The Girl with Seven Names: a north Korean Defector’s Story

The red shoes
I was very excited about the move to Hamhung, on the east coast. At that
time Hamhung was a major industrial hub, famous as a centre for the
production of Vinylon – a synthetic fibre, used in uniforms, that was
invented in North Korea. It was an achievement we were so proud of that
patriotic songs were sung about it. It held dye badly, shrank easily, was stiff
and uncomfortable to wear, but it was marvellously flame-resistant. The
city also boasted many restaurants and a grand new theatre – the largest in
North Korea.
I couldn’t stop pointing at the numbers of vehicles everywhere; there
were far more than in Anju, and more bicycles, too. The streets were broad,
grand boulevards with trolley buses that trailed sparks from the overhead
cables, and the buildings weren’t so shabby. The air was badly polluted,
however. On some mornings the sky had a sulphurous yellow tint and stank
of chemicals from the vast Hungnam ammonium fertilizer complex, which
the Great Leader himself had visited several times and delivered on-the-
spot guidance. His words were everywhere, on red-painted placards
throughout the city, carved on stone plaques, and in letters six feet high on
the side of Mount Tonghung. His image was omnipresent, in murals of
coloured glass, in statues of marble and bronze, in portraits on the sides of
buildings, which depicted him as soldier or scientist; as stern ideologue or
jovial friend of children.
Despite my father’s high rank in the air force the accommodation was
barely adequate. This time our home was on another military base in a six-
storey concrete apartment block with no elevator. We had three rooms and
cold running water. It was decorated with yellowed wallpaper, which my
mother immediately had changed for a better-quality washable type. She

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had the bathroom walls tiled blue. In winter the pipes froze; in summer
mould would turn the outside walls black.
I was very lucky, however, although I still did not fully understand quite
how lucky. My father’s rank not only gave him access to goods many
people didn’t have, but he received a lot of food and household items as
gifts and bribes.
In theory the government provided for everyone’s needs – food, fuel,
housing and clothing – through the Public Distribution System. The quality
and the amount you received depended on the importance of your work.
Twice a month your workplace provided you with ration coupons to
exchange for the goods. Until a few years previously, the Party had still
seriously been thinking of abolishing money. When the system actually
worked, money was only needed as pocket money, or for the beauty parlour.
But most of the time, the communist central planning system was so
inefficient that it frequently broke down, rations dwindled or disappeared
through theft, and people relied more and more on bribery or on unofficial
markets for their essentials – for which cash, and often hard foreign
currency, not the Korean won, was required.
We ate out quite often at restaurants that served naengmyeon, for which
Hamhung is famous. These are noodles served in an ice-cold beef broth
with a tangy sauce, although there are many variations. My mother would
eat naengmyeon with her eyes closed in pure pleasure. She loved it to the
point of addiction.
On Sundays, I played with neighbourhood girl friends outside on the
concrete forecourt of our apartment block. We would skip or play a type of
hopscotch called sabanchigi.
For the other six days of the week I was either at school or busy with
school-related activities. It wasn’t just the children’s time that got filled up.
Everyone – factory workers, cadres, soldiers, dock workers, farmers,
teachers, housewives, pensioners, and my parents included – was kept
constantly busy with some kind of after-hours organizational meeting or
mind-numbing activity, such as ideological ‘study groups’ or ‘discussions’,
which often involved memorizing the speeches of the Great Leader and the
Dear Leader, or attending lectures that could last for hours after work, on
everything from the revolutionary history of the early Party and new

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techniques for pig rearing, to hydroelectric power and the poetry of Kim
Jong-il. This was part of the communist way – to ensure that no one could
ever deviate into a selfish, individualistic or private life – but it was also a
system of surveillance. Perpetual communal participation meant that the
hours in each day when we were not being watched, by someone, were few.
I had begun elementary school in Anju, but now I had to join a new one in
Hamhung, which filled me with apprehension. My mother had real trouble
getting me to enter the building on my first day. The children seemed rough,
and had a different accent; there was no ‘village’ feel as there had been at
the school in Anju. Banners in the school corridors made our priorities
clear: ‘Let us study for our country!’ and ‘Always be on the alert for
Marshal Kim Il-sung!’
But I was outgoing, and curious about my new classmates. I soon made
some good friends among the girls. That came from the confidence a loving
family gave me.
It was at school in Hamhung that I received my initiation into ‘life
purification time’, or self-criticism sessions. These have been a basic
feature of life in North Korea since they were introduced by Kim Jong-il in
1974, and are the occasions almost everyone dreads. They start in
elementary school and continue throughout a person’s life. Ours were held
every Saturday, and involved my entire class of forty students. Our teacher
presided. Everyone took turns to stand up, accuse someone, and confess
something. No one was excused for shyness. No one was allowed to be
blameless.
It must have been humiliating and painful for the adults, standing up to
criticize a colleague for some work-related or personal failing in front of the
whole workforce. But there was only so much for which young children
could be held guilty. The atmosphere in class was deadly serious. The
teacher would not tolerate the mildest levity, even though the accusations
were often ludicrous. The formula was to open the session with a
commandment from Kim Il-sung or Kim Jong-il and then stand up and
accuse the child who had violated it. When the accusations started to fly
and fingers started to point, this was the only time, ironically, that we called
each other ‘comrade’.

