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

This is it. We’re finished.
I looked over to see if my mother and Min-ho had caught what was
happening. Min-ho was surreptitiously sipping from a cheap bottle of
Maotai, the Chinese liquor. The rank, sickly smell of it had already reached
my bunk. He’d said his strategy, if questioned, was to be drunk. He quietly

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screwed the cap back on and closed his eyes. His lips were pressed tightly
together. I felt immensely sorry for him, and for my mother. This was all
my doing. They could be safe at home now. They will pay the price for my
selfishness.
Min-ho’s distraction strategy was not going to work.
‘Chang-soo.’ The policeman was calling the name on Min-ho’s ID. The
name was Korean but he was pronouncing it in Mandarin. Min-ho’s eyes
were still shut. There was nothing I could do.
He called the name out again. No response. Then he called it a third time,
irritated now. I pushed Min-ho, pretending to wake him. The other
passengers watched as he climbed down from the bunk. I could see his legs
wobbling. He was moving slowly as if stepping forward to be shot. My
heart was bleeding for him.
But I could not do as a broker would have done – shrink back into my
bunk, look out of the window, and abandon him to his fate.
I’ll take the bullet for him.
‘What is your name?’ the policeman asked in Mandarin. Min-ho stood
helplessly in front of him with his head lowered. He said nothing. The
policeman looked at the card and looked up at him.
‘He’s deaf and dumb,’ I said in Mandarin, climbing down from my bunk.
‘Who are you?’
‘We’re together,’ I said. He found my card.
‘Really? He’s deaf and dumb?’ The policeman was holding my ID and
Min-ho’s out in front of him. ‘Yours is in Chinese. But his is foreign.’
‘That’s Korean script,’ I said. ‘For Korean-Chinese from the northeast
the ID is in both languages.’
‘Never seen that before.’
‘She’s right,’ the conductor chipped in. I turned my head and saw the
driver tap the watch on his wrist in a show of irritation. ‘The cards are all
like that in the Korean autonomous provinces.’
The novelty of the Korean script had distracted the policeman from the
ID’s photo and date of birth. He still looked suspiciously at Min-ho. Then
he handed back the card.
Suddenly, a loud, ape-like grunting noise behind me distracted everyone.
My mother had clambered down from her berth. She was gibbering as if
unaware she was making any sounds, and waving her arms about in a show

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of extreme annoyance, or as if she’d skipped her medication. The
performance was so startling the policeman took a step backward.
He swore. ‘Another one?’
‘She’s with me, too,’ I said, sounding apologetic. ‘I am guiding them
both.’
Reluctantly, the policeman gave back our cards without further questions.
The entire coach was watching this bizarre piece of theatre. They’d heard us
chatting for hours. They might have been too surprised to speak, but not one
of them gave us away. I had fifty-two accomplices to a crime, and they were
all total strangers.
A minute later the coach was back on the expressway. Min-ho and my
mother looked like people just spared the firing squad. Behind me I could
feel the heat of the other passengers’ stares. I wanted to turn and say
something by way of an excuse, or to thank them, but I was too
embarrassed and scared. The rest of the journey lasted eight hours. My
mother and Min-ho did not utter another word.
We arrived in Zhengzhou in the late afternoon and from there travelled to
Guilin, the capital of Guangxi Province, unnoticed among a group of
tourists on their way to see the famous karst hills along the Li River. We
dozed for much of the twenty-four-hour journey. Occasionally I’d pull back
the curtain and see a vast Asian sky over endless low hills. The chill
northeast was far behind us. We emerged in subtropical China. Another
overnight ride westward, and on the morning of the seventh day we reached
Kunming, in Yunnan Province.
I was feeling a mounting sense of purpose and excitement. We were so
close to the edge of China. The border to freedom. We were going to make
it. We were going to pull this off.
Reverend Kim’s broker was waiting for us in the ticket hall of Kunming
coach station. He was a tanned, middle-aged Chinese man dressed in black
jeans, a cheap leather jacket and tinted glasses. He introduced himself as Mr
Fang. I had an instant bad feeling about him.
I was his client, and was paying for his services, but from the moment he
greeted us he behaved as if we’d been sent to irritate him, and he was doing
us a favour. I watched him glance at my mother and shake his head. She had

