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

Lee’s journey spans eight Chinese provinces. Lee’s plan for checkpoints is to pretend her mother and Min-ho are deaf-mutes and she is their guide. At the next checkpoint, police order bus passengers to the front, to engage in a conversation in Mandarin. They have been on the bus for some time and other passengers have heard them speaking Korean. Lee writes:

‘Chang-soo.’ The policeman was calling the name on Min-ho’s ID. The name was Korean but he was pronouncing it in Mandarin. Min-ho’s eyes were still shut. There was nothing I could do. He called the name out again. No response. Then he called it a third time, irritated now. I pushed Min-ho, pretending to wake him (243).

As Min-ho approaches the front of the bus, Lee stands and proclaims to the officer that Min-ho is deaf and dumb, and that she is his guide. To assist, Lee’s mother makes “a loud, ape-like grunting noise […] and wav[ed] her arms about in a show of extreme annoyance, or as if she’d skipped her medication” (244). The scene is enough to appease the officer.

On the seventh day of their journey, they reach Kunming, in Yunnan Province, and meet their broker, Mr. Fang. Lee remembers that she “had an instant bad feeling about him” (244). Because Min-ho has not been part of the initial agreement, Lee gives Mr. Fang her South Korean ID to ensure he later receives payment for shepherding Min-ho across the border as well. Mr. Fang informs Lee of a change in plans: they will be crossing into Laos, instead of Vietnam, because Vietnam recently began returning North Korean defectors to China. Lee cannot accompany them across the border to Laos, as her presence would be a risk to the endeavor. She is forced to trust this man completely and expresses her worry:

Every hour of the day for the past week, I had been my family’s sole lifeline. But now control was being taken from me. I would have to leave them in the hands of a man I absolutely did not trust (247).

Lee leaves her family. The next day, on her way to the airport, she receives a call from Mr. Fang; there has been a problem, and “[t]he police [have] picked them up” (249). 

Mr. Fang explains to Lee over the phone that he can’t do anything: “They were stopped at a checkpoint by police. We could have rescued them. You didn’t give me enough money” (251). Lee knows only that they were apprehended in Laos. She knows nothing of Laos, where they are within the country, or how to find her family, and now has to find them by herself. The next day, Lee is in a customs line to enter Laos from China:

About twenty people were waiting in line to have their passports stamped. A few were backpacking white Westerners in high spirits. I looked at them with envy. They were inhabitants of that other universe, governed by laws, human rights and welcoming tourist boards. It was oblivious to the oneI inhabited, of secret police, assumed IDs and low-life brokers (251).

Once in Laos, Lee travels to Luang Namtha and searches for her family at the immigration office, police station, and prison. The immigration office is empty, and officers at the other two locations tell Lee they have no North Koreans. Lee is becoming discouraged. On Monday morning, she returns to the immigration office. Officials at the office inform her that two North Koreans were apprehended at the border. 

Lee spends the next week travelling back and forth between the police station and immigration office, building a rapport with the officers. She handles the situation the same way her mother would, “with a combination of charm, persuasion and cash” (254). In Laos, a communist country with a poor economy, she is exposed to the nightmare of bureaucratic inefficiency: “Here, an administrative matter that could have been dealt with in minutes would stretch to hours, or days” (254). After several days of bribes, lodging, and meals, Lee is almost out of money. She calls Kim in Seoul, who immediately transfers her money. After seven days, the immigration office chief escorts Lee to where the two North Koreans are being held: the main prison she had visited when she arrived, which had told her they harbored no North Koreans.

Lee’s mother tells her that the prison was hell and that if she’d known what was in store, she would not have left North Korea. After leaving her mother, Lee phones the South Korean embassy in Vientiane. They instruct Lee to leave Laos and let the embassy handle the matter, but when they inform her the process will take five to six months, she decides that she can’t leave her family.

Lee remains in Laos. She visits the prison daily and bribes the guards. She is able to slowly decrease the fine to free her family to $700 per person. Her mother befriends three other North Korean defectors and convinces Lee to help them as well. Lee has to raise $700 per person. Back in town, planning at a coffee shop, Lee is approached by a very tall white Australian man.

The Australian man had seen Lee in the customs line to enter Laos from China and has frequently noticed her around town since. He’s curious, because “[m]ost people only stay here a day or two […] You’ve been here weeks, like me” (258). The man introduces himself as Dick Stolp; Lee explains to him her predicament. Dick makes a call. When he returns, he tells her he’ll pay for the release of the North Koreans being detained. Lee writes, “My defenses shot up. Why? Why would a white, fifty-something male all of a sudden care about the problems of some Koreans he’d never met” (260). She adds, “When you’ve lived your whole adult life as I had, calculating the cost of even the smallest decision, such generosity wasn’t easy to accept. It involved a loss of control. All I could do was say thank you” (261).

Stolp withdraws half the needed amount from a nearby ATM and gives it to Lee. He withdraws the rest the following day. He’s met North Koreans in his travels and is eager to help any way he can.

Stolp’s actions have a profound impact on Lee:

What [Stolp] had done changed my life. He showed me that there was another world where strangers helped strangers for no other reason than that it is good to do so, and where callousness was unusual, not the norm. Dick had treated me as if I were his family, or an old friend. Even now, I do not fully grasp his motivation. But from the day I met him the world was a less cynical place. I started feeling warmth for other people. This seemed so natural, and yet I’d never felt it before (262).

They hire a police van to escort them to the South Korean embassy, which Stolp also pays for. However, instead of taking them to the embassy, the van brings them to the Laotian immigration office in the city of Vientiane, where Lee is held as a criminal broker for illegal immigrants, and everyone else is detained in cells. 

Lee is interrogated while her family and the other defectors are held in a Laotian prison. The South Korean embassy brokers a resolution to Lee’s criminal charges, though it takes the rest of her money. The embassy also assures Lee that, while disquieting, her family’s detainment in the Laotian prison is a normal part of the process that will result in their transport to South Korea. Lee borrows more money from Kim, flies to South Korea, and waits for her family. 

Lee’s mother and Min-ho remain in the Laotian prison for two months before they are transferred to the South Korean embassy. They spend three months at the embassy. More than six months after Lee returns from Laos, the National Intelligence Service calls and tell her that her family has arrived in Seoul.