Every Falling Star: The True Story of How I Survived and Escaped North Korea

One day Sungju is approached by an older man with a Pyongyang accent who is selling herbal medicine while wearing clean clothes. The man asks him for his name. When Sungju answers with his street name, Chang, the man asks if his real name is Sungju and lists the names of Sungju’s parents. Sungju at first replies, “Only those who speak with the dead know these names” (258). The man then says he’s Sungju’s grandfather. Shocked by this news, Chulho tells Sungju to go along with the man so they can steal from him, since he appears to be wealthy.

Still unconvinced that the man is his grandfather, Sungju reluctantly follows him to his nice house in the mountains as his brothers follow not far behind. When they arrive, they are greeted by a familiar woman who claims to be his grandmother. Sungju wonders if, like the seer, these two people are delusional. He sees them only as people he can steal from. But when he sees a portrait from his parents’ wedding day on their wall, he collapses to his knees and realizes that these truly are his grandparents. He calls off his gang’s plan and tells them these are his actual family members. His grandfather tells him that he never stopped searching for Sungju and his parents in all the years since they last saw each other.

Sungju and his brotherhood stay at his grandparents’ house, where they eat fresh meat and food for the first time in years. They tell his grandparents about their exploits and the deaths of both Myeongchul and Young-bum. Sungju feels that his years of prayers have been answered.

The brotherhood stays for six days but eventually leaves Sungju there so that they don’t destroy the family’s food supply. The only life they know is at the train station in the city. They, too, hope their families will return to find them there. The boys tell each other that they will always be brothers, and Sungju promises he will visit them.

Sungju helps his grandfather make medicines, work the farm, and shepherd the livestock. His grandmother, a former teacher, helps him study again. Though this is the most relaxed Sungju has felt in years, he still feels a hole inside of him and experiences night terrors. On Sundays he visits his brothers in Gyeong-seong. He realizes that while they may not be brothers together physically, they will always remain brothers in spirit.

One night Sungju returns home to find his grandfather pacing in the driveway. He brings Sungju inside to meet a man who claims to have been sent by Sungju’s father. He has come to bring Sungju to China, where his father has been hiding. The man has a note from Sungju’s father to prove that he has paid for Sungju to escape. At first Sungju is angry that his father was in China all this time without looking for him or his mother; he is conflicted about going with the man. Hal-abeoji asks the man to give Sungju two days to think it over.

Ultimately, Sungju goes with him to confront his father before returning to Joseon. While he and his grandparents aren’t sure how much they can trust the man, who claims to be a “friend,” they realize that there is no future for Sungju if he stays in North Korea. Sungju reassures them that if he could survive on the streets for years, he can survive whatever happens during this escape from the country. His grandparents give him a bag of food and supplies for the journey, and he leaves with the man.

After he departs, the man informs Sungju that his father has been searching for him and his mother for four years, but that it has been difficult for North Koreans outside of Joseon. Though he agrees to let Sungju say goodbye to his brothers at the train station, he warns Sungju against asking too many questions and won’t share his name.

When he finds his brothers in Gyeong-seong, Sungju tells them he is going to visit a family member and may not be back for some time. The brotherhood can tell he is lying, but they go along with the story before going back to their lives as kotjebi.

The man then pays a truck driver to let them stow away in the back of his vehicle before staying at a stranger’s house for a sleepless night. The next day Sungju and the man meet a border guard who urges them to swim across a river that, once crossed, will take them into China. After crossing and walking for a long time, Sungju is finally able to rest in a small shed.

Sungju awakens to find two men in the shed with him. One is the man who helped him escape, and the other is a stranger, who the first man says will take Sungju the rest of the way. Shocked by this announcement, Sungju is unsure if he can trust this new stranger, who tries to reassure Sungju that he is his father’s best friend. He gives Sungju a new change of clothes and takes a picture of him, reminding him that the less information he knows about the escape process, the better.

Sungju waits in the shed for a week before leaving on the eighth morning. He and the new stranger take a train, and the man instructs Sungju to pretend to be asleep and let him do the talking. He then drops Sungju at an airport with a new passport and a ticket for his first-ever flight. His seatmate and the voices on the plane loudspeaker speak a Korean dialect that Sungju can barely understand.

After he disembarks at his destination, authorities catch Sungju’s fake passport and haul him in for questioning. He eventually admits that he is from Joseon, and they inform him that, contrary to his own understanding, he is in South Korea, not China. The authorities send him to a center for defectors from Joseon, where he is housed and fed while people try their best to help Sungju find his father. Sungju is unsure whether to trust them based on the propaganda he was taught about South Korea under Joseon’s communist regime. Eventually, he gives them his father’s name. Not long after, he recognizes a stranger who comes to visit him as his father, and they embrace.

As a North Korean defector, Sungju can never return to Joseon since he would be considered a traitor and imprisoned.

When his father left the family in 1998 to go to China, he found himself trapped and unable to return. He then moved to South Korea on the advice of a human smuggler who told him he’d have a better chance of reuniting with his family there. By the time he was able to save up the money to resettle and hire the human smuggler, both Sungju and his mother had left Gyeong-seong. His father didn’t give up the search, though, despite never finding evidence of what happened to his wife.

Sungju struggles to adjust to life in South Korea. The anger and trauma that follows him from Joseon means he often lashes out against other boys his age. His father’s pastor agrees to help Sungju with his studies, and Sungju never fights again. Despite the significant challenges, Sungju eventually attends Sogang University and Arizona State University before starting his master’s degree in international relations at the University of Warwick in England, all with the goal of helping the Korean reunification cause. He continues to work with groups that support defectors from North Korea. His mother, despite continued search efforts, is still missing.