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

“Little do I know this military tactic will one day come to save my life.” 

While the majority of the book is written from the perspective of Sungju as a child and adolescent, here we see an older Sungju looking back on his life and narrating the significance of a specific event that matters deeply later on. Although there are only a few chapters devoted to Sungju’s early childhood, the military tactics and information imparted to him as a child while playing games with his abeoji end up informing and benefitting him later while living as a kotjebi. The memoir form allows Sungju to step in with his “adult” voice, adding more meditation and reflection from an older perspective. Lines like this also remind the reader that, for all of the book’s tension and cliffhangers, we know on some level that most things turn out OK for our narrator, since he lived, survived, and escaped safely enough to relay this story.

“North Korea was founded in 1948 after a long battle between our Japanese oppressors and the liberation army of Kim Il-sung. Our fearless leader braved battles with no food, in the chill of deep winter, walking thousands of miles to lead his armies to rid this land of the foreigners who had taken our natural resources for themselves and turned our people into slaves. Our eternal leader made rice from sand on the shores of the Duman and Amnok rivers to feed his army and turned pinecones into grenades when his armies were weaponless…” 

This exemplifies the kinds of propaganda Sungju was brainwashed by as a child living in Pyongyang. His faith and belief that these stories are true, despite the fantastical elements like making “rice from sand” and “pinecones into grenades,” prove both his childlike innocence and the power of authoritarian regimes to force people to believe lies and untruths. This ties into larger themes of propaganda and folk tales, and the divide between these stories and the stark, brutal reality of life in Joseon. When Sungju and his family are exiled, Sungju’s desire to cling to these stories initially keeps him from adjusting to the reality of the situation around him, before he loses his innocence. It is vital for the reader to understand just how naive he is at the beginning of the narrative so that they appreciate how much of his innocence has been lost by the end of the book.

“As I approached my apartment building, two things happened that were omens that my life was about to take a drastic turn—for the worse. Just as I passed under the streetlamp, the light flickered and then went out. The second was when I discovered a bird of prey, a falcon or a hawk, dead on the walkway, its white stomach held high, as if it were a king, even in the afterlife. I didn’t have to step through our door and be engulfed in the thick air of sadness to know.” 

Sungju’s belief in superstition, especially as a young child, adds to the sense of infallible, mystical powers at work in Joseon. These “omens” are meant to signal the death of Joseon’s “eternal leader,” Kim Il-sung. While it could be argued that the strange omens only became more mysterious in retrospect, within the narrative they signal a turning point in Sungju’s life. The death of Kim Il-sung will lead to famine across the nation as well as the family’s expulsion from Pyongyang.

“Lines of people stretched out before me, but people unlike any I’d seen in Pyongyang. Their skin sagged, their eyes were sinking into their faces, and their complexions were bluish, almost gray, like the clouds that rolled off the East Sea in February. The men didn’t wear Mao jackets but dirty dark gray or blue pants and matching tops. The women weren’t in skirts, nor did they wear their hair neat on top of their heads in buns. They also wore pants and jackets, and their hair was messy. Some of the children wore shoes with big holes in them through which I could see their toes. These children’s faces were covered in scabs and a white coating, like the patches of snow on the grasses of the parks in early spring.” 

Sungju is shocked to see how people live outside of Pyongyang. Since the first-person narrator has never seen people in this state of dishevelment, illness, and desperation, this comes as a shock for the reader as well. The reader tags along on Sungju’s physical and emotional journeys throughout the book. Describing this scene from a child’s point of view helps the book give readers a better understanding of how startling and disorienting these people looked to Sungju at the time. This also acts as another form of foreshadowing, as one day Sungju will also look, dress, and suffer in the same ways these people do.

“Over time, the neighbor men shrunk before my eyes until two of them were no bigger than their sons, who were just a little older than me. The skin on the men’s faces sagged, making them appear years older than I knew they actually were. As they withered away, their eyes remained the same size and began to stick out like saucers. Looking at them made me think of yu-ryeong—legless, floating ghosts that people left on earth because they hadn’t finished some mission, like protecting a family member or seeking revenge on someone else.” 

