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

Whatever it takes, I thought. I’ll do whatever it takes. Humans are selfish
and care only for themselves and their families. Am I any different?
To my surprise, we arrived at the main prison I had visited the first day,
where the people drinking outside had told me indifferently that there were
no North Koreans here. If I’d known that my omma and Min-ho were
indeed in this place I would have visited every day, even if all I could do
was send them good thoughts. I would have yelled over the wall: ‘Omma-
ya! Min-ho-ya! Don’t worry. I’m here.’ I would have come from the
immigration office every afternoon and sat here until dusk had fallen and
the cicada sounds filled the night.
The prison wardens told me I could meet my mother in the women’s
section of the prison, but would not be allowed into the men’s section to see
Min-ho. They led me through a courtyard of mud walls to a large black
gate. With a clanking of locks and a ferrous groan it opened sideways.
Standing behind it, alone, was my mother.
She glared at me for a moment with an odd, distant expression. Her
appearance devastated me. She was much thinner. Her hair was greasy and
plastered to her head. For some reason she had one hand on her hip and was
tilting oddly to one side.
Suddenly she ran toward me, threw her arms around me and began to
sob. She had on the same clothes and rubber flip-flops as when I’d last seen
her in Kunming.
‘I thought you’d gone,’ she wailed. ‘I thought I’d never see you again. A
second ago I thought I was dreaming, so I pinched my side until it hurt.’
No wonder she’d looked at me strangely.
She ran her hands over my face, just as she had after she’d crossed the
Yalu, making sure I was real.
Holding her in my arms, I too had begun to cry, but I forced myself to
stop. I wiped my eyes with the palm of my hand and composed myself. I
didn’t want to complicate matters by letting the guards know I was her
daughter.
I sat with her in the prison courtyard. She was being held in a cell for
foreign women. One Chinese woman had been there for ten years, she said.
Pictures of her family hung on the walls. They had no clean water. They
had to drink and wash from the same ration of dirty water each day. A
couple of days earlier, they’d heard the guards beat a Thai male prisoner to

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death. His wife was in the same cell as my mother, and she wailed without
cease.
‘It’s pure hell,’ she said. ‘We should never have left home.’
Images I’d blotted out until now – of fouled latrines, female violence,
public sex and a murderous lack of hygiene – came flooding into my mind.
There was nothing I could say, but there was no going back now. The
police had taken all the money I’d given her in Kunming. I slipped her
some local currency when the guards weren’t looking so she could buy
some food.
After I’d seen her I returned to town and at once called the South Korean
embassy in Vientiane.
‘It’s dangerous for you to stay there by yourself,’ the consul said. ‘Leave
Laos now, and let the embassy take care of matters.’
This sounded encouraging. ‘How long will it take to get them out?’
‘We have to go by the book, unfortunately. There are no shortcuts. We’ll
submit a request for information and ask permission to visit, but of course
that all takes time—’
‘How long?’
‘Five to six months.’
My head slumped into my hand. But I was not surprised. I’d seen for
myself the sluggish apathy of this country’s bureaucracy.
I simply could not leave my mother and Min-ho in that place.
The prison interpreter turned to me. ‘Five thousand dollars,’ he said simply.
My mouth fell open. I looked from him back to the superintendent. His
elbows were on his desk, his fingers tapping together. He did not blink. A
slow-turning electric fan ruffled his hair, which he periodically smoothed
back into place.
‘Impossible,’ I said.
The superintendent shrugged. ‘In US dollars,’ he said, and made an up to
you gesture with his hands.
Over the following days, I went early to the prison, with gifts and bribes
for the superintendent. Again I was creating a rapport. The interpreter told
me that I was very lucky – until two years earlier, Laos had sent all
defectors back. The policy had only changed after an international outcry.
‘Now, we just fine them,’ he said.

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Slowly, I managed to bring the amount down. Negotiations finally stalled
at $700 apiece. Every time I was allowed into the courtyard to see my
mother, the superintendent took half of my cash, however little it was. I
would sit with her in a shaded spot and update her on my progress. When I
told her I was struggling to raise the funds, she handed me a small dirty
plastic cylinder. Inside was the cash I’d given her earlier. She’d only used a
little to buy drinking water.
I figured that $700 was probably close to the official fine, but it was still
far out of my reach. By this time almost all the money Kim had sent had
been used up. To add to my worries, during my next visit to my mother she
had brought along three bedraggled people to meet me – North Korean
defectors who had been caught a month earlier. They were an old woman,
and an unrelated middle-aged mother and her daughter. My mother was
overwhelmed with compassion for them. She wanted me to help them, too.
I looked at them in dismay, yet I knew I would try to help. They handed me
all the money they had hidden in their private parts. It came to $1,500 – far
short of the total we’d need.
By now my fifteen-day visa was about to expire. The two female officials
who ran the visa office in Luang Namtha told me they could go to the
capital, Vientiane, with my passport to renew my visa, but as it was
expiring in just one day, they would have to fly. I’d have to pay their airfare
and expenses. It would come to several hundred dollars.
I walked back to the Coffee House in a trance. I felt as if I was being
fleeced of everything I had, and my family held to ransom. I slumped into a
chair in the window and tried to think, but every thought came to a dead
end. There were no options. I had no idea what to do.
I closed my eyes. I was about to start beseeching aloud the spirits of my
ancestors, not caring who heard me, when a very tall figure blocked my
light and spoke to me in English. I looked up. Sunlight glinted through
sandy hair.
‘Are you a traveller?’ he said.

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The tall white man had said the word ‘traveller’. I vaguely knew it but I
hadn’t understood his question. By now I had got to know the waiters at the
Coffee House, and called over the one who could speak English and some
Mandarin. He translated for us.
‘Most people only stay here a day or two,’ the tall man was saying.
‘You’ve been here weeks, like me. Are you on business? I’m just curious.’
This was the first time a white person had ever spoken to me. His eyes
were a pale blue and he had a trim, sandy beard that was turning grey. He
seemed more shy of me than I was of him. The English threw me. I couldn’t
find the words. I gestured for him to join me, and opened an English–
Korean translation function on my cellphone.
Slowly, and with many embarrassed laughs and pauses, we
communicated. I told him that I was a South Korean volunteer trying to
help five North Korean defectors who were now in prison for illegal entry
into Laos. The man looked very surprised, and I saw pain in his eyes. I
searched for more words and told him that the Laotian government was
demanding a huge fine.
‘How much?’ he asked.
‘Each person, $700. American money.’
He scratched his beard and stared into the road for a while. Then he made
a gesture that said, Wait here a moment. And another to indicate that he had
to make a phone call. He walked to the other end of the café, made a call,
and returned after a few minutes. I would never in my life have imagined
what happened next. He tapped the words into my cellphone.
In Korean it said, I just made a phone call to a friend in Australia. After