My birthday in North Korea (part 1)
By Han Song-mi
This time of year, I have many memories of my childhood in North Korea.
I will never forget my first birthday after my parents got divorced in May 1998. It had been a tough time, my mom and I were mainly eating grass and vegetables leading up to my fifth birthday. There was no food to celebrate, we were barely surviving. At that time, we were living in a barn that was just a few minutes away from my father's big home.
Mom bought some white rice and cooked some meat. It had been a long time since I had seen white rice. “Today is your birthday,” mom said. “I don't have a gift for you, but today we can have white rice.”
I was thrilled that we had white rice. I was staring at my bowl, but I couldn't eat. Mom had done it again, she had put almost all of the rice in my bowl. Mom's bowl had grass with a few sprinkles of rice.
I put down my spoon. “Mom, I'm not going to eat.”
“Why? It's your birthday.”
“Why are our bowls different?” I turned my head to the side, ignoring the delicious white rice that I really wanted to eat. She insisted that I eat, but I couldn't.
“I like white rice, but you only have grass. How can I eat?”
We were at a stand-off. She wanted to celebrate my birthday by having me eat white rice, and she was giving all of it to me. “Okay,” she said. “How can I get you to eat the rice? It is hot, so eat it now.”
I asked Mom to eat first. We went back and forth. “You first.” “No, you first.” “No, you first.”
We were interrupting each other, telling the other to eat first.
“Mom, let's eat it together. We can eat the rice first, then eat the grass after that.”
She agreed with that! Mom ate a little, then she said, “I'm full.”
I knew that she had not eaten much. It was my turn. I ate a little, it tasted so good, I could feel the rice dancing in my entire body. When I ate grass, I chewed for a long time, eating for the sake of survival. But white rice? I would quickly eat. It was so soft. I felt like I had gone back to a year before when I was always eating such delicious food.
“I'm full,” I said, as I patted my stomach. We were two hungry people, mother and daughter, both pretending to be full so the other would eat. Mom looked at me. She was pleading with her eyes for me to obey her. “Really, it's okay for you to eat it. Why don't you go ahead and eat it today? It's your birthday.”
“Because we don't eat rice very often,” I said. “I want to eat it with you for my birthday. That is my real present.” We began eating, taking turns eating a spoonful of rice. Mother, then daughter, then mother, then daughter. Finally, we got to the last spoonful of rice.
“Okay, this last one is for you,” Mom said. I was happy and satisfied to have shared the meal with Mom. After resisting earlier, I opened my mouth wide, ready to be fed. Mom fed me, laughing out loud. “You are like a little puppy.”
We were both laughing, then I spread my arms wide in celebration, exclaiming, “Happy birthday to me.” We both laughed again.
It was a very difficult two years of living together in a barn, but it brought us closer together. As we ate together on my birthday, I remember thinking to myself: “I don't have a father, but I know I have a mom.”
Han Song-mi is co-author with Casey Lartigue of the book “Greenlight to Freedom: A North Korean Daughter's Search for Her Mother and Herself.” She will be celebrating her birthday on September 27th when she is the featured speaker at “My Escape from North Korea and the Importance of Freedom” in Nashville, TN. The event will be hosted by the Bastiat Society (Nashville) of the American Institute for Economic Research in collaboration with Freedom Speakers International.