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- [00:00]
Chloe Salmon
Calling all educators Join the MOTH this summer for the Virtual Moth Teacher Institute. Mti is for 5th to 12th grade teachers. Whether you're looking to fine tune your strategies or a curious newcomer eager to learn more about MOTH storytelling. A new community of teachers all over the country. Vibrant discussions, live storytelling shows, access to MOTH curriculum and so much more. MTI will take place from July 14th to the 18th. Applications close on June 8th. Visit themoth.orgmti to apply today.
- [00:34]
State Farm Representative
This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Knowing you could be saving money for the things you really want is a great feeling. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state.
- [01:02]
Lowe's Representative
Craftsman Days are here at Lowe's with big savings on the tools you need right now. Get a free select tool when you buy the Craftsman V22 pack battery kit. Whether it's the backyard, the bathroom or beyond, Craftsman has the tools to help you power through and get the project done right because DIYing is unpredictable. But your tools shouldn't be. Shop Craftsman at Lowe's today. Valid through 618. Wall supplies last selection varies by location.
- [01:42]
Chloe Salmon
This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Chloe Salmon, one of the directors at the Moth. I've always loved mystery stories. The clues, the deductions, the big reveals. And I've always secretly dreamed of being a detective. When I was seven, my dad came home from work one day with a book called the Magic Storybook that he had made out of a manila folder and computer paper. All of the pages inside were blank. My dad said that the book was magic and that only he could read the stories, which he would do for me and my little brother when we asked. But the mystery of the book consumed me. It couldn't be real magic, right? I interrogated my dad for weeks before he finally broke and admitted that he was making the stories up as he went along. Detective Chloe cracked the case, and the book felt all the more magical to me because of it. 23 years later, it's still on my bookshelf. In this hour, Stories of mysteries Life presents us and the ways we meet them. Our first story comes to us from Michelle Castellano. She told it for us at a story slam in la, where we partner with public radio station KCRW at our slams. Musical timekeepers let the tellers know when it's time to wrap up. If you hear a weird sound at the end of this story, that's what it is. Here's Michelle live at the Moth.
- [03:12]
Michelle Castellano
So I didn't realize how Midwestern I am until I moved to New York City. Specifically when I tried to get my first apartment in New York City off of Craigslist. I had been there for all of six weeks. I was subletting a bedroom in an apartment where I had eight other roommates. Someone rented the couch, someone rented the other couch, and someone rented the broom closet for $200 a month. I swear to God. So after spending six weeks there in real World Bushwick, I decided I had to get the hell out and went to Craigslist to find my own place. So you see, at the time, I was very busy, super stressed, had a really high pressure job. It was Fashion Week. I was working for a big brand where I held the really important role of unpaid intern. So taking an afternoon off was not allowed and not even an option. Photos would have to do. I had to rent an apartment based off of photos. So this is where it goes from dumb to unbelievable. So please just bear with me if you've ever rented an apartment in New York City before. It's pretty standard that you need three months rent to get a new place. You need the first month's rent, the last month's rent, and a third month, which is a non refundable broker's fee for all of their hard work. That was fine. I had set that aside and planned for it. However, you also had to prove that in addition to that, you made 40 times the rent. And if you didn't make 40 times the rent, you needed a cosigner that made 80 times the rent. So at $0 an hour, I did not make 40 times the rent in Williamsburg. My parents back home in Missouri did not make 80 times the rent. So I told this to my Craigslist broker, my savior, and he said, no problem, just give me six months rent up front. And I said, no problem. You have a business card. You have an office here. Let me just give you the majority of my savings. No further questions. So we meet up, we sign the lease. I give him six months rent in cashier's checks in exchange for a set of keys and we go our separate ways. I go to the apartment to check it out immediately, and when I go to the end of the building, I can't. The keys don't work. They don't fit the lock. It's that simple. So another tenant is kind enough to let me in. And I