of the KPA, separated from his wife and daughter, doomed to slave at the mines until the North Koreans decided what to do with him. All because he’d ignored Pho-Hwa’s warning not to venture too far north of Gyondongdo. “We’re here to fish,” Lim had teased his friend. “We need to go where the fishing is best.” He’d chided Pho-Hwa for being so worrisome, and after his friend had reeled in his first tuna of the trip—a four hundred-pounder that had put up a wonderful fight—Ji had stopped complaining and started to enjoy himself. Less than two hours later, the North Koreans had pulled up alongside the yacht and everything had changed.
There were eight other men working the vein alongside Lim and Ji, and so far they’d filled four carts with the rock they’d hacked loose from the cave walls. They were beyond the reach of daylight and had to work by the wavering glow of a kerosene lamp. Three armed guards watched over the group, filling the cave with the smoke of their cigarettes. Lim’s palms were bleeding where there had once been blisters, and the only thing that ached more than his arms was his lower back; it throbbed constantly and whenever he pitched another load of rock into the cart he felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his right hip. He didn’t dare stop what he was doing, however. When one of the other workers had slacked off a few minutes ago, complaining of leg cramps, the guards had laid into him with the stocks of their carbines, first targeting his arms and shoulders, then taking turns at his skull until they’d killed him. They pitched the man’s body into one of the carts and left it there as a warning for the others to keep working.
As he was shoveling yet another load into the cart next to the one containing the body, Lim Seung-Whan mustered the nerve to lean close to his friend and look him in the eye.
“I’m sorry, Pho-Hwa” he whispered. “Please forgive me.”
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