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

miguk nom, he said. An American bastard.
I did not feel bad for offending them. I felt bad for Brian, who was decent
and kind and had done nothing to deserve their contempt. But I knew I
would achieve nothing by having a row with my mother and Min-ho. They
had only been out of North Korea a few months. Some convictions would
not change overnight.
Slowly, I started speaking out in defence of defectors, and about the human
rights abuses in North Korea – first, in defector group meetings, then in
small public speeches, then on a new television show called Now on My
Way to Meet You, in which all the guests were female defectors, given new
clothes in vibrant colours to dispel public perceptions of North Koreans as
shabby and pitiful. The show had a big impact in transforming attitudes in
South Korea toward defectors.
I started thinking deeply about human rights. One of the main reasons
that distinctions between oppressor and victim are blurred in North Korea is
that no one there has any concept of rights. To know that your rights are
being abused, or that you are abusing someone else’s, you first have to
know that you have them, and what they are. But with no comparative
information about societies elsewhere in the world, such awareness in North
Korea cannot exist. This is also why most people escape because they’re
hungry or in trouble – not because they’re craving liberty. Many defectors
hiding in China even baulk at the idea of going to South Korea – they’d see
it as a betrayal of their country and the legacy of the Great Leader. If the

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North Korean people acquired an awareness of their rights, of individual
freedoms and democracy, the game would be up for the regime in
Pyongyang. The people would realize that full human rights are exercised
and enjoyed by one person only – the ruling Kim. He is the only figure in
North Korea who exercises freedom of thought, freedom of speech,
freedom of movement, his right not to be tortured, imprisoned, or executed
without trial, and his right to proper healthcare and food.
By coincidence, it was at the time I was having these thoughts that
something happened that no defector expected.
My mother and I were watching television on the evening of 17
December 2011 when news came through that Kim Jong-il, the Dear
Leader, was dead. He had died on his private train, the distraught North
Korean news anchor said, from the ‘excessive mental and physical strain’
of his lifelong dedication to the people’s cause.
I turned in shock to my mother. We were yelling. Her palm was raised.
She was giving me a high five. Ok-hee was on the phone straight away. We
wanted to celebrate. Naively, we thought major changes were about to
happen in the North.
We couldn’t believe it. He was seventy. We’d all thought he had at least
ten more years in him. An entire scientific institute in Pyongyang was
dedicated to his longevity. He had access to the best healthcare in the world,
and the best food. Every single grain of rice he ate was inspected for
imperfections.
Our mood soured a few days later, however, when we saw footage of the
forced public outpouring of crying and wailing for this callous tyrant. Kim
Jong-il had been a disastrously bad ruler, doing almost nothing to alleviate
one of the worst events in Korean history, the Great Famine. Yet from his
point of view, he’d been highly successful – his power had remained
absolute, he’d died peacefully, and he’d passed the reins to his youngest
son, Kim Jong-un.
Brian brought stability to my life. I felt settled and less distracted; I attacked
my studies and began to gain confidence at school, especially in English. I
continued speaking out on behalf of defectors, and then something else
occurred that I could never have anticipated. I was chosen through a
worldwide talent search to give a talk at a TED conference. (TED stands for

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technology, education and design, and holds annual conferences to present
interesting ideas to a broad audience.) In February 2013, I was flown to
California to tell my story before a large audience.
To my astonishment the talk received an overwhelmingly positive
response from people all over the world. Some of the most inspiring
messages came from China, a country I love but which caused me so much
hardship. Many expressed their shame at the complicity of their government
in hounding escaped North Koreans. I also received hate messages, calling
me a traitor, and worse. Brian laughed those off and suggested I did the
same.
Later that year, I was invited to New York to testify before the United
Nations Commission of Enquiry on Human Rights in North Korea,
alongside some defectors who had survived the North Korean gulag. The
international outcry that followed the Commission’s verdict on North
Korea’s crimes against humanity finally brought me to the attention of the
regime in Pyongyang. Its Central News Agency, in its inimitable style,
proclaimed this: ‘One day, the world will learn the truth about these […]
criminals. The West will be so embarrassed when they realize they invited
these terrorists [to testify].’
Behind the bluster, I sensed fear. Dictatorships may seem strong and
unified, but they are always weaker than they appear. They are governed by
the whim of one man, who can’t draw upon a wealth of discussion and
debate, as democracies can, because he rules through terror and the only
truth permitted is his own. Even so, I don’t think Kim Jong-un’s
dictatorship is so weak that it will collapse any time soon. Sadly, as the
historian Andrei Lankov put it, a regime that’s willing to kill as many
people as it takes to stay in power tends to stay in power for a very long
time.
So when might this suffering end? Some Koreans will say with
reunification. That should be our dream on both sides of the border,
although, after more than sixty years of separation, and a radical divergence
in living standards, many in the South face the prospect with trepidation.
But we can’t sit on our hands while we wait for the miracle of a new,
unified Korea. If we do, the descendants of divided families will reconnect
as strangers. Reunification, when it happens, and it will happen, may be less
turbulent if the ordinary people of North and South can at least have some

