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

the good life, I thought. I couldn’t tell my mother that I was sick. Adding to
her pain wouldn’t remove any of mine. I planned to keep up my calls to her
until the last moment. I thought long and hard about how to explain the
coming silence, and decided to tell her I was leaving for another country
and wouldn’t be able to call North Korea any longer.
After a month living like this Ok-hee and other friends became so
worried that they urged me to get another blood test. This time the results
were normal. Apparently the blood sugar spike in the first test was to do
with not having had any sleep the night before. I was given the all-clear,
and all I had to show for myself were some overpriced clothes.
The self-pity and despondency lingered on in me for a few weeks, until
an event in Hyesan shocked me out of it and pulled me back together.

---

Chapter 34
The tormenting of Min-ho
As part of my preparations to leave Shanghai, I had sent some money and
almost all of my belongings to Mr Ahn’s house in Changbai. After the
shipment had arrived there, I travelled to Changbai myself, my first visit
since the ordeal with the gang.
I arrived on a clear night in early October 2004. Standing beneath the
trees on the riverbank, I stared across at North Korea. The mountains were
black against the constellations. Hyesan itself was in utter darkness. I could
have been looking at forest, not at a city. It was almost as if the sky was the
substance. The city was the void, the nothing.
My country lay silent and still. I felt immensely sad for it. It seemed as
lifeless as ash. Then, in the far distance, an ember – the headlights of a lone
truck moving down a street.
Mrs Ahn greeted me with the news that Mr Ahn had died. He had
struggled to recover from his injuries and had been very ill with diabetes.
This affected me more than I expected. She invited me in. I saw his walking
sticks and my eyes became heavy with tears. I had grown up with him
always there, just across the river, a kind man my mother trusted. He had
become my lifeline in China – the only connection I had to my family, to
my past, to my real self.
Mrs Ahn helped me arrange the items I wanted to send across. They were
everyday things, but they were rare and of great value in North Korea. I put
my iron, hairdryer, some jewellery, vitamin pills, Chanel perfume, and all
the other bits and pieces into two large blue sacks, and a smaller white one.
I rolled up all of my cash, in US dollars and Chinese yuan, and put it in the
small white sack. I called Min-ho and asked when I should send it.
‘Tomorrow during the day.’

---

‘In broad daylight?’
‘Don’t worry. The guards will be all right.’
Mrs Ahn hired two smugglers to carry the sacks across the river. When
they returned, they said Min-ho had been waiting for them. Everything had
gone smoothly. I breathed a sigh of relief, paid them their fee, and waited
for Min-ho’s call.
No call came.
Nor did he call the next day. I walked along the riverbank, studying
Hyesan. This was my first proper look at my old home since I’d left all
those years ago. In the week I’d spent as a prisoner of the gang I never got a
good view of it. The only traffic was a couple of military jeeps, and an ox
pulling a cart. I’d never seen one of those in the city streets when I’d lived
there. I could see a smiling portrait of Kim Il-sung on the side of a distant
building, the only dash of colour. Everything looked dilapidated and poor.
Nothing had changed. In China, nothing stayed the same. Everywhere was
such a frenzy of construction and reinvention that a city could be
unrecognizable within a year.
I could not stand still. With each passing hour my desperation mounted.
Something had gone wrong. I waited two more days in Changbai, staying in
a cheap hotel, the only place I had found open when I’d arrived so late at
night. I couldn’t sleep from worry, and because the walls were so thin I
heard men talking in the next room. They had strong North Korean accents.
I didn’t know if they were Bowibu agents or smugglers, but it added to a
presentiment I felt in my stomach, of dread and impending disaster. On the
fourth day, after still no word from Min-ho, I returned to Shanghai.
A week later, just as I was leaving work to go home, my phone rang. It was
Min-ho.
‘Nuna, what did you send?’
No greeting, just this blunt question.
‘An iron, a hairdryer, some vitamin pills, other stuff,’ I said.
I went through the list without mentioning the money. I asked him why
he hadn’t called. He ignored my question and asked again: what had I put
into the sacks?
‘I just told you.’
He hung up. I could make no sense of his call.

---

The next morning my phone rang again. A man spoke.
‘I am a friend of your mother’s,’ he said. His voice was deep and
reassuring. He didn’t have a Hyesan accent. ‘There’s been a small problem
because of the items you sent. I want to take care of matters for her, but I
need to know how much money was in the sack.’
It was a curious twist of fate that I could be paranoid and suspicious of
the most innocent and well-meaning people, but when real danger spoke
mellifluously into the phone I did not suspect a thing.
‘Thank you for helping her,’ I blurted. I’d often wondered if my mother
might meet another man. She was not yet fifty. I thought this might be a
boyfriend.
‘You’re welcome. Now, you sent a hairdryer, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And an iron?’
‘Yes.’ He went through the list of items.
‘What about the money? How much was in there?’
‘I can’t remember how much now,’ I said. ‘My mother will know. You’d
better ask her. I really appreciate your help.’
‘Not at all,’ he said, and ended the call.
A week later, Min-ho called again. I was in a Koreatown supermarket
doing my grocery shopping.
‘You did well, Nuna,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Our calls for the past week have been recorded.’
I stopped still, in an aisle of globe artichokes and pak choi.
‘That man you spoke with was a senior army commander. He was calling
from a conference room. The phone was on speaker so that others in the
room could hear.’
Others?
He explained how he had borrowed a car in order to pick up the sacks at
2 p.m. Everything had been arranged with the border guards. But as he was
loading the sacks into the car, a ranking army officer appeared in the
distance on a bicycle, saw what was happening, and started yelling. The
guards fled. Min-ho drove off at speed.
That night, seven or eight armed troops hammered on the door of the
house. They searched, and found the two blue sacks but not the third, the

---

small white one, which Min-ho had hidden outside the house. He and my
mother were arrested and taken into custody at the Hyesan barracks of the
Korean People’s Army. Under interrogation, Min-ho insisted that
everything was contained in the two blue sacks. He denied any knowledge
of a third white sack, even though the army officer was certain he had seen
three sacks. They locked him in a cell. Shortly afterwards, two uniformed
interrogators entered and started beating him around his head with rubber
blackjacks, and kicking him. Still he denied everything. He knew how
much cash was in the white sack – I had told him. He said he’d rather die
than let these bastards have it.