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

with me.
As I entered the city I thought my memory was playing tricks. The
Hamhung where I’d lived as a girl was a buzzing industrial hub, with so
many factory chimneys gushing smoke that the air sometimes choked us,
but now it was fresh and clear. That great polluting monster, the Hungnam
ammonium fertilizer plant, was no longer turning the sky yellow with
chemicals. There were almost no trolley buses or cars, no bustle on the
sidewalks, just people wandering lethargically, or talking to themselves,
hallucinating from hunger.
Aunt Pretty had been making money importing Chinese clothes from
Hyesan to Hamhung, and sending back seafood from the coast, but now she
was casting about for a new venture as the transport situation became dire.
She thought the authorities had taken the decision to cut off the Public
Distribution System altogether in North Hamgyong Province, in order to
save the rest of the country. I asked why that province.
‘Because it has so many people of the lowest songbun,’ she said.
People were falling dead in the streets. Starvation and necessity, however,
were forcing a radical change of mindset. I saw it for myself in Hamhung.
People were unlearning lifetimes of ideology, and reverting to what humans
have practised for thousands of years – trade.
Black markets, where food was on sale at high, free-market prices, were
springing up everywhere – at roadsides, in train stations, in mothballed
industrial plants – and the new rising class of entrepreneurs was
overwhelmingly female, and of low songbun. Very soon a person’s songbun
became far less important than their ability to make money and obtain food.
Many women laid their wares on mats along the sidewalk, keeping alert for
thieves and kotchebi, but some markets had already developed into more
permanent-looking sites, with stalls, and awnings fashioned from blue
burlap rice sacks of the UN World Food Program. Incredible as it seemed

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for a city in the grip of a deathly famine, there were opportunities for social
advancement and business success for those who had an eye for a chance.
During this visit I heard someone say: ‘There are those who starve, those
who beg, and those who trade.’ Coming from Hyesan, I knew many
commercially minded people, but in Hamhung, North Korea’s second-
biggest city, such attitudes seemed new.
The journey back to Hyesan was as nightmarish as the journey out. Many
people were riding in the undercarriage, or clinging to the outside of the
train, or sitting on the roof beneath the electrified wires. When I arrived at
Hyesan Station a man was lying on the platform with the top of his head so
badly smashed that part of his brain was exposed. He was still alive, asking
in a quavering voice whether he was going to be all right. He died a few
moments later. He had been riding in the undercarriage and had been hit by
the edge of the platform as the train came into the station. During the
famine, such accidents became common.
That year, 1996, the culture of our country changed noticeably. In the past,
when visiting someone’s home, I’d be welcomed by the greeting: ‘Have
you had rice?’ This was a gesture of hospitality, meaning: ‘Have you eaten?
Join us.’ But with the food shortages, how could anyone give the old
greeting with sincerity? It wasn’t long before it was replaced by: ‘You’ve
eaten, haven’t you?’ Many were too embarrassed or proud to admit they
were starving and wouldn’t take food even when it was offered. When Min-
ho’s young accordion teacher starting coming to the house, my mother
would ask if he’d like lunch. She could afford to maintain the old etiquette.
‘I’ve eaten, thank you,’ he would say, politely bowing his head, ‘but a
bowl of water with some doenjang would be nice.’
My mother obliged, but thought this odd. Nobody drank water with the
soybean paste used to flavour soup. Each time, the teacher gulped it down
in seconds. After a month of lessons, he stopped coming. My mother heard
he had starved to death. She was stunned. Why hadn’t he accepted her
offers of food? He’d valued his dignity more than his own life.
One afternoon that summer Min-ho and I came home after school to find
a thief in the house. He was a scrawny soldier with pitted skin, no older
than about nineteen. He was trying to carry the Toshiba television set, but
his arms weren’t strong enough. Soldiers had been robbing houses all over

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Hyesan, and they were usually turned over to the police. But my mother just
gave him some money and told him to buy food.
As the famine deepened, rumours of cannibalism spread throughout the
province. The government issued stark warnings about it. We heard that an
elderly man had killed a child and put the cooked meat into soup. He sold it
at a market canteen, where it was eaten by eager diners. The crime was
discovered when police found the bones. I thought these killers must have
been psychopaths, and that ordinary people would never resort to such
crimes. Now I am not so sure. Having spoken to many who came close to
death during that time I realize that starvation can drive people to insanity.
It can cause parents to take food from their own children, people to eat the
corpses of the dead, and the gentlest neighbour to commit murder.
Across the country the travel permit system had collapsed, but entry into
Pyongyang was still tightly controlled. That summer I received permission
to visit Uncle Money and his wife. It was my second long train journey in
the worst imaginable year to travel.
I was nervous about the visit. In fact I was braced for scenes similar to
those I’d seen in Hamhung. But to my great surprise, all was normal in the
Capital of the Revolution: well-fed people were going about their business;
the vast boulevards had electrified streetcars, and traffic; I saw no beggars
or hordes of vagrant children. The power stations were puffing smoke. The
loyal class who lived here seemed insulated from what was happening in
the rest of the country.
After I’d laid flowers and bowed at the feet of the bronze colossus of
Kim Il-sung on Mansu Hill, so large it made me feel like an ant, my uncle
and aunt took me out to Ok-liu-gwon, the most famous noodle restaurant in
the country. The place was packed out, with people waiting for a table.
Clearly, no one was going hungry. My uncle had power and influence. We
went straight to the front of the line and were admitted without having to
wait.
Uncle Money was a large man with a large personality, which seemed
fitting to his position as the wealthiest member of the family. His house had
its own sauna. I’d never seen such a luxury in my life. I counted five
televisions. Some were still in the boxes, to give as bribes. At dinner in his

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dining room one evening I was served Western food for the first time –
some kind of pasta dish.
It didn’t look like real food.
Uncle Money laughed at the expression on my face. ‘Most people will
never have a chance to eat this in their lives. If you don’t try it now maybe
you never will.’
Uncle Money’s wife wore such fashionable clothes she did not look
North Korean. She was a manager at Department Store Number One in
Pyongyang, which was regularly featured on the television news, showing
shelves laden with colourful produce. But when I visited her there she told
me that the goods on the shelves were for display only, to impress foreign
visitors. The store had no stock to replace what was sold.
I told her I’d hoped to buy a present for my mother, like the small
makeup set I’d seen beneath a glass counter.
My aunt winked at the shop assistant, who took it out and gave it to me.
As I travelled back to Hyesan, I thought the whole visit had seemed like a
strange dream. I could not believe Pyongyang was in the same country
where people were dying on the sidewalks in Hamhung, and vagrant
children swarmed in the markets of Hyesan. In the end, though, not even
Pyongyang stayed immune. The regime could not prevent famine coming to
the heart of its own power base.

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Chapter 17