realize not only are the keys not real, the apartment isn't real. There are no vacant units in the entire building. Although I have just signed a lease saying this is my new address and I have movers scheduled to bring my things to this new address the next day. There is no apartment, so I call my friend from Craigslist. He doesn't answer and I call him about 100 more times. My heart is racing like never before. The room was spinning. I start mentally retracing what I have from this person. I go back to his office where I met him. It turned out it was a shared desk that he had rented with cash. I look at the business card I had from him and it was one of those free ones that is basically just an ad for Vistaprint. So I try to call his number again and it's been disconnected. It's now the first of the month. I have nowhere to live, absolutely no money to get a new apartment, and no way to reach the man who has it all. Luckily, between the couches and the broom closet though, I had plenty of places to crash while I figured it out. So my first thing was I tried to take any legal action I could and I find out that the apartment wasn't real and this man wasn't real. No one with his name had ever received a broker's license in the state of New York. Not only that, but the LLC that I made out, all my cashiers checks to was never registered. So there was nothing I could do legally. So I left the courthouse really hopeless that day and in a last ditch, just decided to get on the Internet and see what Nancy Drew shit I could do what I could find on this guy, you know, I didn't have anything left to do. His name was Nathan Smith also. So, like it really doesn't get more generic or like fake than that. So. So I really had a hard time. Anyway, I'm on the Internet. This takes me to a website called the Ripoff Report. And the Ripoff Report is exactly what it sounds like. I highly recommend is like yelp gone rogue. It is really a great tool. So on the Ripoff Report, this guy's name is everywhere. At least a dozen times. He's been running this scam in Brooklyn for about two or three months and he's still, still at it. So I go through the comments and I'm able to find his new phone number. I take it down, but instead of calling him, I call the Brooklyn police. I tell them exactly what happened to me how much money was taken, which was a lot. And I tell them what was happening to other people, you know, So I thought. I couldn't believe it, but they told me to come in the next day and they were going to open a case. So I work with my friends at the ripoff report. I'm like, hey, guys, we finally have a case against this guy. If you want to do anything, come on into the 90th Precinct. So in the course of two weeks, two dozen people came forward that had been ripped off by this one Craigslist scammer. He's stolen over $40,000 from all of us, total. The reason no one had ever been able to bring a case against him is because he had taken amounts from each individual just small enough to not be like grand larceny until he met miss Midwestern. Oh, my gosh, please take my money. No questions asked. Here you. So he has no idea to this day that it was me, the sucker of all suckers that was responsible for a sting operation that led to him being arrested inside of a Starbucks. I like to think that they did it, like, right after they called his name and he picked up his drink, but I have no idea. I don't know how it went down. All I know is that one year later, after this all happened, I get a call from an unknown number telling me to get my checks. So I went in and I got my money back. Thank you.
- [09:34]
Audience Member
Thank you.
- [09:38]
Michelle Castellano
And I like to think that I'm still just as trusting of people, for better or for worse. And I still find all of my apartments on Craigslist and. But now when I meet a new landlord or broker, I like to casually mention the one I had arrested.
- [09:48]
Audience Member
Thanks.
- [09:55]
Chloe Salmon
That was Michelle Castellano. Michelle is a shoe designer who now lives in Los Angeles with her dog, Wylie. Michelle says that she did end up finding another apartment at the last minute, but since she was looking in a panic on the second day of the month with a move in date of immediately, the the options were limited. She spent the next year sharing a space with a roommate and some mice and vowed to never again rent an apartment without seeing it in person first. If any of Michelle's ripoff report compatriots are listening, we want to hear from you. You can find us on Twitter and Facebook, Hemoth and mothstories on Instagram. Who knows, maybe we can get a reunion on the books. Our next story of life's mysteries is from Alexandra Rosas. She told this for us at a grand slam in Madison, Wisconsin, where We partner with public radio station wpr. Here's Alexandra live at the Moth.
