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

Initially, the differences between North Korea and China are subtle, “[b]ut after a few hours’ distance the villages were larger and looked more prosperous” (104). Even the service station along the highway is an experience for Lee, who reflects that:

In North Korea, there were only state-owned restaurants, which saw no reason or need to entice customers or make any effort to sell; and private, semi-legal ones operating furtively in markets or in people’s homes. But here the restaurants were advertising themselves brightly, inviting me to stop and look (104).

Shenyang is one of China’s largest cities, and the skyscrapers and lights are like nothing she has ever seen.

Lee’s Uncle Jung-gil, her father’s cousin, and Aunt Sang-hee are surprised to see her, but welcome her immediately. Uncle Jung-gil’s family fled Hyesan during the Korean War and he grew up in Shenyang. They expose Lee to the enormous selection of ice cream flavors available in China and, while eating, ask how Lee’s father is. Lee had not realized that “[h]e did not know that [her] father, his cousin, was dead” (107). When she informs him what happened, “he stood up and launched into a tirade against [North Korea]. Years of bottled resentment were suddenly on his lips” (107).

Uncle Jung-il tells Lee the history she learned in school is fraudulent and lists the fallacies she’s been taught. He tells her Kim Il-sung wasn’t a military genius and there had been no revolution; rather, he was a puppet installed by the Soviets. He tells Lee that the Kims aren’t communists and that they believe only in power and live in lavish palaces. After a lifetime of conditioning, Lee can’t believe what her uncle is telling her. She “thought he’d gone crazy” (107). The most unbelievable thing, he says, is that the South didn’t start the Korean War, as she’d been taught; rather, the North incited the war by invading the South. Lee writes, “I refused to believe this nonsense. But at the same time parts of it rang true” (108).

Lee’s Uncle Jung-gil runs a trading company and is wealthy. They concoctan alias for Lee: Chae Mi-ran, a Korean-Chinese from Yanbian, a part of China that speaks more Korean than Mandarin.

Lee is enthralled by Shenyang. Unlike North Korea, in which “streets are dark and deserted at night,” Shenyang “came alive at sunset” and was “pure freedom” (109-10). Lee’s several-day stay turns into a several-week stay, then extends past a month. Lee celebrates her eighteenth birthday in China. The day before she is to return home, Lee receives a phone call in Shenyang from her mother. The connection is bad. It’s difficult for Lee to fully understand her mother’s faint voice over the crackle and hiss on the line, but she hears one phrase clearly: “Min-young, listen to me […] Don’t come back. We’re in trouble” (110). 

North Korea has elections; in the past, Kim Jong-il always received 100% of the vote. The day after Lee left North Korea, the country began a census for the next election. Because she would be 18 and able to vote in the upcoming election, the regime discovers Lee is missing and inquires as to why. Lee’s mother covers for her, but a rumor spreads that Lee’s in China. If she reappears, she will likely be punished severely. Lee now can’t return to North Korea.

Lee learns Mandarin, to blend in, but cannot venture out of her uncle’s apartment often. If she is caught, she will be returned to North Korea for punishment. She spends her days studying and watching television to improve her Mandarin. She begins to have nightmares of her family suffering in North Korea, scenes that “played on a loop, hundreds of times, night after night” (114). By now, Lee realizes that North Korea is not the greatest country on earth, but she has also never in her life been more miserable. She tries to call Mr. Ahn and Mr. Chang in Changbai, but their numbers are dead, “[her] lifelines to Hyesan had been cut” (115). Lee’s aunt and uncle devise a plan to lift her spirits: they set her up with a wealthy Korean-Chinese man her age, named Geun-soo.

Geun-soo is the son of Lee’s aunt’s friend, Mrs. Jang. His family owns several restaurants and has money. They are to wed and Geun-soo’s parents will open a new restaurant for him to run, while Lee gives him children. Geun-soo, however, is glib and uninspiring. He’s devoted to two things: his mother and video games. Lee’s aunt and uncle support the marriage as a solution to her problem and theirs: if married, Lee would no longer be illegal and forced to hide in their house. Lee considers the marriage because it’s preferable to life on the run, but two aspects prohibit her from going through with it: everything is being chosen for her, without her input, and more importantly, after the marriage, she would never be permitted to see her family in North Korea again. Lee decides she can’t marry Geun-soo: “Whatever happened next I would be on my own, but I didn’t care. I would find a way to fly in life. I didn’t know how, but I would take my chances” (121). In the summer of 2000, with her wedding weeks away, she fled.

