Sublime

Now, in a totalitarian move I suspect the Chinese leadership would admire, as a result of dissent in other areas, I am being installed to run it, against my will. A test of loyalty to the regime.

That night, as I lay in bed listening to the gunshots and the Rebels’ loudspeakers blaring out bloodcurdling diatribes, I reached a turning point. I had always been told, and had believed, that I was living in a paradise on earth, socialist China, whereas the capitalist world was hell. Now I asked myself: If this is paradise, what then is hell? I d

“The Dear Leader said I was going to act for the world. You know he gave me this name. In English, Sun means hae and Moon means dal, so I’d be night and day, light and dark, celestial body and its eternal satellite. The Dear Leader said that would make me mysterious to American audiences, that the intense symbolism would speak to them.”

The town of Hyesan is famous for its coalfields and copper mines. About twelve miles northeast of Hyesan, there’s an area called Pochonbo, famous for a battle that took place there in 1937. The Koreans were attempting to push the Japanese occupiers out of their country, and the Anti-Japanese Guerrilla Corps, allegedly commanded by Kim Il-sung, beat

I’d never met a woman like Pauline and had met her at a time when I feared not one woman like her existed in all the world. In some way I had never known how to express, I’d feared I would have to become the first of my kind, whatever my kind was, should I be allowed to survive—that which history has never seen before. Instead, here Pauline lived;

looted