- [11:01]
Alexandra Rosas
It really was no big deal. My husband was looking at pictures of our morning. I had taken my mother to sit along the lake bluff of Lake Michigan, and I had taken my son with me, and we had picked her up, and it was a beautiful day, and the sun was hitting us, and I caught the wind blowing my mother's hair. And not even a cheap phone camera could ruin the moment. So he's looking through these pictures, and my mother is in hospice, which means she has a wheelchair, which means she has to be lifted in and out of places. And he wants to know who got her there. So he says, how did your mother get there? My son says, mom did it. My husband says, you're kidding. He says, no. Did you forget she's Colombian? That's the answer my kids give to everything that I do. She's Colombian now, growing up Colombian, I got to see what that meant. My mother was an immigrant. She had six children. She was a single mother. She worked three jobs to give us everything. But because of that, she was hardly home, and I missed her and I wanted her and I wished for her, but she was working. My mother is in hospice because her kidneys are failing. The doctor says that maybe because of her age, we'll have her for three more months, maybe six. But he forgets she's Colombian, too. So 18 months later, we are at Lake Michigan, sitting on the bluff. I take my mother to these places, and we're enjoying our days together. And on this last day, I take her over to the wishing fountain in front of hospice. There's a fountain, and when you're an immigrant, you don't know what's Colombian and you don't know what's American, and you think everybody does things the way you do. But we can't pass a fountain without throwing in coins and saying our wishes out loud. So we park in front of the fountain before I take her back up to her room and I hand her some coins, and she throws her coins in the fountain and she shouts, hawaii. And she does it with such force that I don't know if she's really pissed off off because she never got to go to Hawaii. And I don't want to get her more pissed off because she's dying. So I take my coin and I say, hawaii, just in case. So we make our wishes, and we're throwing in our coins and we're tossing, and we're like maniacs, and we're laughing, and I Look at her. And I fall in love with my mom. I have not had a chance to be with her my entire life and I have her. I don't even need to make any more wishes. I have my wish. I've got her. So I take her back up to her room and she is doing so good that I decide tomorrow we can have another big day. I kiss her on the forehead. I take her back and I tell her, I'll be back in the morning. 9 o' clock. Be ready at 8:20. My phone rings the next morning at my house and it's the hospice center. I pick up the phone and I don't start breathing until I hear her in the background. And she's alive, but she's screaming. No, no. The nurse says, your mother's sick. You have to come. The hospice center is only 8 minutes away, so I rush over and as soon as the elevator doors open, I can hear her. I go in her room. The nurse says, your mother's kidneys are done. We need to start the comfort procedure now. Months ago. Months ago, my mother has signed these forms asking for a comfort procedure, meaning when things end, there is to be no hospital and we just let things go. But she signed those papers when she used to be sick and she's not sick anymore. We were just at the lake and we're going to go shopping today. So when I see the nurse lean into my mother and say, soon, Lenore, you will have your relief soon, I do something that I still can't believe. I step in between the nurse and my mother and in our secret language, Spanish, so that the nurse can't understand. I say, tell her no. Tell her you're going shopping and tell her no. Tell her you want the hospital. Tell her you changed your mind. My mother grunts. Hospital. I say to the nurse, you heard that? She wants to go to the hospital. The nurse says, you can't. This is her wish. And I think how I had my wish for the past 18 months. And I know I was only supposed to have my mother for six months, but I have her for 18 and it has made me greedy and I am ready to beg, borrow and steal for one more minute with her. But I turn, and in English this time, I say, it's okay, you can go. I ask the nurse how long my mother will have after the morphine starts. She says, two days. Six days later, my mother is still with us because why does everyone keep forgetting we're Colombian? When she passes away, I'm there and I want to say something. But I become a little four year old and I'm calling her back. Mama, Mama. The nurse puts her hand on my arm and she says, just think of the life you gave her that she found it so hard to leave. Thank you.
- [17:16]
Chloe Salmon
That was Alexandra Rosas. Alexandra lives in Wisconsin and is currently working on a collection of short stories about life with her mother when they were new to America. She says that toward the end she felt like she got to meet a different side of her mother, a loving, beautiful woman with a sun ray for a heart. Although they never did make it to Hawaii, she says she still cherishes the memories of the days she had someone to carry to the bluff of Lake Michigan. To see a photo of Alexandra with her mother, head on over to themoth.org Coming up next, a magical tree leads to a sibling rivalry and a mysterious coin presents an opportunity to a father and son when the Moth Radio Hour continues.
- [18:13]
Production Team
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
- [18:21]
Kaley Cuoco
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- [18:47]
State Farm Representative
Go to your happy price. Priceline McCrispy strips are now at McDonald's. I hope you're ready for the most dippable chicken in McDonald's history. Dip it in all the sauces. Dip it in that hot sauce in your bag.
