The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story

Lee shares a general detention room with approximately thirty North Korean women. The women left China for Thailand to claim asylum, but were jailed by Thai police before transfer to the South Korean embassy. Lee is horrified to learn that their “real nightmare had begun only once they’d left China” (202). The women are brash and act more like criminals than asylum seekers: “They were on the cusp of freedom, yet their negativity was so caustic it could have dissolved the bars on the window. North Koreans have a gift for negativity toward others, the effect of a lifetime of compulsory criticism sessions” (203).

After about two weeks in the general detention room, Lee is summoned for a face-to-face interrogation. After more than a day of questioning and quizzes to determine if Lee is North Korean, the investigator says to Lee, “I believe you’re North Korean” (206). The investigator has believed Lee is North Korean from the beginning of the investigation, when Lee did not lie about her age to receive enhanced benefits from South Korea. Lee remembers, “The next morning I awoke refreshed. It was the first sleep I’d had without nightmares since I’d arrived at my uncle and aunt’s in Shenyang more than eleven years before” (207). 

Lee is transferred from the detention center to Hanawon, a South Korean facility to educate North Korean defectors on freedom and the society they will be joining. Lee spends two-months in Hanawon, which she describes as “a kind of halfway house between universes” (208). From Hanawon, Lee calls Kim and Ok-hee. Kim is overjoyed to hear she has arrived safely. The long delay has made him nervous. Ok-hee informs Lee that she has arrived safely in South Korea as well. Her processing occurred more quickly than Lee’s. Lee then calls Hyesan and discovers Min-ho has a serious girlfriend named Yoon-ji. Lee is happy for Min-ho, but sad that she would never meet Yoon-ji.

In Hanawon, Lee “attended classes on democracy, [her] rights, the law and the media” (210). She is also taught basic life skills, like how to open a bank account and navigate the subway, and “attended some extraordinary history classes–for many at Hanawon, their first dogma-free window onto the world” (210). When told North Korea incited the Korean War by invading the south, contrary to what North Koreans had been taught their entire lives, many defectors:

rejected this loudly, and outright. They could not accept that [their] country’s main article of faith–believed by most North Koreans–was a deliberate lie. Even those who knew that North Korea was rotten to the core found the truth about the war very hard to accept. It meant that everything else they had learned was a lie. It meant that the tears they’d cried every 25 June, their decade of military service, all the ‘high-speed battles’ for production they had fought, had no meaning. They had been made part of the lie. It was the undoing of their lives (210).

After Hanawon, defectors were assigned to cities across South Korea and given about $18,500 for housing. Lee is lucky to be one of only eleven people assigned to Seoul, the capital and the city where Kim lives. 

Freedom can became frightening once it is a reality and no longer a concept. Lee is lucky to have Ok-hee and Kim for support:“After more than sixty years of division, and near-zero exchange, I would find that the language and values I thought North and South shared had evolved in very different directions. We were no longer the same people” (213).

Lee deduces that to thrive in South Korea, she requires a new education. In North Korea, the most important qualities were not education or hard work, but rather loyalty. In North Korea, social status was hereditary, determined by songbun, but in South Korea it is determined through education. Lee notices that “[e]veryone […] was desperate for a good education in order to avoid sinking to the bottom of the pile,” and that “North Korean defectors flounder because the education they received back home is worthless in a developed country” (214). In South Korea, the uneducated are resigned to a life of menial work, and because North Koreans primarily occupy these roles, they are looked down upon.

Lee has Kim’s help, which makes her transition easier, compared to many other defectors. She enrolls in a six-month course to become a certified tax accountant. Now in South Korea, Lee’s relationship with Kim is in trouble. In Shanghai, Lee wondered why Kim had not proposed after two-and-a-half years of dating. Now in South Korea, she understands why. Kim grew up wealthy, in the affluent Gangnam section of South Korea. His family has high social status. While education is the primary determiner of status in South Korea, the connections of high social status are essential to fall back on if all else fails. Kim has high status and Lee has low status; a marriage between them would never be acceptable to Kim’s family. On Kim’s insistence, Lee applies to university, to improve her career prospects and social status.

Every Sunday, when Lee speaks to her mother on the phone, she tries to persuade her to leave North Korea for Seoul. Every Sunday, her mother replies, “I will never, ever leave” (218). Lee then chooses her seventh and final name: Hyeon-seo. 

On a phone call, Lee’s mother tells her, “People may be hungry now […] but things will get better. We’re all waiting for 2012,” the centenary of Kim Il-sung’s birthday, which at that time was less than three years away (220). Lee writes:

For years, party propaganda had been trumpeting it as the moment when North Korea would achieve its goal of becoming a ‘strong and prosperous nation.’ I knew nothing would change, but how could she? She might grumble about life, but she had no perspective and still shared the regime’s values. It is hard for outsiders to grasp how difficult it is for North Koreans to arrive at a point where they accept that the Kim regime is not only very bad, but also very wrong. In many ways our lives in North Korea are normal–we have money worries, find joy in our children, drink too much, and fret about our careers. What we don’t do is question the word of the Party, which could bring very serious trouble. North Koreans who have never left don’t think critically because they have no point of comparison–with previous governments, different policies, or with other societies in the outside world. So my mother, along with everyone else, was waiting for the mythical dawn of 2012 (220).

Lee continues pressuring her mother to leave. As conditions decline in North Korea, she comes around to the prospect of leaving. She is convinced when a well-known party cadre, Seol Jung-sik, the provincial secretary for the Socialist Youth League, defects. She confirms to Lee during a Sunday phone conversation that she will defect to South Korea, but that Min-ho is to marry in North Korea and will not join her. Lee concocts a plan to escort her mother through most of China herself and then rely on a broker to escort her over the Chinese border into Vietnam, where she can find a South Korean embassy and claim asylum. 

Lee leaves for Changbai to meet her mother and Min-ho (Min-ho is not defecting, just crossing the river to see Lee one last time).Lee’s plan is to retrieve her mother in Changbai and return to Seoul within two weeks. In Changbai, Lee observes Hyesan from across the river: “Hyesan seemed lifeless, a city dug from rock, or an intricate cemetery. A place of ghosts and wild dogs. I felt no nostalgia for it. Only defiance” (226). Lee waits at their meeting place. As their arrival time fades further into the past, Lee grows nervous that something has gone wrong. Finally, Lee’s phone buzzes; Min-ho is on the other end. He states, “We’ve had a problem” (227). 

The night Lee’s mother and Min-ho attempted to cross the river into China, there was a general alert for a high-ranking family from Pyongyang attempting to escape. The border was swarming with guards. It was not safe to cross. They would attempt again just before dawn.

Lee returns to her hotel and, just before dawn, receives a call from Min-ho that they are across, hiding at their meeting place. Lee escorts them back to her hotel in Changbai, where they rejoice together: “Half a lifetime had passed since the three of us had been together. No one could speak. Then my mother broke down, and all her tension released” (229).

Lee spends time with them in Changbai, acclimating her mother to China so she can better blend in. When they return to the hotel, Min-ho receives a call from Yoon-ji. She tells him that someone has informed the senior commanding guard that Min-ho crossed the river with a woman; the guard says that if Min-ho came back with the woman immediately, he’d be OK, but if he came back alone, he’d be in trouble. This put Min-ho in an impossible dilemma: if he brought his mother back to North Korea, she would be sent to a labor camp, and if he returned without her, he would be sent to a labor camp. They contemplate Min-ho’s options before Min-ho resigns himself to the impossibility of the situation: “I can’t go back” (233).