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

Career woman
About a week after receiving my ID, I found a job that paid almost four
times what I earned as a waitress. I became an interpreter and secretary at a
South Korean tech company that made compact discs and LED lights. Its
office was in Koreatown. My boss was one of the South Korean directors,
and part of my role was to accompany him on visits to clients and
manufacturing plants. I noticed that the Chinese looked up to South
Koreans and addressed them respectfully. I had usually known them to
scowl down their noses at North Koreans.
Everything had happened so fast. Overnight I had gone from waiting
tables to sitting in boardrooms, interpreting in negotiations, learning how a
modern company operated, and the culture in which business was
conducted. I was meeting clients and buyers from Taiwan and Malaysia,
and mingling socially with South Korean co-workers. The friends I’d made
while waitressing knew me as In-hee. In my new job I used the name on my
ID card and documentation, Sun-ja. I would have to take care that these two
worlds never collided.
The company’s products were manufactured in a plant that was modern
even by Shanghai standards. The process was kept entirely dust-free. To
enter we passed through a special machine that blew contaminates from our
clothing.
The South Koreans treated me well. I could not bear to imagine their
reaction if they’d known I’d grown up in the bosom of their archenemy. At
times this felt surreal. We were all Koreans, sharing the same language and
culture, yet we were technically at war.

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I began to relax and enjoy life a little. I felt financially more secure, though
there was still the enormous debt to my uncle, which I repaid in monthly
instalments. I started to dress as nicely as I could afford. I noticed how the
businesswomen I saw along Nanjing Lu judged their clothes well, and
carried stylish accessories. I took driving lessons and got my driver’s
licence. The rent on our apartment became too high for Yee-un. She moved
out, and I kept the place to myself.
I felt more confident. I no longer lived in the shadows.
The cloud in my sky was the absence of my family. It was now more than
five years since that last call from my mother. That ache of longing I felt
had not lessened. After the ordeal with the gang I was frightened of
returning to Changbai. I had no plan. A sense of profound resignation crept
over me. The path that led back to my mother and brother was becoming
darker and fainter with time. I wasn’t even sure I’d find it again. I was
twenty-two years old. If I’d stayed in North Korea I’d have graduated from
Hyesan Economics School by now. I’d probably have a government job in
Hyesan, like my mother, a house on the river, and a network of trading
contacts shared with my uncles and aunts. Would that have been so bad?
I pushed such thoughts from my mind.
I now felt safe enough with my new identity to eat at two restaurants in
Shanghai that were owned and operated by North Korea. One of them, near
my home in Koreatown, was the Morangak; the other, in the downtown
Jianguo Hotel, was the Pyongyang Okryugwan, where I went often. These
restaurants were foreign-currency earners for whichever bureau of the Party
in Pyongyang operated them. The waitresses were selected for their loyalty,
their songbun and their beauty. Because they were popular with South
Koreans, I suspected also that they provided cover for Bowibu agents
spying on overseas Korean communities.
The first time I walked into the Pyongyang Okryugwan and sat down I
felt I was back home. The waitresses spoke Korean with the strong accents
familiar to me, and wore their hair in the conservative fashion of North
Korea, almost unchanged since the time of the Korean War. They were
polite but reserved when engaging with customers. They knew they were
each being watched by their co-workers. They were forbidden to form

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friendships with any customer. I guessed that at night they were confined to
a dorm and not permitted to go out into the city.
One particular waitress often served me and, against the rules, became
quite familiar with me. She was from Pyongyang. One time she astonished
me by saying that she hoped to have a boob job done in Shanghai.
‘You can leave here to have it done?’
She lowered her voice. ‘I haven’t asked yet, but it might be possible.’
That surprised me. Some rules could be bent, but I didn’t think that was
one of them. As soon as she mentioned it I found myself searching her face.
‘You’ve had your eyes done,’ I exclaimed.
She had double eyelids, a popular procedure among Korean women to
make their eyes appear larger.
‘Yes.’
‘Here?’
‘In Pyongyang.’
I almost dropped my glass. The elite in Pyongyang had access to beauty
surgery? It seemed almost obscene given the poverty and hunger of most of
the population.
Clients visiting my company from South Korea would often ask to be
taken to these restaurants, and the behaviour of some of the men made me
uncomfortable. There is an old Korean proverb, ‘south man, north woman’,
meaning that the most handsome men are in the south of the peninsula, the
prettiest women in the north. The proverb seemed borne out by the beauty
of the waitresses, whose sheer unavailability turned some of the men into
romantic idiots. They would become besotted, returning night after night to
see a girl they had fallen for. I witnessed some of them handing over small,
elegant gift boxes of jewellery from the luxury-brand stores. To my great
surprise the waitresses would smile coyly and accept the gifts. I figured that
the restaurant allowed this and confiscated them on behalf of the North
Korean state. Not only were these men unwittingly donating valuables to
Pyongyang, they were placing the women in a compromising and
potentially dangerous situation. I don’t think any of them understood the
risk for a North Korean woman should they actually get what they wanted.
But one of them was to find out.
One evening in my second year in Shanghai I arrived at the Pyongyang
Okryugwan to find it closed. The next morning the gossip was all over my