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These sessions could create an atmosphere of great fear and bitterness,
even among children. But often, through a humanity we all possess, adults
and children alike would find ways of taking the poison out of them. If I
couldn’t face accusing someone I’d sometimes accuse myself, which was
permitted. Or a friend and I would strike a deal where she would criticize
me one week, and I would criticize her the following week with some
prearranged made-up charge. And so my friend would stand and say: ‘Our
Respected Father Leader said that children must focus on their studies with
dedication in their hearts and a clear mind.’ Then she’d point at me. ‘In the
last week I have noticed that Comrade Park is not listening in class.’ I
would hang my head and try to look chastened. The next week would be my
turn. That way we stayed friends. My mother would make a similar pact
with colleagues at her workplace; so did Min-ho when he got to elementary
school. The sessions taught me a survival lesson. I had to be discreet, be
cautious about what I said and did, and be very wary of others. Already I
was acquiring the mask that the adults wore from long practice.
Often, students would find themselves criticized unexpectedly. When this
happened, they took revenge. In rare cases, it could be lethal. On one
occasion, in my final year of secondary school, a boy in my class pointed at
another boy and said: ‘When I went to your house, I saw that you had many
things you didn’t have before. Where did you get the money to pay for
them?’ The teacher reported the criticism to the headmaster, who reported it
to the Bowibu. They investigated and found that the family had a son who
had escaped the country and was sending them money from South Korea.
Three generations of the family were arrested as traitors.
Like the ever-present danger of informers, I took the self-criticism
sessions to be part of normal life. But I also had the sense there was nothing
positive about them; they were entirely negative.
The biggest milestone of my youth came at the age of nine, in Hamhung.
With all other children my age, I entered the Young Pioneer Corps, North
Korea’s communist youth movement. Ceremonies were held at schools all
over the country on the same day, with parents and teachers assembling at
large public places for the occasion. This is considered one of the proudest
days in a North Korean’s life.

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Joining the Pioneers is compulsory between the ages of nine and
fourteen, but not everyone is accepted at the same time. First, there is a
formidable test of memorizing: I had to show that I’d learned the Young
Pioneer’s rights and duties by heart. From now on, I followed the orders of
the Great Leader and the Dear Leader, no matter where, no matter what. I
must think and act in accordance with their teachings. I must reject and
denounce anyone who directed me to do anything against their will. I was
good at memorizing, and passed the test easily. And as I’d done well in the
most important subjects on the school curriculum – the revolutionary
history of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il – I was selected for the first
induction ceremony of the year, on Kim Jong-il’s birthday, 16 February, in
1989.
A few days before the ceremony my mother bought me a pair of new
shoes especially for the occasion. They were foreign-made and from a
dollar store – a special shop for people who had access to foreign currency
and wanted to spend it. I was so excited about these shoes that, in order to
calm me down, she let me take a peek at them. They were patent-leather
Mary Janes, fastened with a buckle, and were a luscious deep red – nothing
like the cheap state-issue shoes we all wore, and which only came in black.
My mother wouldn’t let me take them out of the box until the night before
the ceremony.
At the ceremony we were to receive a red cotton scarf and a small silver
Pioneer badge to pin on our blouses. To me the scarf was the mark of a
grown-up and meant that I was no longer a kid. But this excitement was
displaced unexpectedly by my anticipation of the red shoes. The wait was
agonizing. The night before the ceremony I slept with them next to me on
the bed – I woke a few times to check they were still there.
When the morning came at last I was ecstatic. The event was held in my
school hall. The walls were adorned for the occasion with paintings and
collages that the children had made – of the secret guerrilla base in the
forests of Mount Paektu where the Dear Leader was born, and of the new
star that had appeared in the heavens on the night of his birth. Amplified
speeches boomed from the headmaster and the teachers on the stage, whose
centrepiece was an enormous bouquet of kimjongilia, a fleshy red begonia
that is the flower of Kim Jong-il. Everyone then stood to sing the ‘Song of
General Kim Jong-il’, and finally the Pioneers stepped up to the stage to

