19. An Audience For Something
AN AUDIENCE FOR SOMETHING
In the morning they drive up to the Songdowon International Children's Camp.
The road curved along the shoreline and then the whole complex opened up below them at once: white-and-blue dormitory blocks stacked like cruise-ship decks, a long low building striped in aquamarine tile with red slogans running the length of its facade, too far to read.
Between the buildings and the sea, an artificial lake had been dammed off from the tide, and paddle boats in primary colors drifted across it in a loose, unhurried scatter, oars catching the light.
Closer to the water, a pool complex spread out in rings — pale pink tile, a cluster of small circular pools with fountain jets at their centers, and behind them a tower with blue and green spiral water slides leading to the pool.
It was the middle of July, the sun already flat and hard on the tile by nine in the morning, and none of it was in use.
No splashing, no lifeguard whistle, no wet footprints on the pink stone.
He looked twice to be sure.
The fountain jets in the small pools weren't running.
A rail on the slide's upper platform had a strip of tape or cloth wound around it, the kind of improvised fix that suggested the original part had failed and nothing had replaced it.
He found himself doing the math automatically — chlorine budgets, filtration maintenance, the particular smell of pool chemicals that should have carried up to the van and didn't — and decided the water was not something he'd have let a child of his own swim in.
Down by the parade ground, uniformed children stood assembled in white and red, rows of them, facing a reviewing stand and a low stage flanked by white statuary.
No one’s clothes were dirty, no one’s feet were daubed with mud.
Despite there being at least a hundred children outside, it was eerily quiet.
From this distance they looked less like summer campers than like an audience for something, or an exhibit for someone.
Marina kept her face impassive.
Her blank expression troubled him: Joseon was infecting her.
The air through the cracked window smelled of salt and diesel, and somewhere under it, fresh paint — the kind that hadn't quite finished off-gassing. The driver got out, Ri got out, Miss Park and Miss Wu got out of the minibus.
Marina didn’t move.
“No.”
Miss Wu and Miss Park looked expectantly at him like he would know what to do. Perhaps their afternoon assignations had not gone completely unnoticed.
“I’ll check with her,” he said.
The camp sat above the sea behind fresh white walls and cheerful murals painted in impossible colors.
Children's songs drifted faintly over loudspeakers somewhere beyond the gate.
Bright plastic pinwheels turned lazily in the salt wind.
Every few seconds another child in a red neckerchief crossed the parade ground.
A blond-haired boy, a Westerner, shaded his eyes and watched them.
She crossed her arms, inclining her head at the boy: “I’m not going.”
He opened the sliding van door and sat behind her, where she was in the front passenger’s seat.
“I’m not going,” she repeated.
“Why?”
“This camp is sanctioned.”
Sanctioned? A children’s camp? He blinked. Perhaps he’d misunderstood her.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
She turned around in her chair. Outside the driver, Mr. Choe, and the two minders were watching them.
Inside, from the way her eyes shifted left and right in the van — toward the visor, the door panel, the seam beneath the dash — she was aware of the possibility that more than they were listening in.
She opened her door and stepped out. Gravel crunched under her shoes, loud in the sudden quiet between loudspeaker loops. "I'll tell you all outside."
Warily, he got out after her. He was afraid that he was mistaken, and she hadn’t learned another Joseon survival skill: of following along no matter what one’s conscience said.
A security camera on the campground was swiveling, but stopped and focussed on them.
“As a member of the European Union Delegation, and as a European Union official, I am not visiting that camp. It’s sanctioned.”
“By the United Kingdom, which is not part of the EU,” Mr. Choe said.
Ri cut his eyes to him. Mr. Choe was not just there to steer and brake, apparently.
“The camp is accused of involvement in a Kremlin-run operation targeting Ukrainian youth.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Miss Wu said carefully.
“None of this has been proven,” Mr. Choe said.
She gave him a look. “None of it can be proven when international monitors are kicked out of the country. But as it stands, international monitors provided evidence that children from Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine were forcibly sent to the camp?—”
“This is a serious allegation,” Mr. Choe interrupted.
She ignored him: “—where the children were subject to military training and ideological indoctrination.”
Silence.
He gradually became aware again of the pinwheels, and somewhere behind the wall, a whistle blast and the scuff of running feet.
“This is simply untrue,” Miss Wu said.
“What is your evidence for that?” Marina pressed.
Miss Wu smiled. “I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand.”
“All children come here to learn the wisdom of accepting the socialist way,” Miss Park added mildly.
Mr. Choe was drumming his fingers on his left thigh. His right thumb rested against the holster on his belt as though reassuring himself it was still there.
Ri had accepted the explanation without question: armed protection for a foreign diplomat. It sounded perfectly reasonable before they’d left. Standing here now, he understood the weapon had never been meant to defend her.
She stared the driver down. “I’m not setting foot in there. The moment I do, the government can say the European Union sent an official delegation here. I’m not giving them that.”
“There’s nothing wrong going on! All of the children are happy,” Miss Park insisted.
Ri looked back at the blond boy, but the boy was gone.
Marina walked back to the van, her shoes loud on the gravel, then silent once she reached the paved apron.
A gardener near the gate stopped trimming hedges. The shears hung open in his hand.
Mr. Choe was enraged.
“Just calm down, Choe. She’s a member of the diplomatic community that the Great Marshal is trying to entice to return here,” he said.
“It sounds like you’re protecting your girlfriend,” he snapped.
“Where’s your evidence for that?” Ri shot back.
“She looks sick,” Miss Park said abruptly, putting a hand on his arm; a fraction too long to be casual.
He remembered to keep his heart off his face and didn’t turn to check on her, right then. “Really?”
“Yes, I think she has a headache,” Miss Park continued, her voice soft.
Miss Wu looked back at the van, and back at them: “Yes, I think it’s a woman's headache. She is under the weather.”
He pivoted slowly on his heel, taking in the driver, the children’s camp, and then the van: “Ah, yes. She did look unwell.”
“We should send our regrets to the Camp Director,” Miss Park suggested.
He nodded. “We should indeed.” He looked at the driver: “Sometimes people with headaches get into a bad mood.”
Mr. Choe scowled, then shrugged. “Sometimes they do.”