Citizens of Joseon who are starving amid a sweeping famine are often said to resemble yu-ryeong, or ghosts, which become a recurring symbol in the work. The notion of being “haunted” while still alive, as these men slowly starve to death, is deeply disturbing to Sungju as well as the reader, especially when juxtaposed with his early childhood experiences in Pyongyang. Though he will one day join their ranks and grow desensitized to the image of these “ghost men,” this is the first time Sungju sees the seriousness of the famine up close. He notes that the men’s lack of purpose or will is even scarier than their physical state; it is as if they are merely existing long enough to “seek revenge” or “protect a family member.” These images of emaciated men also reflect Sungju’s own fears for his father after his father’s disappearance.

“As the sky slid into twilight, I limped back to the road and collapsed on a small mound of earth off to the side. I then began to sob…I had lost Bo-Cho, my dreams of becoming a general, my schooling, Pyongyang, my piano, my doghouse, my father…my mother. I didn’t stop crying until the day songs of the cicadas faded and the cooler melodies of the night insects took over.”

Here the reader sees how drastically Sungju’s life has changed in a relatively short amount of time. Having lost both of his parents in quick succession, he is at a loss of what to do or where to go for comfort. Sungju reflects on the many comforts and securities he’s lost since his family left Pyongyang, and he grieves for them. This moment of grief and trauma will influence many of his subsequent decisions as a kotjebi, and they are only the first of several such moments throughout the book.

“I knew I stank of my own waste as I finally made it out the front door and headed down the road. I knew I looked like something dug up dead from the river. I knew I scared the children, as their mothers draped them in their arms and hastened them into their houses. But I knew I would die if I didn’t press on.” 

Sungju struggles after his mother’s disappearance. Sick and starving, he has morphed into the yu-ryeong men he noticed when he first arrived in Gyeong-seong. The image of him covered in his own waste, while scaring mothers and their children, signals just how desperate his situation has become. It also provides motivation for his eventual decision to join with other kotjebi and form a gang, so he can avoid ever ending up in this situation alone again.

“I had never begged before. I lowered my head in shame and blushed. I wanted to tell this woman that I was from Pyongyang, to assure her that if she knew me, I would pay her back if she would feed me now.”

Despite his dire circumstances, Sungju still clings to his idealized conception of Pyongyang and its citizens to show others that he can be trusted. His morality, naïveté, and innocence are on display here, as he begs for food in the market. In this scene he learns relatively quickly that people on the streets are less interested in helping those less fortunate for themselves, and they often look out for themselves first and foremost. Begging is more passive and less successful than stealing, and it is something Sungju must eventually embrace.

“‘Young-bum,’ I whispered, ‘The people kotjebi steal from are starving, too. They might have children like us. They could be mothers—our mothers—and by stealing from them, their own children may go hungry.’ Young-bum fell quiet. ‘If I think about that, I’ll die,’ he finally said in a contemplative tone.” 

Young-bum spells out the somber reality of the impossible situation for boys like themselves, who must fend on the streets without their parents. Though Sungju’s moral code is commendable, it isn’t conducive to survival in Joseon, especially not during a famine. While stealing is reprehensible under most other circumstances, Young-bum makes it clear that if Sungju remains hung up on the morality of stealing, then he won’t survive much longer. In this moment Young-bum very kindly, if bluntly, lays out the stakes of the situation at hand to Sungju, who does not feel prepared to handle his new reality as a kotjebi.

“Young-bum laughed, ‘This is why those fat cats in Pyongyang liked you so much,’ he said, ticking me, ‘You’re a coward. You’re…what’s the word? Compliant. Easy. If your life hadn’t taken a different turn, you would have made a perfect general. You’d do whatever they asked of you, without thinking twice.’” 

Again, Young-bum points out how propaganda from Pyongyang won’t serve Sungju outside of the capital city. Sungju is eager to please authority figures and compliant with their brainwashing, unlike Young-bum, who has never benefitted from these false narratives. On the one hand, what Sungju desired most as a boy was to be “a perfect general,” but Young-bum points out that this also makes Sungju cowardly and unwilling to make difficult decisions that will help him survive. This is the first time Sungju is confronted with just how harmful the regime’s propaganda can be, and it marks the start Sungju’s journey to unlearn the communist party’s brainwashing. The reader also sees the brotherhood and close friendship between the two boys grow as Young-bum realizes he must be brutally honest with Sungju to help him survive, and as Sungju realizes that Young-bum is right—he must be less compliant and less “good” if he wants to live long enough to be reunited with his parents.

“‘The past doesn’t feed us,’ Young-bum would say as we’d walk the road to the market. […] Truth: I don’t believe Young-bum believed in anything anymore, least of all Joseon. He believed in survival, plain and simple.”