- [19:00]
Lowe's Representative
Dip it in your McFlurry.
- [19:01]
State Farm Representative
Your dip is your business. McCrispy strips at McDonald's.
- [19:05]
Lowe's Representative
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- [19:38]
Chloe Salmon
You're listening to the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Chloe Salmon. In this episode, we're exploring stories of mysteries great and small. Our next story comes to us from Annie Scher. She told this at a slam in Chicago where we partner with public radio station wbez. After a few other storytellers, Annie took the stage.
- [20:02]
Annie Scher
So, as seems to be true for many of us here tonight, my first enemy and friend was blood related. My brother and I would fight constantly growing up. We'd fight about everything from which blockbuster movie to rent, to who was better at Dance Dance Revolution, which was me, to who had the worst bowl cut, which was also me. The only thing that we didn't really fight about was who was really to blame for our tumultuous relationship, which we could agree on was our parents. But looking back now, I think that more specifically, the real root of our siblinghood rivalry was the gumdrop tree. So to backtrack a little bit, when my brother and I were born, our parents planted a tree for each of us in the backyard. And my tree was a beautiful tree that blossomed big white flowers. I really had no complaints about my tree, except compared to my brother's tree. And his tree was also this beautiful tree that blossomed big white flowers. But the difference was that his tree also blossomed gumdrops. Now this was really the biggest mystery to my brother and me growing up. All we knew was that one random morning each spring we would wake up and look outside our bedroom windows and there they'd be, these hundreds of different gumdrops of rainbow colors strewn about my brother's tree and covered in sugar and ready to be harvested before breakfast. Now of course, I was more than welcome to engage in the harvest, and I did every year. But when I really started to think about this discrepancy, I couldn't help but become a little bit unhinged. Why was my tree a normal tree and his tree was this super special gumdrop tree? Was I being ungrateful or were things in my life really this vastly unequal? Was I adopted? So this one night in early spring, pre harvest, my brother and I were playing a game of hide and seek. And I headed to the best hiding spot in the house, which was underneath my parents bed. And I'm not kidding when I tell you that this is the best hiding spot in the entire house because it was taking him quite some time to find me. And I start to poke around, see if there's anything interesting I can find to help pass the time, when out of the corner of my eye, I see this big white storage bin with the lid kind of popping off. And I take this box out from underneath the bed and I take the lid off. And what did I see but dozens and dozens of bags of rainbow colored gumdrops and huge spools of green floss. I had single handedly uncovered the greatest mystery of my generation. So here I was at this crossroads. I could either put the lid back on the box and put the box back under the bed, not say anything, and let the mystery of the gumdrop tree live on for my brother forever, or I could be a big asshole about it. So I run out to the hallway and I yell my brother's name and he comes running back into my parents be bedroom where he is swiftly confronted with this big box that single handedly destroys all of our childhood hopes and dreams. And he takes one look at the box and he starts to cry. And I take one look at him and say, who's special now? And he takes one look at me still with tears in his eyes and says, annie, I've known that mom and dad do the gumdrop tree for a really long time. But I'm sad because I wanted the magic to live on for you. So I don't quite remember what happened for the rest of that night. But what I do remember is that for several years after, my family and I would spend one night together late spring, sitting around the kitchen table stringing rainbow colored gumdrops onto spools of green floss in preparation for tomorrow's harvest. So what I learned is that regardless of whatever grows on your trees or in your gardens, sometimes there's nothing sweeter than your roots. Thank you.
- [25:00]
Chloe Salmon
That was Annie Scher. Annie is a writer and performer based in Chicago. She's an ensemble member at the Neo Futurist Theater. And she says that in addition to storytelling, she loves biking, karaoke and playing cribbage. While young Annie sleuthed her way into the truth of the gumdrop tree, there was one mystery left for me. Why did her parents only ever put gumdrops on her brother's tree? She graciously put my query to the family group text and her mom confessed that simply put, the hanging process was much more difficult than they anticipated and decorating one tree was easier than two. They ruled that the annual harvest had to be equally shared between the siblings. That Annie would understand when she grew up and called it a day. Case closed. While her family has stopped hanging the gumdrops, now that she and her brother are adults, Annie says that she can't wait to revive the tradition. If she has her own family someday, and if she has more than one kid, she'll be sure to put Gumdrops on everyone's trees. Next up, another slam story from Chicago, where we partner with wbez. This one from Adam Bottner.