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contact, be permitted to have family vacations together, or attend the
weddings of nephews and nieces. The least that could be done for defectors
is to ensure that they know, when they risk everything to escape, that they
will not be lost for ever to the people they left behind, that they have
supporters and well-wishers the world over, that they are not crossing the
border alone.
With the wide publicity I received after these events, my mother could no
longer ignore the fact of my relationship with Brian. He had been so
supportive of me. What’s more, the attention I was receiving for my work
was causing a change of attitude in her and Min-ho. Through me,
circumstance was forcing them to take a more international view of their
lives. Slowly, they were starting to see themselves as citizens of a larger
world, rather than displaced people from a tiny area of Ryanggang
Province, North Korea.
Nevertheless, the next step was a major one for my mother to accept. She
became quiet and forbearing when I told her the news.
‘Omma, Brian has asked me to marry him. It means so much to me that I
receive your blessing.’

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Epilogue
Incredible as it may seem in our connected world, I lost touch with Dick
Stolp shortly after leaving Laos. The email server I was with went out of
business, and with it, all my addresses. I wrote letters to the editors of
several Australian newspapers hoping that they’d be published and that
Dick would see one of them and get in touch. I wanted him to know what
his kindness and his heroism had achieved. None of my letters was
published. It was only after the attention generated by the TED talk that an
email eventually appeared in my inbox. ‘Hyeonseo, is that you?’ Dick
wasn’t sure that it was me he was writing to, since he’d had no idea I was
North Korean. An Australian news programme, SBS Insight, got wind of
the story and flew me to Australia to thank Dick in person. TV cameras
were there to film the reunion. Normally, such public pressure would have
kept my North Korean mask firmly on my face, but the moment I saw
Dick’s towering figure and the same gentle, kind smile I’d seen that day
outside the Coffee House in Luang Namtha, I threw my arms around him
and wept.
I know that the mask may never fully come off. The smallest thing
occasionally sends me back into a steel-plated survival mode, or I may ice
over when people expect me to be open. In one edition of the popular South
Korean defectors’ show, each woman’s story was spoken through floods of
tears. But not mine.
I still go through bouts of self-loathing. Somewhere, years ago in China, I
stopped liking myself. After leaving my family behind, I felt I didn’t
deserve to celebrate my birthday, so I never did. I am perpetually
dissatisfied. No sooner do I achieve something than I become unhappy with
myself for not doing better, and achieving the next thing.
I try to appreciate what I have and keep a smile on my face. I have
recently graduated from university, thanks to that friendly encouragement
from Mr Park the policeman. Min-ho is at university, speaks English, and
these days is best of friends with Brian. Both of them laugh, now, at that

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dinner when they first met. In many ways it symbolized the ludicrous
misconceptions created by politics.
And my mother, my wonderful omma, cries far less. She even manages
to smile from time to time, especially when Brian mangles something in
Korean. Those she left behind – my uncles and aunts – still appear to her in
dreams. She tries to be strong for me, but some nights I hear her weeping
quietly.
Perhaps the most remarkable step in my mother’s own journey came
when we asked her to Brian’s hometown in the Midwest to attend our
wedding. She surprised me by neither objecting nor complaining.
And so, my mother accompanied us on a journey into the belly of the
Yankee imperialist beast, the United States of America. Had her mother, my
grandmother, who’d hidden her Workers’ Party card in a chimney from
American soldiers sixty years before, and worn it for the rest of her life on a
string around her neck, been able to see my mother marvel at the view from
the hundredth floor of the John Hancock Center in Chicago, or watch her, as
I did, sitting in an American diner, sampling American food, she would not
have believed her eyes. She would surely also have been astounded, as
Brian and I were, to see her asking a waitress, in English, for another cup of
coffee, and humming to herself, gazing across the sunlit canyon of
skyscrapers, completely at her ease.