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receive, with great solemnity, their scarves and badges. The parents in the
audience applauded each one.
I walked up to receive mine, bursting with pride for my red shoes. It
surprises me now to think that there were no repercussions. All present in
the school hall must have noticed them. It did not strike me until years later
what an unusual gift they were. Most kids at the ceremony – several
hundred of them – were wearing the state-issue black shoes. My mother
was a cautious woman, but, consciously or not, she was encouraging a
distinct individualism in me.
We took many group photos and family photos. It was a proud day for
my parents. My father wore his air force uniform. My mother was carrying
Min-ho, aged two.
Classmates not selected for that day’s ceremony had to wait until the next
ceremony on Kim Il-sung’s birthday, 15 April.
One girl I was friendly with had not been accepted for the February
induction and was often absent from class. For some reason our teacher
decided that she and some of the girl’s friends should visit the girl’s home
to see if she was all right. It was in a run-down area of the city where
hoodlums hung about. The housing was very squalid. Our visit was a
terrible mistake. Her house was bare, and smelled of sewage. She had
obviously hoped to hide her poverty from us, but there we were, crowded
into one of her two small rooms, staring at our feet while our teacher,
flushed with embarrassment, suggested to her mother that our friend should
try to attend school every day.
The experience was deeply confusing for me. I knew there were degrees
of privilege, but we were also equal citizens in the best country in the
world. The Leaders were dedicating their lives to providing for all of us.
Weren’t they?
Schooling in North Korea is free, though in reality parents are
perpetually being given quotas for donations of goods, which the school
sells to pay for facilities. My friend had not been attending because her
parents could not afford these donations. None of us was cynical enough to
realize that our schooling was not really free at all. The donations were a
patriotic duty – rabbit-fur for the gloves and hats of the soldiers who kept us
safe; scrap iron for their guns, copper for their bullets; mushrooms and

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berries as foreign currency-earning exports. Sometimes a child would be
criticized by the teacher in front of the class for not bringing in the quota.
In early 1990, when I was ten years old, my father announced that we were
moving again, this time back to Hyesan. My mother had had enough of the
pollution and grind of life in Hamhung, and missed her family and the clean
air. She did not think an industrial city was a good place to bring up Min-
ho. Once again, we looked forward to the move. My parents talked
incessantly of Hyesan and of the people there.
We were going home.
Min-ho, my mother, and I all waved goodbye to my father, and to
Hamhung, from the train window. My father would follow in a day or two.
That journey home would not have stuck in my mind but for a drama we
experienced on the way that made a lasting impression on my mother and
me.
On the way north we had to change trains at a town called Kil-ju on the
east coast. Train stations in North Korea have a rigorous inspection of
travellers’ documents, with passengers often having to pass through
cordons of police and ticket inspectors. No one can board a train without a
travel permit stamped in their ID passbook, together with a train ticket,
which is valid for four days only. The documentation is then checked all
over again at the destination station. A woman ticket inspector examined
my mother’s ticket and told her brusquely that it had expired. She was the
type of official most North Koreans are familiar with – a mini Great Leader
when in uniform. She took my mother’s ID passbook and ticket and told her
to wait.
My mother’s face fell into her hands. Now we had a problem. She would
have to get permission from Hamhung again before we could buy new
tickets. That would take time and she had two children in tow, and luggage.
We were stranded. Min-ho was crying loudly. My mother took him off her
back and held him and together we slumped onto a bench inside the station.
I held her hand. We must have looked a desolate bunch, because a middle-
aged man in the grey cap and uniform of the Korean State Railway came up
to us and smiled. He asked what the matter was. My mother explained, and
he went to the ticket inspector’s office. The woman was not there, but he
brought back my mother’s ticket and ID passbook, and gave them to her.

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In a low voice he said: ‘When the train stops, jump on. But if she comes
looking for you, hide.’
My mother was so grateful that she asked for his address so that she
could send him something.
He held up his palms. ‘No time for that.’
The train was creaking into the station, bringing with it a reek of latrines
and soldered steel. It screeched to a stop and the doors began flying open.
We boarded. The carriage was crowded. My mother quickly explained
our predicament to the passengers and asked if we could crouch down
behind them. Sure enough, a minute later we heard the voice of the ticket
inspector, asking people on the platform about us. Next thing we knew she
had entered the carriage.
‘Have you seen a woman with a baby and a little girl?’ She was shouting.
‘Did she get on the train?’
‘Yes.’ Two of the passengers in front of us said this in unison. ‘They
went that way.’
The woman got off, still looking left and right for us. We heard her
asking more people on the platform. We were holding our breath. Why
wasn’t the train moving? A minute seemed to pass. Finally we heard the
shrill note of a whistle. The train shunted forward, couplings banging
together. My mother looked at me and finally exhaled. She’d been terrified
Min-ho would start bawling again.
Kindness toward strangers is rare in North Korea. There is risk in helping
others. The irony was that by forcing us to be good citizens, the state made
accusers and informers of us all. The episode was so unusual that my
mother was to recall it many times, saying how thankful she was to that
man, and to the passengers. A few years later, when the country entered its
darkest period, we would remember him. Kind people who put others
before themselves would be the first to die. It was the ruthless and the
selfish who would survive.

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Chapter 7