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

So they’re checking my trash.
‘What does it say?’
‘Just my thoughts and feelings,’ I said. ‘Is that allowed?’
‘Yes,’ he said, surprised. ‘I studied Chinese at university, that’s all. So I
tried to read it. I just wondered why you wrote it.’
‘There’s nothing to do.’
Early the next morning, he opened the door and put his head in.
‘It’s snowing. Would you like to see?’
He led me to the bathroom, opened the window, and left me there. It was
just before dawn. A bar of gold along the horizon illuminated the underside
of the clouds. Snowflakes were floating like goose down, such as I hadn’t
seen since I was a young girl. It was far below freezing. Lights burned in
every building I could see, and dotted all across the city were glowing red
crosses. There are so many hospitals, I thought. (Later I learned that the
crosses marked churches, not hospitals. I’d never seen such signs in North
Korea or China.) It was magical. I thought of that far-off thundery day in
Anju when I’d waited for the lady in black to come down with the rain. ‘If
you grab her skirt, she’ll take you back up there with her,’ Uncle Opium
had said. I’d been scared stiff she’d carry me away into another realm. In a
way, she had. And I was looking at it.
The next day, the interrogator smiled for the first time. The questioning
was over, he said. ‘I believe you’re North Korean.’
‘How did you know?’ An enormous grin spread across my face. By now
I felt as if I’d known him for months. ‘The women think I’m Chinese.’
He made a modest gesture with his palms. ‘I’ve been vetting people for
fourteen years,’ he said. ‘After a while you get a feel for the psychology. I
can usually tell when people are lying.’
‘How?’
‘From their eyes.’
I felt my face redden. That explained the lingering eye contact. He hadn’t
been flirting at all.

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‘Still, you were a curious case,’ he said. ‘You’re in the one per cent that
I’ve seen in fourteen years.’
One per cent?
‘First, you’re the only person I’ve met who arrived here easily, by direct
flight from where you were living. Second, it took you no time to get here –
just a two-hour journey – and, third, you didn’t have to pay any brokers.
That’s what I mean. You just jumped on a plane. Was it your idea?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you’re a genius.’ He was quite different now, talkative and
friendly. ‘I knew things would go smoothly with you, because you didn’t lie
about your age. Most North Koreans do. The old ones claim to be older
than they are in order to claim benefits. Young people make themselves
younger so that they’re eligible to study for free. But you said you were in
your late twenties. When I came to question you, I expected to meet
someone in her mid-thirties, but you looked about twenty-one. I thought I
had come to the wrong cell so I went back to check. Why would a North
Korean who looks twenty-one admit she’s in her late twenties? Because
she’s honest, I thought.’
I smiled, but a part of me thought I’d missed a trick here.
The next morning I awoke refreshed. It was the first sleep I’d had
without nightmares since I’d arrived at my uncle and aunt’s in Shenyang
more than eleven years before.

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Chapter 39
House of Unity
With a large group of others I boarded a bus early in the morning for the
two-hour drive to Anseong, in Gyeonggi Province. The morning was clear
and mild. This was my first proper look at my new country by daylight. The
trees were budding with bright green leaf. Within the city, and surrounding
it, far into the distance, were many soft green hills, an iconic Korean
landscape familiar to me. As the sun rose, one crest of low hills would
materialize in the haze; then the row behind it, and then, faintly, the row
behind that. Hanawon, which means ‘House of Unity’, was among these
hills. It is a facility in the countryside south of Seoul that enrols defectors
on a crash course, teaching about the society they’ll soon join. Without the
two-month stay there, most North Koreans would not be able to cope. As
many discover, freedom – real freedom, in which your life is what you
make of it and the choices are your own – can be terrifying.
I was high on optimism. I vowed to myself that I would succeed in this
beautiful country, no matter what. I would make it proud of me. I thanked it
with all my heart for accepting me.
The facility is nothing special to look at – a complex of classrooms,
dorms, a clinic, dentist, and a cafeteria, all surrounded by a security fence –
yet there is probably nowhere else like it in the world. It is a kind of
halfway house between universes, between the parallel Koreas. People
who’ve crossed the abyss begin to adjust at Hanawon. Few find the
transition easy.
We were given an allowance to buy snacks and phone cards. I
immediately called Kim. This was the first call I’d been allowed to make
since arriving in the South. He shouted with joy when he heard me. As time
had dragged on, he’d become seriously worried.

