Out of North Korea

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 1

I’m an American, and I’m in trouble.

Big trouble.

I’m not talking about the kind of trouble you get in when your computer crashes the night before your dissertation is due. Or the trouble you get into with the relatives when you forget to call your granny on what has got to be her 115th birthday.

That’s not the kind of trouble I’m in right now. I wish it were. Even from where I sit on the atheist/agnostic spectrum, I don’t think it’s too strong for me to say I wish to God it were that easy.

In fact, I could even go so far as to say I wish I were back in that Chinese jail.

Yeah. That’s how serious this is.

I’m an American. I’m fixating on the words like some meditative mantra at an enlightenment class, but as my interrogator stares me down while I sit here in my boxers and my not-so-stylish pair of handcuffs, I don’t think he cares all that much about what’s written on my passport.

Nor does he care that the lies and the crimes I’ve been accused of may very well cost me my life.

All he cares about is one thing. Breaking me down until I confess to whatever it is they think I’ve done. Unfortunately, after my last experience in North Korea, I have a pretty solid idea about what that means.

I’m shivering in my boxers. This little hotel room/office/holding cell/whatever the heck this place is can’t be a degree over fifty, and I haven’t seen my clothes since last night.

“Do you know where you are, American?” my interrogator asks. He’s got this sneer on his face that’s so quintessentially villainous he could be accused of overacting if anyone ever got this on film. Except I’m not in a movie. No Navy SEAL team or debonair James Bond type is going to break in here and rush to my rescue.

In Hollywood, the Americans always make it out alive. In this case, I think my chances are about as good as the guy who played Jar Jar Binks winning an Oscar for his performance in Star Wars.

In other words, I’m doomed. The biggest question isn’t whether or not I’m going to die. It’s how much this man — and all the others like him — are going to torture me before someone finally pulls the plug. Or the trigger.

Or whatever it is they’re going to do to me.

Now maybe you understand why I’d rather still be a prisoner in China.

The man leans down and thrusts a pen and paper onto the desk where I’ve been chained. “Start writing,” he barks.

I’m about to tell him that penmanship while handcuffed isn’t a skill most citizens practice in America regardless of how they might do it in North Korea, but with his scowling face and my sitting here shivering in my boxers, I’m not sure how well the delivery would pull off. So instead, like a good little schoolboy, I ask, “What do you want me to write about?” And all the while I’m thinking about if I’d rather be rescued by James Bond, Navy SEALs, or one of those femme fatale spy characters like Angelina Jolie in Salt.

Heck, I would even take the Avengers or Peter Parker in his Spidey suit if I thought it’d increase my chances of surviving.

My overacting villain trope continues to grimace. I get the feeling that he imagines himself quite the intimidating specimen. Adding to the melodrama, he refuses to clear his throat but growls out in a raspy voice, “Start off by telling us who you are and why you snuck into North Korea to spy on our great nation.”