- [26:23]
Adam Bottner
So when my son Sam was about 11 years old, he got very into coins, more specifically into metallurgy, sort of the chemistry around coins. He was fascinated with the metals and he would do all these things with these coins, just change around the house. He would shine them up using chemicals. He would bake them in the oven to make them look older. He would, you know, clean them with chemicals to make them look brighter and shinier. He would electroplate one coin's metal onto the other coin. And he was just like this little mad scientist. And it was very fun to watch this kid. He was very into everything he did. He was a bright little kid. So that led to his desire to be a coin collector because he was so into the coins themselves. And he knew that I had a coin collection when I was a kid. So he asked me if he could start. I said, sure, I'll do what my dad did for me. I'll give you some of my coins to get you started. But you gotta promise me you don't clean any of the coins because that devalues the coins. No matter what you do, if you want to make them look better, it just makes them less valuable or value less. So he's like, cool. So we start collecting coins. I gave him some of mine. He starts going on cointalk.com at night and talking to these 60 year old coin collectors. And it's hysterical to watch this little kid. He's just so into it. And we would go to these coin shows every month down in Lamont, Illinois, and I would just basically follow him around and he would take his, you know, his allowance or his birthday money and he would buy a couple coins. He talked to the other exhibitors and he was really knowledgeable because he was always reading about it. So it's just fun to watch him at work. So one time we're down there and he says to one of the coin exhibitors, he says, if I had a 1943 S doubled die, would that be valuable? And the coin exhibitor says, he like kind of looks up, you know, with like a very dramatic pause. And he takes off his glasses, he goes, if that's true, you may have just put yourself through college. And so I'm standing behind them. At that time, I was a government lawyer and I had no money in the bank. I was putting away $25 with each paycheck for a government, for a bond, a Savings bond. And on that savings plan, it would have taken about 400 years to put him through college. So I was just like. You know, I was like. Then I was a cartoon character. Like, the dollar signs in my eyes bugged in and out. Boing, boing, boing, boing. And I was just so excited because nothing like this would ever happen to somebody in my family. So it was very exciting. We said, what's the next step? And the guy goes, take a picture of it tonight when you get home and send it to me, and I'll tell you what I think. So we go home. Sam was also into the photography of coins, these really accurate pictures of coins. And then we sends it to this guy, and the guy immediately emails back. He says, I think you got something here. So I'm thinking, like, in excess of $100,000. That's what university of Illinois at that time was, like, $120,000. So that's what I'm thinking. And so I'm so excited. We're, like, going crazy in the house. We're running around, and we're like, oh, what do we do with the penny? So we hid it in between, like, his box spring and the mattress. You know, God forbid the house gets robbed. They won't be able to find the penny in the bed. And then we asked the guy, what's the next step? Like, this guy's like, the Ms. Like, he knows everything. You know, he's like Moses or something. We just met him at this thing. And so he says, you gotta take. You have to get it graded, like, officially assessed by these national grading companies. And one of them was coming to the Rosemont Convention center for a big convention in, like, the next month. So we waited, you know, guarded the house. We were on constant vigil, you know, and so we go to this coin show a month later, and I walk in, you know, I'm like, making sure nobody's following me, you know, because I've got the coin of the century. And I walk in, and we go up to the booth, and I tell the guy, I go, what we want to do? He goes, yeah, let me see it. So I give it to him, and in two seconds, he says, has this been cleaned? And I looked at Sam. And Sam, he's a little man, and he bows his head, and the energy just goes out of his body. And I realized he had cleaned it, and it's now worth nothing. So we went from this to this. And so at that time, I had to stop being his financial planner and be his Father. So I. I said, come on, let's take a walk. And so we go. We went on the stairwell. I remember we sat down. I go, did you really clean that coin? And he said, maybe. And, you know, maybe. Of course, man. He for sure did. And so now, again, I can't be his financial planner. I have to be his father. I said, listen, you know what? We never had this money. It wasn't ours. Things like that. That's just crazy fortune. I said, don't worry about it. We're gonna be fine. You know, the best things in life are the ones you have to work for. And as I'm saying this, I'm kind of making myself actually believe it, too. And so he started feeling better. I said, do you want to go back in the show or you want to go home? And he said, let's go back in the show. I love coins. I'm like, okay, cool. He got over it, and