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

A series of small miracles
Under new rules introduced after spies were discovered among the North
Koreans seeking asylum, my family’s period of processing by the NIS was
longer than mine. They were questioned for three months before being
moved to Hanawon, where they stayed another three months. The women
who had been held in Laos with my mother and Min-ho arrived at the same
time. Sadly, after making it all the way here, the older lady died of cancer.
In these weeks while I was waiting, I was contacted out of the blue by
Shin-suh, the friendly video-chat girl who’d appeared naked on my laptop
screen in Shanghai. She’d been trying to reach me, she said, but my change
of name had made me hard to track down. I was thrilled that she’d made it
to Seoul not long after me. I invited her over. But when I opened the door,
the girl on my doorstep was a stranger, not the person I’d seen on the video-
chat. It flashed across my mind that this was a trap. There were rumours
throughout the defector community of Bowibu spies and assassins in our
midst.
My confusion amused her. ‘It’s me, Shin-suh.’ She clapped her hands
together and laughed.
I recognized her voice. She explained that she’d spent $20,000 on a total
plastic surgery overhaul – eyes, forehead, nose, lips, breasts, everything.
Her South Korean boyfriend had been so turned off by the transformation
that he’d broken off their relationship.
When I told her that I had got my family out of the North, the light went
out of her eyes. She became quiet and pensive. Like me, she missed her
family with an almost physical pain. She wanted to get hers out too, she
said, but she was terrified of the risks. She had suffered far worse than I
had. Like many North Korean women, Shin-suh had been trafficked, tricked

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by men who had posed as brokers helping her to escape. She considered
herself fortunate that she’d been sold to an adult video-chat business, and
not as a bride to an impoverished Chinese farmer. It made me blush to recall
how, as an eighteen-year-old, I’d thought the worst thing in my life would
be to go through with a marriage to the affluent, harmless Geun-soo in
Shenyang.
A week before my mother and Min-ho emerged from Hanawon I decided to
have the long-overdue talk with Kim. I did not want to postpone it any
longer. My family was about to join me. A new chapter was beginning, and
I knew Kim would not be a part of it. My experiences had made me a
realist. I was not going to be a romantic fool hoping that he’d defy his
parents and marry me, nor did I expect him to. He’d never done anything to
displease his family. Pining over lost love was for TV dramas, not for me.
My priority now was to help my mother and Min-ho adjust to a new life. I
had to move on.
‘I don’t think we have a future,’ I said to him. I think he’d guessed from
my tone why I’d come to his apartment this evening.
After a long, heavy pause he said: ‘I know. You’re right. It would be hard
to deal with my family.’
We sat for a while just looking at each other across the sofa in his
apartment, listening to the sounds of the city. I hadn’t expected to feel as
sad as I did. It was such a shame. We liked and respected each other very
much. He’d come home from the gym and was wearing a sweatshirt that
showed off his body. He was a beautiful man, and kind. But his future was
as closely connected to his past, and to his family, as mine was to mine.
And that meant separate destinies.
‘There’s not much left to say then.’ If I wasn’t going to cry, I needed to
get this over with quickly.
‘I guess not,’ he said.
I smiled at him warmly. ‘Let’s part as friends.’
We embraced, and I left before he saw me break down.
Two days later I was waiting anxiously at the top of the subway stairs for
my mother and Min-ho. It was now August 2010, almost a full year since
our drama in Changbai, and nine months since I had last seen them in Laos.

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When I caught sight of them I bounded down the stairs and into their arms.
At last they were free, South Korean citizens. My worry was how well
they’d cope with the ‘free’.
‘You told me it would all take two weeks,’ was the first thing Mother
said. ‘If I had known how long and awful the journey was going to be, I
doubt I would have agreed.’
‘Well, we’re all here now,’ I said. ‘That’s what matters. Min-ho, look at
you. You were too thin last time I saw you. Now you’re too fat.’ Actually,
he looked much healthier.
‘No way,’ he said. He grinned at me, and I saw my father in him. ‘I’m
hungry. Let’s eat.’
Their eyes were everywhere. The subway had disgorged my family into
the bustling area near City Hall. Their senses were being assaulted by the
sights and sounds of the most modern city in the world. Seoul is bright with
signage that competes to grab attention, and illuminated advertising
designed to entice and allure. Streets are solid with more traffic than a
North Korean could ever imagine. Crowds moved in every direction. These
were the modern Koreans, whose language was recognizable to my mother
but whose fashions, attitudes and indifference toward the thousands of
foreigners of all races living unmolested in their midst were so at odds with
what she had known. Everywhere she looked was a vast hive of activity,
and prosperity.
I had invited Ok-hee along, to join us for seolleongtang, ox-bone soup.
‘Eat a lot, Omma,’ I said. I was concerned that she looked frail. I’d hoped
she would look relaxed and healthy after Hanawon.
‘I was too stressed to eat most of the time,’ she said.
We chatted freely until the restaurant closed. I was so happy, and kept
holding their hands. I had been fantasizing about a scene like this for more
than a decade.
My mother’s first few days of freedom in the developed world were
overtaken by a series of small miracles. She struggled to keep up. At
Dongdaemun, a popular night market of street-food vendors, she was
transfixed by the ATM where I’d withdrawn cash. ‘I can’t figure it out,’ she
said. She thought an extremely small teller was crouched inside a tiny room
in the wall, counting out notes at high speed. ‘The poor thing, stuck in there
without a window.’

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‘Omma.’ I started laughing. ‘It’s a machine.’
The travel card I gave her also flummoxed her. When we got on a bus,
she swiped it over the reader, as I had shown her, and a mechanized
woman’s voice said ‘hwanseung imnida’ (transfer), meaning that the fare
had been paid.
‘Do I need to reply?’ my mother asked loudly.
Later, in the street, she asked me if the kids she kept seeing were from
South Korea’s equivalent of some sort of Socialist Youth League.
‘No, why do you say that?’
‘They salute each other, like this.’ She held up her palm.
‘Omma, that’s called a “high five”.’
One evening, as we were strolling after dinner she said: ‘It wasn’t all
bull.’
‘What wasn’t, Omma?’
‘All these cars. All these lights. I’d seen them in the illegal South Korean
TV dramas, but I’d always thought it was propaganda, that they’d brought
all the cars in the city to the same street where they were filming.’ She
shook her head. ‘It’s astonishing.’

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Chapter 52