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

The wedding trap
Geun-soo, my aunt explained, was the son of her good friend Mrs Jang, a
member of her Korean-Chinese social circle. He was gangly and so
nondescript I’m not sure I could have picked him out in a crowd. He had
the sallow complexion of someone whose pursuits all took place indoors,
and an adolescent sheen to his skin.
There was an awkward pause after the introductions were made. I looked
at my aunt. To my mortification, she said: ‘Now, why don’t you youngsters
go out for an ice cream?’
In an ice-cream parlour near my uncle and aunt’s apartment, I saw that
Geun-soo was even more uncomfortable than I was. To put him at his ease I
suggested we share a tub of my favourite, the heavenly purple taro. He
seemed to relax a little. He was twenty-two, he told me, and had two older
sisters. He’d graduated from a university in Shenyang, but seemed in no
hurry to find a job. His family ran a successful chain of restaurants, and had
money. He spoke with great deference about his widowed mother, more
than I would have expected from a young man. It made him seem filial and
kind, which I liked. He admitted that he enjoyed nights out drinking with
his old college buddies. I thought he must be daring and fun. I knew no
young people in North Korea who drank.
This was the first of many dates with Geun-soo. Over the following
months he would take me for walks in Beiling Park during the day, or to
noodle bars, or out to a noraebang bar, the Korean version of karaoke, in
the evenings. He was harmless, but I soon began to find him glib and
uninspiring. I felt no emotional bond.
No matter how hard I challenged him to an interesting discussion, even to
the point of provoking him, he seemed unable to offer a firm opinion on

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anything. We often spent our dates in silence. I got the feeling that when he
wasn’t seeing me he spent his days playing video games. He also had such a
devotion to his mother that I began to dread meeting her. He seemed
content for her to decide everything for him.
Geun-soo knew that I was North Korean, but believed my name was
Chae Mi-ran. I saw no reason to reveal my real name to him. In fact I was
getting so used to being called Mi-ran it felt as if I was shedding the name
Min-young like a former skin. I went along with the dating and would
occasionally hold Geun-soo’s hand. The relationship wasn’t serious; it was
pleasing my uncle and aunt; it helped to keep me distracted as the Western
New Year passed again, then my nineteenth birthday, then the Chinese New
Year, and to ward off miserable thoughts that it was now well over a year
since I’d last seen my mother and Min-ho.
I should have seen the warning lights when Geun-soo began urging me to
improve my Mandarin and correcting me on points of etiquette.
When he took me to meet his mother, I was made to feel the significance
of the occasion. The family apartment was far larger and more luxurious
than my uncle and aunt’s. Mrs Jang greeted me in the hallway. I had never
seen such a rich lady. She was elegant and very slim. Her hair was pulled
back in a mother-of-pearl barrette; she wore an Hermès scarf around her
neck, and beautiful Japanese pearl jewellery.
‘Welcome, Mi-ran,’ she said. Her smile was tepid.
I could guess what she was thinking. A North Korean girl was beneath
her son. Yet I also knew from Geun-soo that she did not approve of him
dating Chinese girls, a cultural prejudice against the Chinese shared by
many ethnic Koreans.
Mrs Jang was a pragmatic, calculating woman: she was willing to put her
misgivings aside because she thought a North Korean girl would make a
compliant and obedient wife. After all, I was an illegal, and hardly in any
position to complain. She also knew that I was raised in a culture that
revered elders. I would be submissive to her, my mother-in-law. Although
her conversation was excruciatingly polite I watched her looking me up and
down as if she were inspecting livestock.
Over the next few months, whenever I was taken to Geun-soo’s home,
Mrs Jang began to talk about my future with her son. The family would
open a new restaurant for him and me to manage together, she said. Not

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long after that, without anyone asking me what I felt about the idea, she was
mentioning marriage. Her son was a little too young to marry, she told me,
but out of consideration towards her he wanted to provide her with
grandchildren as soon as possible.
I began to feel caught in a gathering wave. Geun-soo had not proposed
marriage to me. In fact, I wasn’t even sure how he felt about me. I found it
difficult to picture him getting aroused and passionate about anything.
Perhaps he became livelier when he went out drinking, but it was clear that
he was keeping that side of his life separate from me. He was passive in all
his mother’s schemes.
My dates with him started to become stifling. He kept repeating the need
to improve my Mandarin, and would correct me often. His main concern
seemed to be that I should not embarrass his family by making mistakes
when I spoke. I felt as if I had been enrolled in a training programme to join
his family, without once having given my assent. My situation was
becoming deeply awkward because my uncle and aunt saw marriage as the
solution to my problem, and to theirs. My five-day visit had already turned
into a stay of nearly two years.
One afternoon toward the end of 1999, when I was at Geun-soo’s home,
Mrs Jang came home laden with department-store shopping bags and
mentioned, quite casually, that she had given my birth details to a fortune-
teller, who had recommended a propitious date in the summer for our
wedding. And she had found a home for us in a nearby apartment, she said.
She would soon start choosing our furniture.
That evening, lying on my bed, I was forced to examine – really, truly
examine – whether I had any options. I tried to think calculatingly, like Mrs
Jang. Regardless of my feelings about the feckless Geun-soo, I asked
myself whether this marriage would help me, or trap me. I knew I had a
desire to be a businesswoman, and to travel. But if I were to marry now and
have children, I’d have to put any career on hold. On the other hand, my
position was precarious. I could not stay at my uncle and aunt’s much
longer. I had no prospects, least of all of becoming a businesswoman. The
alternative was a life on the run.