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once ranked highly in her society and was the wife of a senior military
officer, but in this fellow’s eyes she was an empty-handed old woman on
the run. His body language showed contempt; his manner of speaking even
more so.
I’ll admit that, as a Korean, I’m sensitive to how I’m treated. In our
hierarchical culture, everyone is either above or below you. Honorific
language is used with anyone further up the hierarchy. The safe bet when
meeting strangers is to use polite forms, until you can place their age, or
status. But this man began speaking to us in language reserved for kids. He
was especially dismissive of Min-ho.
‘That fool’s taking his time,’ he said when Min-ho was in the station
bathroom.
If we’d been in Seoul, I’d have told him plainly to his face to watch his
manners, but I kept my anger banked down. I could not allow my feelings
to interfere with our goal. I forced myself to treat the situation as another
type of checkpoint, to be passed with calm nerves and composure. My
family’s safety came first.
Mr Fang’s Korean was so thickly clouded with Mandarin that I had to
keep asking him to repeat himself. I’d never heard Korean so mangled. In
the end I had to ask him to speak in Mandarin, which further annoyed him.
My mother and Min-ho, meanwhile, were not reacting well to the fug of
humidity we’d stepped into off the coach, or the pervasive reek of gasoline
fumes. To make matters worse, the oily fried food we’d been eating at
expressway restaurants all the way from Shenyang was taking its toll. Their
bodies weren’t used to it. They now had stomach cramps. Min-ho, who
possessed such sinewy strength, had become listless and wan at the very
stage of the journey he needed to be taut and alert.
Mr Fang led us to a guesthouse for the night. It was the cheapest kind of
lodging, in a rough neighbourhood of old, single-storey houses separated by
narrow, litter-strewn dirt alleyways. When I turned on the bathroom light,
tiny lizards darted across the walls; the shower head was a spigot with a
sock tied over it.
Mr Fang sat down on a bed. Payment was the first thing he mentioned.
Without asking if we minded whether he smoked in our room, he lit a
cigarette.

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I took out my cash. From my experience of gangs and brokers I knew
that the worst thing I could do was betray any sign of desperation, or appeal
to his pity. I spoke as if this was a controlled, manageable situation.
‘When I arranged this with Reverend Kim, we only planned for my
mother. But there was a problem and my brother had to come with us. Right
now I only have the money for one person.’
‘We had an agreement.’
‘We still do,’ I said. ‘As soon as I return to Seoul, I’ll pay the extra to
Reverend Kim. He can transfer it to you.’
The man swore under his breath. ‘That’s not going to work, little Miss.’
‘It will, because I’m giving you my South Korean ID card.’ I took it from
my wallet and handed it to him. ‘You keep it. You and Reverend Kim now
know exactly who I am, and where I live, and can come after me if I don’t
pay. And I will pay.’
The ID was the only thing I had that might persuade him to trust me.
He seemed to weigh the card in his hand for a moment, gauging its value,
then slipped it into his jacket pocket.
‘They leave tomorrow,’ he said, nodding to my mother and Min-ho.
‘They will be guided early in the morning over the border. Into Laos.’
Where? ‘No, we’re going to Vietnam.’
‘That was the plan, but two days ago a group of North Koreans was
caught in Vietnam and sent back to China.’
I glanced at my mother. She wasn’t following the Mandarin, but she
could see the alarm in my eyes.
‘The Vietnamese used to allow you people to go to South Korea,’ he said.
‘We don’t know why this has changed, but it means that route is not safe
now. We can’t risk it. We’re switching to Laos.’
My head was spinning. ‘Where’s Laos?’
‘Next to Vietnam. Same distance from here. Seven hours away.’
‘Is it safe?’
‘Safe?’ He gave a snort. ‘Nothing is guaranteed. But we’ve been doing
this a long time. We can get you across the border and to the South Korean
embassy in Vientiane.’ He saw another blank look on my face. ‘That’s the
capital. I’ll get your mother and brother there.’ He took a final drag on his
cigarette and flicked it through the open window, trailing orange sparks.
‘Well, I’m going too,’ I said.