Sungju realizes the depths of Young-bum’s disillusionment with Joseon. Although he suspected it, by articulating it here, he realizes that his friend’s lack of faith in anything is very much at odds with his own need to believe in institutions and ideas larger than himself. The idea that the past and all that comes with it—Pyongyang, family, security, comfort—won’t help him moving forward is a difficult but necessary lesson for Sungju to learn. It also conflicts with the project of the memoir, which uses Sungju’s story to provoke further discussion about how to help North Korean defectors. Those suffering under the regime don’t have the time or strength to dwell on the past if they wish to improve their current circumstance, but we as readers do, and we have the opportunity to learn from Sungju’s story.

“Death was all around us. We’d enter the market in the mornings to find women wailing and rocking in their arms children who had died during the night. As we plunged deeper into the merchants’ stalls, we found the corpses of old men and women, mouths still agape as if, in their final moments, they wanted to say something, their eyes staring out, pleading with us to hear them. I always thought the place after death was peaceful. It was how my eomeoni described it. But what I saw on the faces of the dead was anything but. It was as if they had got stuck looking at and feeling all their grief and pain.”

Yet again, Sungju is confronted with the somber reality of life and constant death in Joseon, especially the ways death differs from how his eomeoni explained it to him. This is in keeping with the theme of propaganda and lies standing in stark contrast to real life, and it provides an example of another time when Sungju loses his innocence about the horrors of life in Joseon. After seeing these corpses in public, Sungju realizes how high the stakes are and that his chances of survival are slim unless he finds support among his fellow kotjebi.

“My gang and I don’t believe in Joseon, because it lies to us. It says Joseon is a paradise and children its kings and queens. But children are dying from terrible starvation and diseases. Kings and queens don’t die like this. The military are thieves.” 

To Sungju, these lines of dialogue are treasonous; yet as he is learning, they are also true. The military and communist party institutions call the country’s children “its kings and queens,” but rather than nurture them, they allow children to live and die homeless and starving on the streets. Sungju wrestles with the juxtaposition of what he learned as the child of a military official with what is necessary to stay alive as an abandoned child.

“We had to join forces with him and his gang. It was the only chance we had at surviving.” 

Collective brotherhood and group survival are key to Sungju’s story and survival in Joseon. As he has come to realize in the text, joining forces with other boys living under similar circumstances is “the only chance” he has at making it. The boys will come to rely on one another as a gang to pool resources, skills, ideas, and physical protection as they perform, steal, and travel in search of better opportunities. This moment is another turning point for Sungju, in which brotherhood becomes a source of comfort and spiritual kinship in the wake of losing his family.

“Everyone really did hate us, just as our eternal leader had always said. Maybe all along, the government was trying to protect us. Listening to the merchants made me more confused than ever. I didn’t know whom to trust. Joseon really was an island on its own. And my parents? Where were they? I didn’t even want to think about it.” 

Sungju’s doubts about whether the regime’s propaganda is based on fact or on fiction have come to the forefront. This forces him to question his own parents’ knowledge and motives. Considering these potential lies, and the idea that there may be no escaping from Joseon to a place that might embrace him, terrifies Sungju. Like Joseon, Sungju also feels like an “island on its own” after his parents disappear. The confusion about what and who to believe overwhelms him and leads to question much of what the government and the adults in his life tell him moving forward. These seeds of doubt make it difficult for him to trust anyone outside of his brotherhood.

“I think the worst thing anyone can do to another human being isn’t take away their home, their job, their parents. I think the worst thing anyone can do is make them stop believing in something higher, something good, something pure, a reason for everything—hope, maybe. God, maybe.”

The reader gains insight into Sungju’s feelings about his disillusionment in the state of Joseon. While losing his home and his parents has certainly traumatized him, he is more upset by a lack of hope than anything else. Without hope or faith in something larger than himself, it’s hard to desire anything beyond his own base survival needs. Taking away hope for a better future of any kind robs life of its meaning. Sungju is determined not to lose his faith in something bigger and better, which gives him cautious optimism and the will to live through horrific conditions.

“A few mornings each week, I’d awake to stare into the open eyes of a child, usually the youngest, who had died in the night. I kid you not, but sometimes in that place just before awakening, I’d see that dead boy walking among us, no longer sickly but alive and sparkling like the sun on the crest of a wave. He would see me, wave, as if waiting for me to say good-bye, and then leave…up, like a balloon full of helium on Parade Day. ‘We’ve become murderers,’ I whispered to Chulho on night. ‘The state is clever. We’ll kill each other before ever defying them.’” 