Lee hops in a cab with no plan. She debates with herself before deciding to go to Xita, a Korean section of Shenyang with an informal job market for illegals. There, she’s approached by a woman named Miss Ma to work at a hair salon. The salon would provide housing. When she arrives at the salon, (which was outside of Xita), it’s like no salon she’s seen. The manager looks as if he’s in a gang and instead of doing anything with hair, Lee is expected to massage and entertain clients, go to bars with them, and party. The housing accommodations are disgusting. When she tells a housemate and coworker that she will leave the next morning, the housemate whispers to Lee, “They won’t let you” (126). The next morning, Lee flees and dives into a cab as Miss Ma and the manager chase her. Lee barely gets away.

Back in Xita, Lee’s out of money and without her possessions. Desperate, she goes to every restaurant for a job. Finally, one agrees to hire her. She lies and tells them her name is Jang Soon-hyang, the name from a fake ID Geun-soo’s mother had procured for her and was to give her after their marriage. The ID says that she’s Korean-Chinese. Without legal papers, she does not have better job prospects than waitressing. The restaurant’s dormitory for workers, $40-a-month wages, and free meals makes the job well worth it for Lee. After a shaky start, Lee takes well to the work. She works daily from 8:30am to 10pm, with one day off each month, and shares the dorm with four friendly waitresses. After a few months waiting tables, Lee is promoted to cash register and given a raise. The job provides Lee a window to the world: “I started to see that the world was far less conventional than I’d ever imagined in North Korea. People were complex and diverse. Many lifestyles and choices were possible” (131).

Lee eventually begins to regret running away from her aunt and uncle in Shenyang. After about six months away, she calls them from a payphone. She apologizes; they inform her that she has humiliated them and must call Geun-soo’s family to apologize. When she calls, Mrs. Jang pleads with her to return to Geun-soo. Lee feels bad, but she can’t return to Geun-soo if it means she would never again see her mother and brother. She convinces herself that she’s a bad person and laments that “something inside [her] had hardened and the tears had stopped. [She] no longer liked [herself]” (132). She punishes herself for the hurt she’s inflicted on Geun-soo by vowing never to marry.

In January 2001, two men claiming to be from South Korea enter Lee’s restaurant. They tell her they’re filmmakers seeking North Korean defectors for a documentary. They leave Lee their business card and say to let them know if she comes across anyone, as they can guarantee their safe passage as a refugee to South Korea. Lee’s intrigued, but too suspicious to lower her guard and take them up on the offer herself. She discusses the encounter with a housemate, who explains to Lee (to Lee’s massive surprise) that “South Korea considered all North Koreans to be South Korean citizens,” and that “[a]ny who succeeded in reaching Seoul were given a South Korean passport and quite a large allowance to help them resettle” (134). Still worried that it’s a trap, Lee does not take the men up on their offer, and they stop going to her restaurant. Lee writes that her “Uncle Opium had once told [her] you get three chances in life. [Lee] couldn’t shake the feeling that [she] had just let a major one go flying past [her] ears” (134).

Lee develops a trust in her roommates and eventually confides in them that she’s from North Korea. She becomes curious about other North Korean fugitives in Shenyang and comes to know several others hiding in plain sight. She becomes close with one, Soo-jin, who was living in China with her South Korean boyfriend. Eventually though, Soo-jin disappears and her phone is discontinued. Months later, Lee runs into Soo-jin. Soo-jin explains to Lee that someone informed the Chinese police she was illegal. They arrested her at her apartment and deported her to North Korea, where she was imprisoned for three months and her meals “consisted of ten kernels of corn” (135). After her release, she escaped again and “said that China was too dangerous for her now. She was determined to get to South Korea” (135). A week later, Lee is apprehended at the restaurant.

Two police officers escort Lee to the Xita Road Station, where she’s interrogated. She lies and tells the officers she’s her Uncle Jung-gil and Aunt Sang-hee’s daughter, and gave their details. After questioning her and attempting to trap her into answers that would give her away, the officers present her with several tests to prove she’s Chinese and not North Korean, including tests in reading and writing Mandarin, which she passes only because as a child her father made her practice writing Mandarin characters.

Flabbergasted, the officers conclude that Lee had been reported falsely and release her. Relieved, Lee thinks, “Chinese characters take years to master. That final test had dispelled the last doubts in their minds. My father had saved me” (140). She writes:

The experience I’d just had was deeply dehumanizing. A police bureaucracy, with its correct procedures and trick questions, and inspectors in pressed shirts, thought it reasonable and right to send people from my country to a Bowibu torture cell for beatings with wire cables (140).

Two weeks later, Lee is assaulted in the stairwell while returning from work and blacks out.