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‘No, you’re not.’ He shot me a look of glinting suspicion, as if I were
trying to steal his trade secrets. ‘You’re going back to Seoul.’
‘I’m not leaving them. They need me.’
‘They’ll be in safe hands.’
‘They don’t speak Mandarin and they don’t know about anything outside
of North Korea. I’m staying with them.’
‘Too dangerous. You’ll be a liability, little Miss.’
My fists clenched. If he calls me that one more time …
‘Everything we’re doing is illegal,’ he said. ‘With a South Korean
passport you can enter Laos for fifteen days without a visa. They don’t even
have passports.’ He gestured casually at my mother and Min-ho. ‘If you’re
caught with them you’ll be arrested for helping illegals. They’ll think
you’re a broker and put you in jail. You’ll be no help to anyone there. They
need you to arrange things for them in South Korea.’
‘I could travel on my Chinese ID,’ I said.
The moment the words were out, I knew this was a bad idea.
He seemed to read my mind. ‘And if something goes wrong, do you want
to get sent back to South Korea, or to China? If the Chinese figure out
you’re a defector, too …’
The thought was left hanging in the air.
He had me. There was nothing I could say.
Every hour of the day for the past week, I had been my family’s sole
lifeline. But now control was being taken from me. I would have to leave
them in the hands of a man I absolutely did not trust.
At dawn the air was already humid and noisy with the cries of unfamiliar
birds. The alley smelled of rotting garbage. It took us just minutes to
prepare ourselves. My mother would take only a small bag, and gave me
her winter clothes. I went out to buy toiletries for her and Min-ho. I checked
the remaining cash in my wallet. I did not have much left, and still had to
buy my plane ticket to Seoul.
I went with them to the coach station. I gave Min-ho 1,000 yuan ($150). I
wrote my South Korean cellphone number down for him and my mother
and told them to memorize it.
We said our goodbyes. I did not want to let go of their hands, but Min-ho
gave me his grin and said: ‘Nuna, we’ll be all right.’

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I watched the coach until it had turned the corner and disappeared from
view. Please be safe. The dice were rolling again. Now it was all in
Fortune’s hands.
I stayed behind in Kunming until I’d heard from Min-ho, who called that
evening. They had arrived at the border without incident. They would cross
at dawn, when Mr Fang would bribe the guards. At 5 a.m. he called again.
‘We’re in Laos.’
Relief washed over me like warm spring water. The end of the journey
was in sight. For days my nerves had been wound to breaking point. Now,
as the tension drained from my body, I was so tired I could barely move.
I found a post office and mailed back the two borrowed IDs. Then, with
some hesitation, I called my boyfriend Kim in Seoul. I hadn’t spoken to him
for more than a week, and had told him nothing about what I was going to
do. I had not answered his worried text messages. When I told him where I
was, however, his shock was greater than his hurt.
‘Where?’
In the background I heard the business meeting he was in go quiet.
I briefly told him what I’d done, and that my family was now in Laos,
heading for the South Korean embassy.
There was a stunned pause on the end of the line. Finally he said: ‘I don’t
know what to say.’ Then I heard that gentle laugh. ‘Come back quickly.’ He
thought I was insane, he said, but I heard the note of admiration in his
voice. ‘I’ve got to hear all about this.’
I sat in the back of the taxi satisfied that I’d accomplished a difficult
mission. And I couldn’t wait to get out of the grime and humidity of
Kunming. We were approaching the departures terminal when my phone
rang.
It was Mr Fang. I didn’t hear him at first because a plane roared so low
overhead I could see the streaks of rust on its fuselage. All I got was the
word problem. My stomach turned to stone.
‘Problem?’
I was staring at the back of the taxi driver’s head, with the phone at my
ear.
‘The police picked them up.’

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Chapter 46