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

201, 176, 11 …
The man was looking around the auditorium. ‘Eleven? Who has it?’
The west coast wouldn’t be so bad.
‘Eleven? Come on.’
A memory came to me of a summer on the beach near Anju, and my
father telling me how the moon made the tide go out.
I felt a sharp pain in my arm. The woman next to me had poked me. She
was pointing at the number in my hand. ‘Eleven – that’s you.’

---

Chapter 40
The learning race
I was met off the bus by Mr Park, the smiling policeman who’d taught us
about personal security at Hanawon. ‘You’ve moved to my neighbourhood,’
he said. ‘I’m here to help.’ He was in his early forties and was from the
Security Division of the National Police Agency. His calm authority
reminded me a little of my father. He helped me find my feet, and to do the
paperwork to apply for my South Korean ID and passport. Mr Park remains
one of the most warm-hearted people I have ever met in South Korea.
My new home was a small, unfurnished, two-room apartment in the
Geumcheon district of southwest Seoul, near Doksan Subway Station. I was
on the thirteenth floor of a twenty-five-storey block. It had a view of similar
blocks and the street. There was a large hill behind it. This was not an
affluent neighbourhood.
Red Cross volunteers had shown me to my apartment. When they said
goodbye, and my metal door closed, echoing down the corridor with a
clang, I was alone. Not in hiding, but free. I stood at the window for a long
time, watching life go by below, and the shadows of the buildings lengthen
as the sun moved into the west. I didn’t know what to do, I realized. I could
go out and buy a mattress and a television and watch soaps all day; I could
let laundry and unwashed dishes pile up; I could stand here and wait for
summer to turn to autumn, and autumn to winter. The world would not
interfere. Freedom was no longer just a concept. Suddenly, I felt panicked.
It was so frightening and unsettling that I called Ok-hee and asked if I could
stay at her apartment that night.
Ok-hee was very relieved to see me. After we’d embraced and
congratulated ourselves on achieving our dream, we sat on the floor and ate
instant noodles. Her own experiences since arriving in Seoul made a

---

sobering story. Despite living for years in Shanghai, as I had, Ok-hee was
not finding life here easy. She told me of an experience she’d just had after
a job interview. The interviewer told her that he would call her to let her
know the company’s decision. After days without hearing, she phoned the
company and was told that they hadn’t called because it was impolite to
reject someone directly.
North Koreans pride themselves on their directness of speech, an attitude
that had been encouraged by Kim Jong-il himself. Foreigners are often
taken aback by the bluntness of North Korean diplomats. Ok-hee’s
experience was the first hint I got that the two Koreas had diverged into
quite separate cultures. Worse was to come. After more than sixty years of
division, and near-zero exchange, I would find that the language and values
I thought North and South shared had evolved in very different directions.
We were no longer the same people.
The next day Kim flew home from Shanghai and came straight to my
apartment. I melted when I saw him. It had been three months. We spent a
long time simply hugging, pressing our faces together, whispering how
much we’d missed each other. I’d missed his touch, his fragrance, his
calming voice. He’d grown his hair longer. If it were possible, he was more
handsome than he was before.
Later he took me to a big cinema complex in Yongsan. He suggested
buying snacks to take into the theatre, and asked me what I wanted. I read
the illuminated menu above the counter. It was in Korean. I couldn’t
understand a word. What were na chos, pop corn, and co la? Of course I
knew these snacks, from China. But English transliterated into Korean
words baffled me. And, as I soon found, there were many more. When
people mentioned that they were in the elebaytoh, leaving their apateu to
catch a tekshi to a meeting, I felt embarrassed. I had no idea what they were
talking about. I needed to learn. In fact, I needed a new education.
I had grown up in a communist state where the Fatherly Leader provided
for all. The most important quality for all citizens was loyalty, not
education, nor even the capacity for hard work. Social status was fixed by
the songbun of one’s family. In South Korea, too, social status matters a lot,
but here it is not hereditary. It is determined through education. And

---

although education is a great leveller in South Korea – even the children of
the wealthy get nowhere if they do poorly at school – it brings with it
oppressions of its own. It is partly the reason why South Koreans are,
according to surveys, the unhappiest people in the developed world.
Everyone I seemed to meet was desperate for a good education in order
to avoid sinking to the bottom of the pile. In the stampede to avoid this fate,
80 per cent of school students go on to university. Even K-pop stars and
athletes take degrees to avoid being perceived as the other 20 per cent.
Mothers enrol their children in extra tuition from kindergarten to give them
a competitive edge. The pressure mounts so much that school years can be
torture. Because so many are awarded degrees, extra credentials are needed
if a job candidate is to shine – proficiency in English, and so on. If, after all
this struggle, a student gains a position in one of South Korea’s star
conglomerates, such as Hyundai, Samsung or LG, then they have made it.
North Korean defectors flounder because the education they received
back home is worthless in a developed country. If they are too old to return
to school, they have to opt for menial work. If they are young enough, they
find themselves lagging far behind, and lacking confidence. I had been
vaguely aware of this while living in Shanghai, but the reality began to bite
during those first weeks in Seoul. I knew then what they meant at Hanawon
when they said life would be ‘challenging’. Without a university degree, I
would be no one.
Because North Korean defectors are usually in low-paid, low-status jobs,
they are looked down upon in South Korea. The discrimination and
condescension is seldom overt, but it is felt. For this reason many defectors
try to change their accents and hide their identity when looking for work. I
was deeply hurt when I learned this. I had kept my identity secret for years
in China. Would I have to hide it here, too?
With Kim’s help, my adjustment was going more smoothly than it was for
the other defectors I’d known at Hanawon, some of whom were looking for
service industry or blue-collar-type jobs where they’d be fed at work. I
didn’t want to do that. I was done with waitressing. I wanted a life that
wasn’t day-to-day and hand-to-mouth. This took a little time to figure out.
After a few weeks, I made the decision to enrol in a six-month course to
become a certified tax accountant. I was good with figures, and thought this