I was over it. And we're walking around, and I come up with the brilliant idea of, hey, do you want to find out what it would have been worth if we didn't clean it? Really, really stupid idea, right? So we go back to the grading guy, and I walk up to him. I said, what would this coin have been worth if we didn't clean it? He goes, 20, 25 bucks. And I go, no, no. If we didn't clean it. And he goes, yeah, 20, 25 bucks. I go, wait, it's a 1943 S double die, right? It was stamped twice by the San Francisco Mint in 1943 by mistake. Only a few got it to circulation, right? He goes, no, it's like it's something. He goes, it's not what you're talking about. He goes, it's worth 20 or 25 bucks whether you cleaned it or not. So we realized, you know what I was thinking, like, we had won the golden ticket, that this was like the Willy Wonka episode where we wanted to go, and we never had it in the first place. So all of a sudden, we're jumping up and down like we had. Like we had just found the 1943 S double die, you know? And I realized, you know, coins, when they're flawed, sometimes are very valuable, you know? But when we're flawed as people, we really learn some valuable lessons. Thank.
- [32:00]
Michelle Castellano
You.
- [32:03]
Chloe Salmon
Adam Boutner lives in Buffalo Grove, Illinois, and is a director of legal solutions for a technology company. While his favorite pastime these days is telling stories, he's also written several screenplays, the most recent being Searching for Frenchie Fuqua. Adam says that he and Sam continue to look for valuable coins to add to Sam's collection. They'd make weekly trips to the bank, buy $10 or $20 worth of pennies or dimes, and return home to comb through them looking for another potential winner. They never did find one, but the time spent together brought them closer, and Adam says that was reward enough. After the break, a journalist puts herself on the line to go undercover in North Korea. That's when the Moth Radio Hour continues.
- [32:56]
Production Team
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
- [33:02]
Kaley Cuoco
At Capella University, you can learn at your own pace with our Flexpath learning format. Take one or two courses at a time and complete as many as you can in a 12 week billing session. With Flexpath, you can finish the bachelor's degree you started in 19 months and under $19,000. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella. Edu fast as 25% of students cost varies by pace, transfer credits and other factors. Fees apply.
- [33:34]
Chloe Salmon
This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Chloe Salmon. In this hour we're listening to stories that will add a little mystery to your day. Our final story comes from Suki Kim. She told this for us in Australia at our show where we partnered with the Sydney Opera House at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. Here's Suki Kim.
- [33:57]
Audience Member
So I was packing my suitcase when there was a knock at the door. I knew it was there so I ignored it and I kept packing and she kept knocking. So finally I gave up and I opened the door. So There she was, 24, British, one of the evangelical Christians that I had been working with for the past six months. She said, he's dead. For a moment I was confused. I thought she meant God. This was a Christmas time and there had been a lot of these Bible study meetings lately, which is why I didn't want to open the door. It was exhausting pretending to be one of them for months. And this was my last day teaching. I just wanted to get out of there. Then she said, pointing at the ceiling and now whispering, she said, he died. Then I knew she meant the other God in that world, Kim Jong Il, the then great leader of North Korea. So the place was Pyongyang. The time was December 2011. I had been teaching at an all male university in Pyongyang. I was University of Science and Technology that was funded, founded and operated by a group of evangelical Christians from around the world. Now religion is not allowed in North Korea and Proselytizing is a capital crime. This group of evangelical Christians, however, had struck a deal with the North Korean regime, an unofficial one, to fund the education of the sons of elite. In exchange for access, they promised to not proselytize. But they were getting a footing in a country of 25 million devout followers of the Great Leader. And if he were to fall, then they would need another God to replace him. So I pretended to be one of them to be there. But I only got away with it because the real missionaries were pretending to not be missionaries. So why did I go through such an extreme to be there? Writing about North Korea with any depth or meaning is impossible unless you are embedded there. A full immersion was the only way. I had been to North Korea since 2002 and returned there repeatedly. And if I were to just write whatever they showed me, then I would be the regime's publicist, not a writer. And I didn't want to wait for North Korea's permission to tell North Korea's truth according to North Korean regime's agenda. But this was also personal. I was born and raised in South Korea into a family that was torn apart by the Korean War. In 1950, when North Korea bombed South Korea, my grandmother, who was living in Seoul, packed her five children, including my mother, who