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

They’re watching to see if I’m lying. Don’t show them. Speak clearly and
with confidence. Nervousness began to show in my fingers. I was clutching
my hands together in my lap. They would notice that. I stilled my fingers.

---

Back to your parents. What is your father’s date of birth? Your mother’s?
And then, casually, as if asking the day of the week: ‘When is Kim Il-sung’s
birthday?’
April 15th. A question any North Korean could answer without thinking.
‘I have absolutely no idea,’ I said.
The questioning moved on to a new phase. Inspector Xu asked me when
I would get married. I thought there might be a trap in the question.
‘Not for ten years yet,’ I said. My laugh sounded fake. ‘I’m too young.’
The police standing behind me observed the whole scene in silence. No
one came into the room; no one left.
Inspector Xu was watching me carefully, twirling his pen in his fingers.
Next he slid a copy of the Shenyang Daily across the desk, and told me to
start reading the first article. It was about a traffic pile-up on the Shen-Da
Expressway.
By this time, my Mandarin sounded natural. I was fairly sure that I spoke
without a trace of a North Korean accent.
After a minute or two, he said: ‘Enough.’
I noticed that so far nobody had entered any of the answers I had given
into the computer on the desk.
They’ve got doubts. They think I may be Chinese.
Next was a written test in Chinese. One of the interrogators dictated from
the newspaper, and stood behind me as I wrote down his words.
When I’d done that one of them said: ‘Where’s your ID?’
‘It’s at home.’ When Geun-soo had shown me the ID card his family had
made for me, I had memorized the ID number. I gave it to them. The ID
system was still paper-based. Checking the number would require a call to
another station, which would have to retrieve a file.
If they think I’m North Korean, they’ll start checking properly now. Then
that’s the end.
Instead, the atmosphere in the room lightened. The suspicion was
draining from their faces. Inspector Xu smiled for the first time. ‘So, when
are you really getting married?’
I laughed again. ‘When the best offer comes along.’
One of the interrogators flipped his notebook shut. I heard him say to the
other: ‘False report.’
So, someone had reported me.

---

Inspector Xu stood up. ‘You’re free to go,’ he said with a sweep of his
arm toward the door. ‘Sorry to take up your time. We had to follow
procedure.’
I walked to the door in a daze, under the eyes of all the police in the
room, and just like in a dream, I expected to hear: ‘Ah, one last thing …’
The door closed behind me. I rushed down the stairs, across the reception
area, and past the holding cell. I could not bear to look at the people locked
in there.
I walked out into the sunshine and the bustle of the street. Once I was
several blocks away from the station I slowed and stopped for a minute on
the sidewalk. It was a clear, warm morning. Business was carrying on as
usual in Xita. Pedestrians flowed around me. I looked up. An airplane was
tracing its way across the blue, like a tiny silver minnow.
Thank you, my dear father, with all my heart. Thank you for making me
study Chinese for all that time at school.
Chinese characters take years to master. That final test had dispelled the
last doubts in their minds.
My father had saved me.
I knew now that time was running out for me in Shenyang. I could not stay.
It was too dangerous. Until I figured out where to go, I would hide. I would
move out of the dorm. But to where? Nowhere in the city was safe from the
police.
As I walked my relief began turning into depression. I was already hiding
beneath so many lies that I hardly knew who I was any more. I was
becoming a non-person. The experience I’d just had was deeply
dehumanizing. A police bureaucracy, with its correct procedures and trick
questions, and inspectors in pressed shirts, thought it reasonable and right to
send people from my country to a Bowibu torture cell for beatings with wire
cables.
I clasped my hands to my head. How could I have been so stupid, telling