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List of Illustrations
1
 Hyeonseo with her mother, or ‘Omma’, 1984, at a photography studio.
2
 Hyeonseo’s mother with Aunt Pretty, her younger sister.
3
The Mansudae complex of skyscrapers in Pyongyang. Courtesy of
breathoflifestar
4
A housing estate on Kwangbok Street in Pyongyang. Courtesy of
breathoflifestar
5
 Placards from the vast, extravagant performance of the Mass Games that
captivate foreign audiences. Courtesy of breathoflifestar
6
Visitors bow to the bronze statues of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il on
Mansu Hill. Courtesy of breathoflifestar
7
A procession float featuring a painting of Kim Jong-il. Courtesy of
breathoflifestar
8
Factory workers going to work together in the city of Hyesan, on the
border of China’s Changbai County. © REUTERS/Reinhard Krause
9
A building in Hyesan pronounces slogans as Kim Il-sung looks over
women working in front, 2009. © REUTERS/Reinhard Krause
10
 Hyesan, from the Chinese border. Photograph by Hyeonseo Lee
11
An infamous picture, seen around the world in May 2002, taken at the
Japanese consulate in Shenyang, China. Kim Han-mi, aged two, watches
her mother being dragged by Chinese policemen as her family attempt to
enter the Japanese consulate in order to seek asylum. The Han-mi family,

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including her uncle and grandmother, had dashed into the Japanese
consulate gate in Shenyang, China in May 2002. Two male relatives had
slipped through successfully, but the two women and the girl were
forcibly apprehended, sparking a diplomatic incident between Japan and
China. This image of Han-mi looking on as her mother was being
wrestled to the ground was broadcast worldwide. © REUTERS/Kyodo
12
 Hyeonseo and her family at Navy Pier in Chicago.
13
 Hyeonseo’s mother and brother in their first water fight. Photograph by
Hyeonseo Lee
14
Hyeonseo (misspelled on her identification panel) testifying at the
United Nations Security Council in April 2014.
15
Hyeonseo with the US ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha
Power.

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Picture Section
This studio photo of me on my mother’s back was taken when I was three. It is the only photo I have
of me in North Korea.

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My mother and Aunt Pretty pose for a photo just before my mother escaped North Korea. They were
extremely close, but like many divided families on the Korean peninsula, accept that they may never
meet again.

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These towers in Pyongyang were completed in time for the centenary of Kim Il-sung’s birth in 2012,
the year in which North Korea was to become ‘a strong and prosperous nation’. They house high-
ranking members of the Workers’ Party and their families.

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However, even for families of the ‘loyal class’, housing can be poor.

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Portraits of Kim Il-sung and his son, Kim Jong-il, are formed by thousands of children holding up
cards in unison during a mass games display. In the stadium at Hyesan my classmates and I rehearsed
for hours in the card section without being allowed a toilet break. We had no choice but to urinate in
our clothes.

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Citizens bow before the colossal bronzes of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il on Mansu Hill, Pyongyang,
a major shrine in the cult of Kim. Foreigners visiting the capital are brought here and are asked to bow.
In this way the regime creates the impression on ordinary North Koreans that the Kims are respected
and admired the world over.

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A propaganda painting of Kim Jong-il adorns a float in a parade. He is depicted on a rainswept terrace
gazing into the dawn. The symbolism here is that he steered the country through tempestuous times
towards a bright future. A slogan on a f oat in the background says ‘Regeneration through self-effort!

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Factory workers in Hyesan march to work behind their unit leader. Children set of to school in the
same way.

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A slogan on a public building in Hyesan reads ‘Unification of the Fatherland. Our Great Leader Kim
Il-sung is always with us.’

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A picture from Changbai, China, across the border into Hyesan, North Korea. The river separating
the two countries is very narrow here, and when it is frozen over, it is easier for North Koreans to
escape. Because North Korean train schedules are so irregular, numerous people have died on the
stretch of railroad tracks in the distance, jumping of to avoid an oncoming train.

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In China a woman and a girl attempting to enter the Japanese consulate to seek asylum in South
Korea are dragged out of the compound by the police. Due to international pressure, China later
allowed the group to leave for South Korea. Since then, China has intensified security around foreign
embassies. China regularly repatriates defectors to North Korea, where they are severely punished.

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Our family at Navy Pier in Chicago. It was my mother’s first visit to America and she was frequently
surprised by America’s development, and that many people were so friendly. She had been taught the
opposite.

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My mother and brother experiencing their first water fight. They said this was the most fun they had
had in years. North Korea is a conservative society, so a water fight among family members is almost
unheard of. My mother and brother have vowed to have a rematch in the future.

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Testifying at a special session of the United Nations Security Council in April 2014. The session was
historic, as it was the first time the Security Council specifically focused on North Korean human
rights abuses.

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Meeting the US ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power. Ambassador Power has been a
strong advocate for the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), and endeavours to promote human rights.

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Index