얼굴이 두껍다두껍다

One’s face is thick.

A Jumak in Chongjin, March 7th, 1952

Ho Ka-i spoke better Russian than Korean. This earned him few favours amongst the Central Committee, but was an accepted fact of life amongst the Soviet Koreans. Most of their meetings switched into Russian after only a short time. Yet, their faction in the Central Committee was small - most of their membership came from lower-ranked members among the party, and local leadership in the various districts. Chongjin was a particular stronghold of the faction, and intermingling between Soviet representatives and members of the Korean Worker’s Party was common in the city.

Chongjin had been a sleepy little fishing village before the Japanese came. Their brutal hand transformed the area into an industrialized city built on a street-grid system, and a large steel mill had been built by the Nippon Steel near the harbour. With the city so far north, it had been protected somewhat from Coalition bombing raids - it was one of the few areas still seeing anything close to pre-war production levels. After all, the Americans had (foolishly, in Ho Ka-i’s eyes) focused on bombing the rail line from Pyongyang to Seoul, and Seoul itself.

“They are trying to blast Seoul from the Earth,” Ho was saying in his Far Eastern accent. “So what would that pig, Syngman Rhee rule, if, in the most horrendous miscarriage of justice, his men do not bayonet him in the back soon?”

“We have heard of the bombing raids,” the Soviet representative, Vladimir Nikolaevich Razuvaev said. He was a severe, old-guard Soviet; one who distinctly remembered the October Revolution, who claimed to have fought in it. He told that he had been part of the firing squad that ended the Romanov dynasty in 1918. “Old Sverdlovsk, or Yekaterinburg as it was called then,” he would regale when three Vodkas deep, “a mining town. It was, perhaps fate that a place of so much worker’s misery would become the last place that the Tsar and his cows would take their breath.”

Ho Ka-i and Pak Chang-ok, both in the prime of their own revolution, adored him without reservation.

“The bombing raids,” Razuvaev was saying, “are unlike what we experienced in the Great Patriotic War. The Germans were good at killing people on the ground, but their airplanes - we got the better of them, soon enough. After all, they were so arrogant to think that a Slav could not fly an airplane as good as a pure-blooded, Aryan - and of course, thus came their folly when they were proved disastrously incorrect.

“So, I estimate, it will be the same with you. By the end of this war, the Americans will have learned that they are no better soldiers than the brave Russians, and Koreans. As they are already learning. I hear the fighting in the south is severe.”

“It is, Ambassador,” Ho Ka-i said. “But, we have not come to discuss war stories. We come with news of our Chairman.”

“Chairman Kim Il-Sung - we have received mixed communications regarding him.”

“Very mixed,” the rotund Commerce Minister, Yi Chu-yon, stated.

“We have heard,” Ho Ka-i continued, “that he collapsed two nights ago in Moranbong. In Pyongyang,” he added by way of explanation to the other Soviet representative’s confused expressions.

“Collapsed?” Razuvaev asked.

“He has begun to recover,” Yi Chu-yon said, “but… nevertheless, it is a poor omen for his future.”

“Which is the reason we have come to you, Vladimir Nikolaevich. We wish to know the Soviet’s will should Kim Il-Sung prove… not to be the chairman of the party, for much longer.”

Razuvaev looked between the three Korean ministers present. His expression aws inscrutable - a measure of surprise at being asked such a treasonous question so directly. But, slowly a smile spread across his face - that Russian smile which did not indicate or propel joy in any measure.

“The will of Comrade Stalin is clear. Kim Il-Sung is, of course, one of our greatest allies. Yet, the outcome of this war has not been fully to our satisfaction.”

“We agree wholeheartedly,” Pak Chang-ok replied. Razuvaev held up his finger to indicate he was not finished.

“You understand, we will not involve ourselves in changing leadership in Korea. We also, however… will not interfere in it.”

The three Soviet Korean ministers looked at each other, then at the Soviet representative. Their time was close at hand.

To be continued…