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

‘The house is cursed’
Our new neighbourhood was a cluster of single-storey homes separated by
narrow alleys. The house was larger than previous houses we’d lived in,
painted white, with a tiled roof, and surrounded by a white concrete wall. It
had three rooms, each the width of the building, so that we had to go
through the kitchen area to the main room and through that to the back
room, which is where the four of us slept.
My mother had paid a lot of money for it. Officially, there is no private
property in North Korea, and no real-estate business, but in reality people
who have been allocated desirable or conveniently located housing often do
sell or swap them if the price is right.
The location of this house was perfect for my mother’s illicit enterprises.
She could arrange for goods to be smuggled from just a few yards away in
China, straight over the river to our front door. For security against the
rampant thievery she had the wall around the house built higher, to about
six feet, and bought a fierce, trained dog from the military. The entrance
was through a gate in the front wall, that we kept heavily locked. We had to
pass through a total of three doors and five locks just to come and go. In
front of the house was a path that ran along the riverside, five yards from
our front gate, along which the guards patrolled in pairs. Uncle Opium and
Aunt Pretty dropped by and congratulated my mother. The location couldn’t
be better, they said.
Min-ho was extremely excited about this new home. It was a warm, mild
autumn and the day we moved in he saw boys his own age playing in the
river, mixing with Chinese boys from the other side, while their mothers
washed clothes along the banks. To most North Koreans, the borders are
impassable barriers. Our country is sealed shut from neighbouring

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countries. And yet here were five-, six- and seven-year-old boys splashing
and flitting between the two banks, North Korea’s and China’s, like the fish
and the birds.
The next day my mother went to introduce herself to the neighbours.
What they told her made her heart sink to her stomach. She returned to the
house looking angry and pale.
‘The house is cursed,’ she said, slumping to the floor and covering her
face with her hands. ‘I’ve made a terrible mistake.’
A neighbour had told her that a child of the previous occupants had died
in an accident. My mother thought she’d been lucky to find the place, but in
fact the occupants were selling in a hurry to escape the association with
tragedy and bad luck. I tried to comfort her, but she shook her head and
looked tired. Her superstitions ran too deep to be reasoned with. I half-
believed it myself. Many of my mother’s beliefs were rubbing off on me. I
could tell she was already thinking of another expensive session with a
fortune-teller to see if she could get the curse lifted.
My mother quickly furnished the house, once again doing her makeover.
People who could afford them had started buying refrigerators coming from
China, but my mother was reluctant to attract attention. This meant daily
shopping for food, almost all of which she obtained at the local semi-
official markets, not from the Public Distribution System. Her director at
the government bureau where she worked had recently been sent to a prison
camp after inspectors had found food in his home that he had been given as
a bribe, so my mother was especially careful. We never stocked up on rice –
seldom keeping more than twenty or thirty kilos in the house.
The one luxury we did buy for the new house was a Toshiba colour
television, which was a signal of social status. The television would expand
my horizon, and Min-ho’s, dramatically. Not for the ‘news’ it broadcast –
we had one channel, Korea Central Television, which showed endlessly
repeated footage of the Great Leader or the Dear Leader visiting factories,
schools or farms and delivering their on-the-spot guidance on everything
from nitrate fertilizers to women’s shoes. Nor for the entertainment, which
consisted of old North Korean movies, Pioneers performing in musical
ensembles, or vast army choruses praising the Revolution and the Party. Its
attraction was that we could pick up Chinese TV stations that broadcast
soap operas and glamorous commercials for luscious products. Though we

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could not understand Mandarin, just watching them provided a window
onto an entirely different way of life. Watching foreign TV stations was
highly illegal and a very serious offence. Our mother scolded us severely
when she caught us. But I was naughty. I’d put blankets over the windows
and watch when she was out, or sleeping.
We were now living in a sensitive area, politically. The government knew
that people living along the river often succumbed to the poison of
capitalism and traded smuggled goods, watched pernicious foreign
television programmes, and even defected. Families living in this area were
monitored much more closely than others by the Bowibu for any sign of
disloyalty. A family that fell under suspicion might be watched and reported
on daily by the local police. Often, subterfuge was used to catch offenders.
One morning not long after we’d moved in, a pleasant and friendly man
knocked on the door and told my mother that he had heard that the Yankees
paid a lot of money for the returned remains of their soldiers killed during
the Korean War. He had some bones himself, he said, disinterred from
various sites in the province. He wondered if my mother could help him
smuggle them across the border.
My mother treated requests for help with extreme caution. She knew how
undercover Bowibu agents operated, dropping by with intriguing
propositions. They had all kinds of tricks. We’d heard of one high-ranking
family who had got into serious trouble when investigators turned up at
their children’s kindergarten and asked brightly: ‘What’s the best movie
you’ve seen lately?’ and a child had enthusiastically described a South
Korean blockbuster, watched on illegal video. On this occasion, however,
her superstitions were her best defence. She didn’t want to be haunted by
the disturbed spirits of American soldiers, and told the man she couldn’t
help.
In mid-November, a few weeks after we had moved to the new house, the
first snow had been falling all day in fine grains that stung our faces. We
were huddled on the floor for warmth, wearing our coats indoors, when my
father arrived home. Each time he returned from China he brought with him
small luxuries that were out of reach for most people. Sometimes he came
with good-quality toilet paper, or bananas and oranges, which were almost
never available at home. This time he was carrying such an enormous

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package that I failed to affect my usual boredom in his presence. I was too
curious to know what it was. It contained gifts for Min-ho and me. Mine
was a larger-than-life doll with silky white-blonde hair, blue eyes and a pale
Western face. She had the most beautiful dress, of patterned gingham
trimmed with lace. She was so large I could barely carry her. I had to prop
her up in a corner next to my bed. My mother said she could hear me
chattering to her. Min-ho’s gift was a hand-held Game Boy video game. His
little face was overawed. This was something so new. We knew of no one
else who had anything like it.
I can only think of that doll now with immense sadness. I was a little too
old for a doll, but it was such a beautiful, generous gift. I realize now that
my father felt he had lost me and was trying to reconnect with me,
somehow. He knew something had gone badly wrong between us, and he
had probably figured out what it was. I certainly did not deserve the gift.
It was the last thing he ever gave me.

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Chapter 12