---

would position me well for a job. My fellow students were all women. I
would soon learn from them how hard it was for South Koreans themselves
to be happy in their own society.
Many of them had failed to find jobs with prestigious companies and had
become depressingly resigned, believing that fate was against them. Minor
flaws – being too plump, or too short – and misfortunes in love became
exaggerated and were perceived as causes of failure. Still, I couldn’t help
feeling sympathy for them. Every country has worries of its own.
Sometimes their complaints sounded like plotlines from TV melodramas.
Within only weeks of being reunited with Kim, I began experiencing a
romantic melodrama of my own. When Kim and I had lived in Shanghai,
our feelings for each other were so strong I was convinced we would marry.
I’d waited for him to propose. But after two and a half years, he had not
proposed. Now, I understood what had been stopping him.
Kim had grown up in Gangnam, the affluent, fashionable district on the
south side of the Han River. His family had profited greatly from the boom
years, becoming millionaires from soaring property values. He was highly
educated and his parents were also graduates of prestigious universities. As
crucial as education is in South Korea, it is not an end in itself. It is the
means toward status, and social status is the insurance against the fear that
everything may one day turn upside down. In a country that went from
being third-world to the world’s fourteenth-biggest economy in the space of
one lifetime, hunger and instability are still lingering memories. If all else
fails, a person with status will have family and connections to fall back
upon. Kim’s friends came from similar backgrounds. Some were well-
known actors and models – part of Seoul’s beautiful set. When we’d go for
a night out, some of the girls my age would arrive in luxury Western sports
cars. Their parents had impressive job titles in the Korean conglomerates.
Yet I had nothing – no family, no job, no degree, no money. I had no back,
as the South Koreans say, from the English word ‘background’, meaning
that I had no connections, no support.
I didn’t feel sorry for myself. I’d shared a similar belief system in North
Korea. Uncle Poor had grown up in a high-songbun family, but he’d
ignored family advice, married the girl from the collective farm, and had
sunk in the social scale. Kim could rebel against his parents, run away with

---

me, and marry me. We might even be happy for a year or two. But the
romance would fade. The disappointment he had caused his family would
gnaw at his conscience. Life with me would wear him down until, as I
imagined had been so with Uncle Poor, he’d conclude that his marriage had
been a big mistake.
Kim had realized this before I had – probably when we were living in
Shanghai – and had been trying to think of a way forward.
‘I want you to go to university,’ he said, driving me home after one of
these nights out with the beautiful set. ‘If you could pass the exams to be a
doctor or a pharmacist, it would really please my parents.’
I stared ahead and said nothing. I had not even been introduced to his
parents.
The next day, however, I investigated. The medical courses were
expensive, and only the very brightest students passed the exams. Worse,
the NIS had told me that because I’d left North Korea without graduating
from secondary school, I would have to take a two-year course to become
sufficiently qualified merely to apply for college. This titanic effort to
please Kim’s parents would take a decade.
In that summer of 2008, I watched the Beijing Summer Olympic Games on
television with Kim and a large group of his friends at an apartment in
Gangnam. When the South Korean athletes were winning, they cheered
tumultuously, as did everyone watching in nearby apartments. I heard the
roars rising across the whole neighbourhood. They chanted ‘uri nara!’ (Our
country!) and ‘daehan minguk!’ (Republic of Korea!) I was cheering, too,
but I couldn’t shout uri nara. I tried to, because I wanted to fit in, but my
heart went quiet, and the words wouldn’t come out.
My heart was rooting for North Korea. I was proud to see my country
winning gold medals. But I couldn’t cheer. North Korea was the enemy.
Later, I turned down Kim’s offer of dinner and went home to my little
apartment, where I could still hear distant cheering and celebrations from
the other blocks. The experience had depressed me. That night I lay awake
on my mattress, watching the reflected glow of the city on the clouds. The
sky over Seoul was a thick amber broth that obscured the stars. In Hyesan, I
could see the Milky Way from my bedroom window.

---

The Olympics sparked a full-blown identity crisis in me. It had probably
been building for a while, fuelled by the insecurity I was feeling over Kim,
and by my lack of education.