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‘I thought they’d sent you back to China,’ he said.
We had a long talk, and when I heard that gentle, relaxed laugh of his my
heart swelled. I could not wait to see him.
Next I called Ok-hee. She had arrived by ferry and had been processed
much faster than I had. We talked excitedly. She already had an apartment
in Seoul, she said, and was going to job interviews.
When I replaced the phone I wanted to jump in the air. My new life was
just weeks away.
Later, at the time I had agreed with my mother, I called Hyesan. She gave
me the news that Min-ho had a serious girlfriend. Her name was Yoon-ji.
My mother said she was very beautiful and from a family of good songbun.
Her parents adored Min-ho. This brought a lump to my throat. I was never
going to meet his lucky girl.
This complex in Anseong was for women only, and I shared a room with
four other girls. I was told that every week the aggressive women I’d been
with in the NIS detention room had gone out to meet the bus to see if I was
on it. They were so convinced I was Chinese that they’d been taking bets on
whether I’d been caught. When I met them again, however, they had
softened. I learned that some of them were plagued by guilt over family
members they’d left behind, or by memories of terrifying treatment at the
hands of the Bowibu. They carried that darkness in them, so strongly that it
obscured their hopes for the future. Despite the tight security, some of them
obtained alcohol from the outside and would get rolling drunk, for which
they were severely reprimanded by the staff at our morning assemblies. In
this more lax environment, fights often broke out, too. The Bully was there,
but she avoided me.
My nightmares had stopped, but curiously, it was here, in this haven, that
many defectors’ ordeals caught up with them, and tormented them in
dreams. Some suffered breakdowns, or panic attacks at the thought of the
super-competitive job market they were about to enter. Psychologists were
on hand to talk to them, and medics too, to tend to chronic, long-neglected
ailments.
Many arrivals found it hard to shake off old mentalities. Paranoia, a vital
survival tool when neighbours and co-workers were informing on them,
prevented them from trusting anyone. Constructive criticism, which

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everyone needs when learning a new skill, was hard for them to take
without feeling accused.
I attended classes on democracy, our rights, the law and the media. We
were taught how to open bank accounts, and how to navigate the subway.
We were warned to be careful of conmen. Guest lecturers visited. One was
a North Korean woman who’d set up a successful bakery in the South. Her
self-belief inspired me. Another was a priest who introduced us to the
Catholic faith (many defectors embrace Christianity in the South), but his
justification for the celibacy of priests and nuns caused much mirth among
the women. Another speaker was a kindly policeman called Mr Park who
told us what to do in case of emergencies, such as needing an ambulance or
reporting a crime.
We also attended some extraordinary history classes – for many at
Hanawon, their first dogma-free window onto the world. Most defectors’
knowledge of history consisted of little more than shining legends from the
lives of the Great Leader and the Dear Leader. This was when they were
told that it was an unprovoked attack from the North, not from the South,
that began the Korean War on 25 June 1950. Many rejected this loudly, and
outright. They could not accept that our country’s main article of faith –
believed by most North Koreans – was a deliberate lie. Even those who
knew that North Korea was rotten to the core found the truth about the war
very hard to accept. It meant that everything else they had learned was a lie.
It meant that the tears they’d cried every 25 June, their decade of military
service, all the ‘high-speed battles’ for production they had fought, had no
meaning. They had been made part of the lie. It was the undoing of their
lives.
We ate three good meals a day, each one different, and everyone put on
weight. Eat as much as you like, the staff said. Once you leave here, it may
not be so easy to eat well. In fact the instructors warned us that life,
generally, would be challenging. It might not be easy to find a job, they
said. We’d have bills to pay, and if we didn’t pay them we’d get into debt.
This was a source of extreme anxiety for those who owed large sums to
brokers, who waited daily for them outside the main gates. The staff gave
us the impression that the path to a happy and successful future was
winding and obscure. I had hoped to hear: ‘Work hard, do your best, and

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you’ll succeed.’ They were trying to manage our expectations, but this
vague uncertainty made me nervous. Soon I would no longer need to live
by my wits. I would have the freedom to shape my own life. But whenever I
tried to picture what lay ahead, I saw not clarity but a swirling fog, and
hidden in it were unresolved questions to do with my mother, with Min-ho,
and with Kim.
To prevent the creation of a North Korean ghetto, the South Korean
government disperses defectors to towns and cities all over the country. We
can’t choose where we are sent. Ninety-nine per cent would prefer Seoul
but, given the shortage of housing, only a few were selected. Each of us was
given a grant of 19 million won (about $18,500) for housing expenses.
I desperately hoped to live in Seoul. I thought my best chance of finding
a job was there, and it was where Kim lived. I thought of him every day at
Hanawon. I daydreamed about him in classes. I tried to picture his
apartment in Gangnam, what it would be like to meet his family, his stylish
friends, how he spent his Sunday mornings – with espressos, and jazz
music, and stock-market news.
My mood plunged, however, when I realized that only ten people out of
hundreds would be chosen for an apartment in Seoul. Ten people. So to
avoid any accusations of unfairness, Hanawon selected the people destined
for Seoul by a transparent lottery of numbers placed in a box. In a packed
auditorium, a staff member shook the box, as if it were a game show, and
picked out ten numbers. One by one, he called them out: 126, 191, 78, 2, 45
… Each winner threw up her arms, cried with happiness, and was embraced
by her friends.
I was only half listening. The whole spectacle depressed me. I was trying
to imagine where else I might get sent in the country.