was then four years old, to flee, and all the southbound trains were jam packed. So the family secured seats in the back of a truck. And it's when the truck was about to pull off, somebody shouted, young men should give up seats for women and children. So my grandmother's first child, my uncle, who was then 17, got up and said, I'll get a ride and I'll join you in the next town. He never arrived, and later the neighbors reported seeing him with his hands tied, being dragged away by North Korean soldiers. In 1953, after millions of Koreans died and families got separated, an armistice was signed and the Korean War paused. And along the 38th parallel, which is an artificial division originally drawn by the United States with the help of the allies, the 5,000-year-old Kingdom of Korea was split in half. From that point, my grandmother waited for her son to come home. Like millions of Korean mothers on both sides of Korea, over 70 years have passed, and that border, which Koreans thought was temporary, is still there. Even though I moved to America when I was 13 years old, this family history haunted me. Later. As a writer, I became obsessed with North Korea and to find out what is really going on there. So I went undercover as a teacher and a missionary. When I got there, in 2011, they were preparing for year 100. The North Korean calendar system begins at the birth of the original Great Leader. To celebrate the occasion, the regime had shut down all universities and put all university students into construction field to build Great Leader monuments. In actuality, however, the then Great Leader was dying and his young son was about to take over. They put old youth scatter them to prevent any possible revolt outside. This was the time of North Korean Spring and the Arab Spring, and they didn't want a North Korean spring. And the only ones who did not get sent to construction fields were my students. The campus was a five star prison. None of us were allowed out. The students were never allowed out. The teachers were allowed out in group outings with reminders to visit Great Leader monuments. Every class was reported on and recorded. Every conversation was overheard, Every room was bugged, Every lesson plans had to be pre approved. And I ate meals with three students every meal. And they never veered from the script. They went everywhere in campus in pairs and groups and watched each other. In order to get to know them better, I assigned letter writing and essay writing. Although many of them were computer majors, they didn't know the existence of the Internet. Although many were science majors, they didn't know when a man first walked on the moon. The vacuum of knowledge about anything other than their Great Leader was shocking. But I was under a strict set of rules to never tell them anything about the outside world. Once a student said he listens to rock and roll on their birthday. And usually they all said they only list songs about the Great Leader. And when he blurted this out, he looked around to check who might have hurt him and he froze. And the fear that I saw on his face was so palpable that I knew that whatever punishment that would go with the slip was something beyond my imagination. So I changed the topic. What really disturbed me about that was that I had been waiting for that slip in order to understand the world better. But when that slip happened, I became nervous and worried. And I began to question what it was that I was doing there. Then I began to notice something strange about my students. They lied very often, very easily. The lies came in different tiers. Sometimes they lied to protect their system. There was a building on campus called Kim Il Sung ISM Study hall, which means Great Leader ISM Study hall, where they went to study Great Leader studies every day. And they had to guard these people, building 24 7. So I would see them guarding the building all night. But if I ask them, how was your night? They'll say they slept really well and felt really rested. Sometimes they would just regard state lies that they'd been taught. They'll say the scientists in their country changed blood types from A to B. Sometimes they lie for no apparent reason, as if the line between truth and lie just wasn't clear to them. Initially, I was really upset and repulsed by these rampant lies. But as I spent months and months there with them in that locked compound, I began to really understand their predicament. And I felt such empathy and love. And they were so easy to love, but impossible to trust. They were sincere, but they lied. But if all you've ever known were lies, then how can you expect them to be any other way? It's as if their great humanity was in constant conflict with the inhumanity of their system. But then I was there, pretending to be something I'm not in order to get to the truth of the place. In that world, lies were necessary for survival. But then one day, a student asked me about a National Assembly. There was no way I could explain that without bringing up democracy and the outside world. But I was nervous. You know, the other students at the table were watching this conversation. So I answered as honestly as I could and as vaguely as I could. That night I couldn't fall asleep. I was afraid that the student was trying to make trick me into saying something so he