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

Sungju is playing with toy soldiers with his father (abeoji) and his mother (eomeonji) while out on a picnic in Pyongyang, North Korea. The three of them re-enact one of the decisive battles between Kim Sung-Il and the Japanese army. Eomeonji teaches her son to leave messages using rocks to escape with his soldiers to safety. The chapter ends with Joseon as the victor, and an older version of Sungju noting that one day this particular military strategy would become crucial to his own escape later on.

A young Sungju dreams that he’s a general in army of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, marching in a parade with great pride while saluting Kim Il-sung. He admits that this dream was likely inspired by his father’s own service as a high-ranking military officer in the North Korean army. While he doesn’t know what exactly his father does in the army, he still looks up to him. Sungju dreams of one day being a military officer and model citizen just like his father.

He describes his young childhood living in a comfortable three-bedroom apartment in Pyongyang with his parents and dog (named Bo-Cho). He recalls going to school and watching television that sang the praises of North Korea while reminding citizens of the country’s greatest enemies: Japan and the United States. The lessons he learns are propaganda, but at the time, he had no way of knowing that anything was amiss. Sungju learns about Kim il-Sung’s mysterious history: “Our eternal leader made rice from sand on the shores of the Duman and Amnok rivers to feed his armies and turned pinecones into grenades when his armies were weaponless” (6). He reveres the country’s leader from afar and considers him a “descendant of Dangun” (6), meaning that Kim Il-sung is part deity.

Sungju’s mother (sometimes called eomeoni) is reluctant to acknowledge her only child’s desire to join the military. But this didn’t detract from an otherwise happy early childhood, filled with birthday parties and fun at tae kwon do lessons, all while surrounded by family and under the rule of the beloved Kim Il-sung.

On July 8, 1994, Sungju comes home from school, bored and lonely. Suddenly, he hears multiple voices wailing and crying from outside his apartment. Sungju fears that North Korea has been invaded. Eomeoni comes home from work and tells him the news: Kim Il-sung has died. They both slide to the floor in grief, and Sungju’s father (sometimes called abeoji) arrives home not long after to join them.

Eomeoni’s parents, Sungju’s grandfather (hal-abeoji) and grandmother (hal-meoni), arrive for dinner that night. After the meal, the family walks to a monument within a humongous crowd of crying mourners. Sungju cannot cry, but his mother pinches him to try and make him perform the act of crying so no one will think he is a traitor. But he reveals that he cannot cry because he never believed Kim Il-sung was mortal, so he didn’t believe he could actually die.

Sungju’s parents put him to bed, but he cannot sleep. Hal-abeoji catches him sneaking out to Bo-Cho’s doghouse that night and tells him a story about two brothers, one greedy and the other kind. The kind brother saw a swallow being chased and attacked by a snake and, when he stopped the attack and tended to the bird’s injuries, was rewarded with a magic seed. The seed, when planted, yielded gourds filled with jewels. But when the greedy one saw this, he broke a bird’s leg and fixed it in hope that he too would get a magic seed. Yet his magic seed sprouted gourds filled with pain rather than jewels. Hal-abeoji reminds Sungju that “good deeds lay a foundation for a house of great wealth and luck. Greed and ego, however, lay a foundation of destruction” (17).

For the next two and a half years, Pyongyang is wrapped up in suspicion, darkness, and dread. Sungju’s father returns from his military position each day feeling exhausted. When Sungju asks his mother why his father is so quiet and sad, she says he is merely mourning their eternal leader. But Sungju suspects that this is not the full story.

In January 1997 Sungju witnesses two strange omens on his way home from tae kwon do—one is a streetlight that flickers as he walks beneath it, and the other is a bird of prey that he finds dead on the sidewalk. When he enters his apartment, he finds his mother crying. She tells him that they will need to go on a long vacation, her voice trailing off before saying why. He’s told that he cannot take many things, but that he will attend a new school while they are on vacation, and that Bo-Cho will be given to one of his father’s colleagues. Sungju chases Bo-Cho as the colleague leads him away, but Sungju falls in the snow, wailing for his dog.

A week later the family leaves Pyongyang by train, heading for the city of Gyeong-seong, where Sungju’s parents will serve as laborers for the duration of their holiday. He realizes that something has shifted when a policeman near the train gives them a condescending look.

After falling asleep on the train and dreaming of happier times, Sungju awakens to see the train pulling into a station full of emaciated, dirty people with sunken eyes and disheveled laborer clothing, wailing and begging for food from the train passengers. Policemen block the crowd from getting on the train, but Sungju is terrified by the experience nonetheless.

Once they pull out of the station, Sungju is hyperconscious of his clean clothes and body, and how much he stands out on the train. He and his parents disembark from the train and arrive in a small dark town in a pull-cart. The party official for Gyeong-seong meets with Sungju’s father before the family makes their way to a small house.

Sungju asks his father why they really left Pyongyang and if they are really on vacation. His father responds vaguely, saying that the world is not as it seems to Sungju, as he’s been taught in school. Joseon is facing problems because of the Americans. Sungju tells his parents he still plans to be a military leader and bring his glory to his country and his family.

Sungju awakens in the new house to see snow outside. The house has no electricity or central heating, and so it is bitterly cold. While eating breakfast, abeoji teaches Sungju a trick he learned in the military to help keep him warm: remembering the best meal he’s ever had and the sensation of a warm bath.

Abeoji takes Sungju to his new school (so-nyon-dan). The school’s manager assures them that the curriculum encourages students to agree with the government’s regime. When Sungju meets his new teacher, he realizes that the man’s clothes are far too big for him and wonders if that is the way men wear their clothes in the country.

Sungju has an easy time with his schoolwork. He also makes a friend named Young-bum, a friendly and perky kid in his class who is familiar with Pyongyang. Another student, Chulho, joins them. Sungju, while talking about amusement parks back in Pyongyang, learns that there are no amusement parks in Gyeong-seong, and Chulho informs him that all of the good food and entertainment goes to Pyongyang. Adults don’t work because there is no food to work for, and most make a living by begging or stealing. Young-bum and Chulho discuss hunting squirrels to eat to keep from starving. It slowly dawns on Sungju that the government does not provide anything for the people outside Pyongyang, a realization that makes him panic.

Chulho asks what Sungju knew about Gyeong-seong before he moved, which is next to nothing. Young-bum reassures Sungju that if he needs help looking for the food in the woods when his family runs out, Young-bum will go with him and teach him how to find edible plants.