While imprisoned in the guhoso, Sungju witnesses fellow kotjebi endure unthinkable torture and brutality. Again, he sees ghostlike figures, which could either be hallucinations or perhaps a source of comfort, an omen that that these boys have gone on to a better afterlife. These ghostlike figures symbolize the loss of the will to live; they continue to drive Sungju’s need for hope and faith in a better tomorrow. This stint in the guhoso also cements Sungju’s disillusionment with the state that, as Chulho notes, has abandoned them and incentivized killing one another. Sungju’s vision of these ghosts also ultimately spurs his and Chulho’s plans for escape.

“This world is not for the living anymore. Tread lightly, for all the dragons now fall.” 

A sex worker who claims to be a seer repeatedly speaks this line to Sungju. Much like Sungju’s other brushes with the supernatural, this moment signals the imminent climax of the book’s narrative arc: Young-bum’s death. The ominous warning reads like a riddle whose message only becomes clear after tragedy strikes. The cruel world they live in can no longer contain Young-bum, one of the most dynamic figures in Sungju’s life. Much of what Sungju thought he knew for certain, or that he’d come to rely upon, is about to be questioned and upended once more. The foreshadowing here builds tension before Young-bum’s death.

“His hand in mine fell lifeless. I started to cry, as if all those other times I wanted to weep, the pain had just collected on the other side of a big dam. This, however, was the final blow that broke it. All my grief exploded.” 

Young-bum’s death breaks down Sungju’s emotional “big dam” that has kept him from breaking down over the years. In addition to being one of Sungju’s best friends and confidants, Young-bum was the one who helped Sungju learn how to live as a kotjebi. He helped Sungju through the loss of his family, and in turn, he became Sungju’s brother. Without the comfort of Young-bum’s friendship, Sungju must face the totality of his grief and loss alone. In many ways he’s cycled back to the vulnerability and helplessness he felt when his mother disappeared, only this time he’s older, with a better understanding of just how many people he has now lost.

“‘Hope,’ I whispered. Something I had lost.” 

Sungju says after realizing the stranger who approached him is actually his grandfather. Hope was something Sungju was sure he could no longer feel after Young-bum’s death. In the wake of this tragedy, Sungju lost all faith in everything, lashing out in anger, hurt, and grief, but seeing his grandfather jolts him out of his sadness just long enough to feel something more positive. Young-bum, who had seemed like Sungju’s only true family for years, is suddenly not his only loved one looking out for him. Earlier Sungju mentioned that losing hope was the worst thing that could happen to him, but seeing his grandfather restores that sense of hope and faith that he might one day be reunited with family.

“I guess, also, I always knew I’d have to leave my brothers for good…at least in body.” 

To be reunited with his father, Sungju most leave the brotherhood behind. Their bond, however, transcends physical location—these boys have become chosen family for him, and they will remain so no matter what. The spiritual kinship that Sungju feels for them gives him strength as he embarks on the dangerous journey out of North Korea. He says “I always knew I’d have to leave my brothers for good” to stoke a sense of fate—that their union inevitably had to end, and that he would have to find a way to say goodbye and preserve the memory of their time together.

“This is one of the most dangerous journeys in the world you’re about to take. You’re a street boy, so you know people, whom to trust and whom not to trust. You know danger. You also know how to act calm in the face of danger. That’s why I know we’ll be okay. But stop asking questions. That’s your first order.” 

The human smuggler charged with getting Sungju out of North Korea has a stringent set of rules for the odyssey they are about to embark upon. Though Sungju “knows danger” from his time on the streets, it is nothing compared to the trouble they could get into if they are caught. This is an abrupt change for Sungju, who is used to being the leader and in charge of executing plans. Although it is hard for him to fully trust this stranger, Sungju realizes that he has no choice but to comply with his orders and not ask any questions.

“Unlike that day when Kim Il-sung died, this time I did wail, harder than I ever had, inhaling my father’s musky scent that as a child made me feel safe at night.” 

When Sungju is reunited with his father in South Korea, he recalls the day Kim Il-sung died. Just like that pivotal day which started this journey, Sungju’s life is about to change in ways he never could have anticipated. His tears are now of joy rather than grief. For the first time in a long while, Sungju has what he’s dreamed of for so long: a safe reunion with family. Although Sungju’s childhood was largely taken from him, he finally feels like a kid again while embracing his father.