Just Another January Day by Mike Bozart - HTML preview

Just Another January Day

by Mike Bozart

© 2020 Mike Bozart 

Image: Two parka-wrapped North Korean females are walking along a frozen creek on a gray winter’s day in North Korea.

The voice of a middle-aged Kangwŏndo woman: “Yes, it was just another January day, Mike. Just another typically ultra-frigid January day to get through – to survive through – in Wŏnsan.”

I wondered to myself: Never heard of that town. Is it near the border? [with South Korea]

“You look confused, Mike. Wŏnsan is on the eastern side of the peninsula; it’s a coastal city and a provincial capital located on the Sea of Japan, as the rest of the world seems to call it. Wŏnsan is now North Korea’s summertime beach-resort destination. It’s also where we captured one of your spy ships [the USS Pueblo (AGER-2)] on a January day in 1968. And, we didn’t give it back; yep, we still have it. It’s docked as a museum piece on the Potong River in Pyongyang. It’s a trophy to our government. Kim Il-sung was very proud of it, as was his son. [Kim Jong-Il] I don’t think Kim Jong-un will give it back, either. To snatch a ship from the mighty United States Navy … It was a very big deal for us. We were constantly told that America is the ever-expanding evil empire that wants to take over our country and enslave us. Though from this perspective, it seems that we were already serfs, mentality-wise. The brainwashing was astounding, Mike. And the insecurity, why, it is so pervasive; it’s in the DNA of the Kim dynasty. Well, I certainly didn’t say such when I was alive. Way too risky.” When I was alive?!

“So, you’re a ghost?” I mumbled.

“My name is Ae-sook. You can categorize me as a subconscious phantom if that is convenient for you.” Convenient for me? Huh?

“Uh, ok,” I murmured.

“Getting back to the weather on that super-chilly January day. Well, Mike, I don’t think that the high temperature even reached -20° Celsius. [-4° Fahrenheit] I believe that the year was 1990. Anyway, my younger sister Da-hee and I – oh, she must have been ten and I would have been fifteen – were bored and hungry. It seems that we were always hungry – a hot bowl of rice was like a gold nugget to you Americans – so we went searching for cheap food just west of our ancestral hometown. Soon we were aimlessly following a frozen stream.”

“Ok. Please continue, Ae-sook.”

“We came upon a pair of teenage boys who were playing a game in a wider, much flatter, section of the solid-ice stream. They had placed an empty bottle in the middle of the frozen surface and were bowling a croquet ball at it. How they got a croquet ball is beyond me, as we don’t play that game. At least not then. In fact, at that time, I didn’t even know what croquet was. I thought their ball was a large, spray-painted ball bearing from some industrial machine.”

“Ah,” I softly sighed.

“The boys bowled at the presumed liquor bottle from opposite sides, upstream and downstream. They were probably 25 meters [82 feet] apart from each other, and the bottle was betwixt them. The apparent goal was to hit the bottle. However, the snow-less surface was super-slick and had some slight undulations. Needless to say, their shots we missing, rolling errantly wide of the target. But then the boy on the far end got the speed and spin just right. Smash! Shards of broken glass were instantly scattered all over the ice. And, guess what happened next, Mike?”

“Dunno.”

“They just walked away without cleaning up the glass.”

“Oh,” I uttered.

“Anyway, we weren’t really that surprised. We continued on our freezing-cold walk, heads-down and not talking. We then encountered a frail, emaciated, older couple. They must have both been in their late 60s. As we greeted them, they both fell over, crashing head-first onto the rock-hard ice.”

“Did they slip?” I enquired.

“No, Mike; they had both collapsed from malnutrition. Not enough calories to keep their lungs breathing, much less remain standing. They died of starvation right in front of us. But, get this: this was not the first time that I saw this happen. My friends had seen such occur, too; it was not that uncommon. Food – especially in the winter – is worth more than your American gold in North Korea, Mike, because you can’t eat gold.” But, can’t you trade it for food?

“Did it freak you out, Ae-sook?”

“Yes and no, Mike. Like I said, I had witnessed this before. My sister’s mouth was agape for a few minutes, though. Neither of us said anything. Soon a policeman arrived and called for medic. We just continued walking.”

“What were you thinking?” I asked, very interested in her answer.

“I remember thinking that it is a very fine line between life and death in North Korea, Mike. Life is so tenuous over there. I also felt the pangs of hunger – sharp as knives in my stomach – at that moment. I was desperately hoping to come across some affordable, inexpensive food – very inexpensive, as I only had the equivalent of your nickels and dimes.”

“I see. Yeah, we take food for granted here in America, and so does pretty much the whole Western world, Ae-sook. No doubt about it. And we fetishize food, too. It’s perverse.”

“Do you want me to tell you what happened to my sister?” Please don’t tell me that she was raped and killed. Not that.

“Uh, ok,” I weakly vocalized with obvious trepidation.

“Unlike me, she had a rebellious spirit, Mike. She got in trouble during her last year of high school for questioning ‘the supreme leader’. They started to monitor her. One day the authorities were following her after school. Would you believe that it was a January day very near that frozen creek? Well, it was. Da-hee managed to elude them by rounding a corner of a large abandoned factory building. And then she disappeared.” She disappeared?

“What, did she snap her fingers and become invisible?”

“No, silly; Da-hee was just missing. She had vanished without a trace. No one had any idea where she went or what became of her. Our parents were inconsolable. Well, now I know her grisly fate. I replayed that day, and watched from overhead like a drone. Oh, my poor sister. She hid in an old, nonfunctioning chimney. And got stuck. I’m not sure if Da-hee froze to death or died from dehydration.” How awful!

“What a horrid demise. I’m so sorry to hear that. If I may ask, how did you die, Ae-sook?” Whoops.

“After my sister died, I became woke to the regime. I wanted to leave the country. Intensely. When my parents died, only one month apart in 2016, I decided to go for it as you Americans say. I consented to become the wife of a Chinese widower, who was twenty-five years older than me. He was a farmer near the Mongolian border. It was ok at first, but then the real brute emerged. He was an alcoholic sadist, Mike. He began to beat me. Daily. I could not take it anymore. I snuck out of his small shack early one morning and began running across the barren, fallow field. He chased me in his ancient tractor. And ran me over. My corpse lay in that field for months, until all the land animals and birds had consumed my remains. And, do you know when this happened? Are you still there, Mike?”

“Yes, I’m listening, Ae-sook. Just trying to process all of this. So, when did this horrible tragedy happen to you?”

“It happened on just another January day.”

Suddenly, someone was shaking my left shoulder. It was my wife Monique (aka Agent 32). “Did you know that you were talking in your sleep again, bana?” [husband in Cebuano]

“Oh, really?”

“Yes, really. What were you dreaming about, my kano loko? [Cebauano for ‘crazy American’] Were you talking to your shower girl?”

“Huh? What? It was the spirit of a deceased North Korean woman. She was telling me about a day in North Korea – just another January day to be more precise.”

“You know, bana, whenever you mix that certain cough medicine with those pain pills and dark beer, you do this. And, I can’t sleep with you muttering mumbo-jumbo all through the night!”

“I’ll refrain in the future, asawa.” [wife in Cebuano]

“Just another January day. Harrumph!”