could report on me. And I was in fact writing a book in secret. I had pages and pages of notes hidden on USB sticks which I kept on my body at all times. And I thought, if those were discovered, then would I disappear the way my uncle had? And would my mother then have to repeat the life of heartbreak that my grandmother lived through? Being in North Korea, if you tap into that fear that's beneath the propaganda, is bone chillingly depressing. That night I felt more alone and more afraid than ever. But then the next day I ran into a friend of his and he said, he thinks like you. Then I realized the student was not making reports on me. The student was in fact, genuinely curious. Now this was even worse. I was now afraid of the consequence of that curiosity. That I might have inspired my role there was to plant a seed of doubt. But then what would happen to the student that I might have reached? Would he then be punished for questioning the regime? Or would he be doomed to a life of unhappiness? I was no longer sure if our truth, the truth of the outside world, would in fact help them. I adored my students. I called them my young gentlemen. And they opened up to me Little by little, through those letters that I signed. And in those letters, they talked about missing their mothers, their girlfriends, and also being fed up with the sameness of everything, because their lives were only about the Great Leader. The only break they ever got was playing group sports. Some evenings I would watch them play soccer and basketball, and I would marvel at the beauty and this exuberant energy and joy and grace of their youth. And I wanted to show them, tell them about this incredible world outside, filled with infinite possibilities that they so deserved. But I knew that I couldn't. All I was capable of doing was to observe that while their bodies bounce, their mind remains stuck in that timeless vacuum that had nothing but their Great Leader. On my last day, Kim Jong Il's death was announced. The world, everything came to a sudden end. And I saw my students from the distance as they were hauled away to a special meeting. Their faces looked at me, but their eyes didn't see me. It's as if their souls had been sucked out of them and they had just lost their God, their parent, and the reason for everything in their world. I never got to say goodbye to them. The horror of North Korea goes beyond famine and gulags. To survive there, real human beings have to not only believe in the lies of the Great Leader, but also perpetuate them, which is a mental torture. It's a world where every citizen is complicit in the deprivation of their own humanity. Towards the end of my stay, a student said to me, we always think of you as being the same. Our circumstances are different, but we think of you as the same as us. We really want you to know that we truly think of you as being the same. But are we really the same? Maybe we were at some point, but three generations of the Great Leader have now happened. And for 70 years, the world sat back and just watched, which to me, that silence is indefensible. Lies run so deep there because the center is rotten, and that rottenness is irrevocable. What would happen to my students, my young gentlemen, as they become the soldiers and slaves of their Great Leader, Kim Jong Un? If my uncle had managed to survive, would it be the same boy that had jumped off that truck? Thank you.
- [51:15]
Chloe Salmon
That was Suki Kim. Suki is the only writer to have lived undercover in North Korea for immersive journalism. She's the author of a New York Times best selling nonfiction book, without you, there is no US Undercover among the sons of North Korea's elite, and the award winning novel, the Interpreter. Born and raised in Seoul, she lives in New York City. This has been an hour about the mysteries we encounter in life. They're rarely open and shut, but the space in between might just be where the best stories lie. That's it for this episode of the Moth Radio Hour. Thank you to all of our storytellers in this episode for sharing with us and to you for listening. I hope you'll join us next time.
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Production Team
This episode of the Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, Kathryn Burns, and Chloe Salmon, who also hosted this Hour. Co producer is Vicki Merrick, associate producer Emily Couch. The stories were directed by Katherine Burns, with additional Grand Slam Slam coaching by Jennifer Hickson. The rest of the Moss leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin, Janess, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Cluce, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Inga Gladowski, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Aldi Kaza. The Moth would like to extend a special thanks to the Hollywood Foreign Press association, which provided sponsorship for the 20002019 LA Slams where Michelle Castellano told their story. Walt's stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Stellwagen Symphonette, Tahiti boy and Mr. Oizo, Ozzie Kotani, Brad Meldow and Guy Curd. We received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Special thanks to our friends at Odyssey, including Executive producer Leah Rhys Dennis. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website themoth.org.