You Can't Go Home Again

Last Saturday I had the opportunity to attend a very unique and rare show at the Yecheon Cultural center: a performance by a troupe of dissident North Koreans.  Though the show was hardly advertised (if at all, officially), I got word of it less than an hour before it began and was off to see what it was all about.

The entertainers had been a troupe in North Koreas capital, Pyongyang, before they escaped to South Korea.  While their details were vague on their past history or the story of their dissent it was very clear where they were from.  Their manner of speaking was immediately and obviously different.  While I'm not versed enough at Korean to pick out the nuanced variations in their inflection from the general South Korean dialect, the leader of the troupe's speech resonated with the sharp, almost militaristic tone of the North Korean state television news broadcasts picked up by our media sometimes.  This in itself seemed somewhat sad, as the woman opening the show was clearly anything but harsh and militaristic--it was simply the way she had learned to speak the language, at least before an audience, and it's left to mine and anyone else's imagination how she grew up and what kind of life she led.  The thing I was most aware of each time she was on stage, moreso than how she spoke, was that when she smiled it looked like she was about to cry--a tendency I haven't seen on any other Korean's face.  Thinking about it later I realized that when her mouth was pulled into a grin her eyes didn't go along with it, narrowing as they normally would, giving the curious impression of someone who is distraught but ordering themselves to smile anyway.  Whatever it was, I was starkly aware that in some intangible way her features bore her past all too well.  "If you leave during the show, I'll send you to the North Korea," she joked darkly in Korean before the first performance began, and chuckles rippled thoughout the crowd.

I didn't know what to expect from the show, and indeed I suspect few did, besides that there would be singing involved.  The first act was some of the members performing a song which I assume was called Pangapsumnida ("nice to meet you") as this word, repeated, constituted the chorus.  On an enormous projector screen behind the stage video played of elderly Koreans finally being reunited with family members they lost after the border was drawn between the North and South in the destitute days following the Korean war (a reunion organized years ago in a rare joint agreement between the North and South).  I hadn't expected  to get teary during the show but around the auditorium I sensed there were plenty more misty eyes, perhaps none more so than the most elderly members of the audience.

The night featured plenty more songs, some of them North Korean in origin, other ones oldies well known by the audience.  At one point the singer came down into the audience and let some old women sing a few of the lines of the song on the microphone while the crowd intoned the lyrics all around.  As the singer walked down the aisle, women gripped her hand firmly as if they didn't want to let her go.  It was in some way a moment of fascination for all, the first encounter with a North Korean (or at least a former one), but in they way people held and reached for the singers hand with elated smiles on their faces there was also an air of reunion--of a long lost sister and daughter finally returned to them.

Besides singing the snow included plenty of dancing and also a bit of a magic act.  One dance by the troupe's young women was done entirely with pots balanced on their heads, and another was a traditional Korean fan dance.  The entire show was throughly enjoyable and the crowd couldn't have been more receptive.  The time passed quickly and when it was over I found myself still ready to see more.  I wished that I could meet with the performers and talk long with them--there's so much I want to know about their lives and so many stories I wish I could hear them tell, but alas, it wasn't in the cards (and even if I could meet them, I'm nowhere near capable enough with my Korean.)  Of my many questions, I continue to wonder who they left behind in North Korea when they escaped.  Do they have friends there, or family?  Is the troupe a family unto itself, or were they the only friends each other really had?  I suppose I'll never really know, and in a way maybe it's best that I couldn't speak to them and bring such things up.  Returning to the North would almost certainly mean imprisonment or death (the first one quickly leading to the latter, I don't doubt), and without a way to contact those inside I imagine they've had to move on and reconcile whoever they did leave behind in a way that most of us can scarcely imagine; the only option left on the table when you can't go home again.