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office – a waitress had run off with one of my company’s South Korean
clients, a friend of my boss the director. Rather unwisely, the man had
hidden the woman in his apartment. The North Koreans reported the
disappearance to the Shanghai police, who questioned the staff, quickly
identified the customer, and went straight to the man’s apartment. Both
were deported, he to South Korea and she to North Korea and her fate. I
never found out for sure who the waitress was, but I had an awful
intimation it was the friendly one who’d wanted a boob job. Two months
later the restaurant reopened with completely new staff.
By my second year in Shanghai I sometimes forgot that I was North
Korean. My friends were all Korean-Chinese or South Koreans from my
workplace. I socialized with them as one of them. I spoke fluent Mandarin
with a Korean-Chinese accent. My ID documents stated that I was Korean-
Chinese. I was enjoying my work and felt that I was finally on life’s upward
curve. No one in the city knew my true identity.
I was jolted out of this insouciance by an unexpected encounter.
It was during my lunch hour on a busy street in Koreatown. A loud,
man’s voice behind me said: ‘Soon-hyang?’
I froze. But then I could not stop myself from turning around to see who
it was. I recognized him at once, the friendly businessman from the
restaurant in Shenyang who’d put me in touch with the Chinese broker,
someone who probably knew full well I was from North Korea. He was
smiling, waiting for me to acknowledge him.
‘You’ve mistaken me for someone else,’ I said and walked away.
Fear breathed on me like a draught of night air. I took this as a warning
not to get complacent. I was not so safe from my past. It could catch up
with me at any time. For days after that I avoided Koreatown at lunchtime.
Just a few weeks later, I was recognized again, in a much more serious
incident.
It was at a house party I was taken to by a colleague from work. She told
me it was the birthday celebration of a charming man from Shenyang whom
she knew only vaguely. When we arrived at this man’s apartment, the music
was booming and the drinks flowing. I was led across a crowded room to
meet the host. When I saw him I blanched. I knew him. He owned a
restaurant in Shenyang. I’d met him several times and had even been on

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nights out with him and others. I racked my brains for an excuse to turn and
leave. But it was too late. He’d seen me.
‘Soon-hyang,’ he said. His eyes were wide with astonishment. ‘I don’t
believe it.’ He was genuinely happy to see me. ‘What are you doing here?’
My work colleague gave me a puzzled look.
‘Soon-hyang? No,’ I said, laughing. ‘That’s not me, but it’s lovely to
meet you.’
He thought I was pulling his leg. It took me several minutes to persuade
him that I was not this person Soon-hyang. My work colleague was
listening to all of this. If anyone at my workplace realized I was not who I
said I was, questions would be asked, and my documents examined.
Eventually he scratched his head and said over the noise: ‘Well, I have to
tell you that I know a girl in Shenyang who looks exactly like you. You
must have a twin. I’m sure this is a secret only your mother knows.’
I had just about got away with it, when a fresh group of guests arrived.
‘Soon-hyang!’
A woman was waving at me from across the room, and pushing her way
through toward me.
It was a strange feeling, being exposed so publicly. A kind of exhilaration
mixed with a sickening contraction in my stomach.
‘Soon-hyang! I don’t believe it, it’s been a long time.’ She hugged me,
right in front of the man I’d just lied to. ‘I didn’t know you were coming.’
She was another acquaintance from the restaurant trade in Shenyang, a
woman I’d met many times. There was no possible way I could repeat the
lie to someone who so obviously knew who I was. Over her shoulder my
eyes searched for my work colleague. She was caught up in a conversation
with someone and had not heard this drama over the noise of the party. But
the man from Shenyang, whose party this was, was staring at me in
bewilderment. His eyes were saying, Why would you tell a lie like that?
I had to say something to him.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said with my head lowered. ‘Please don’t tell anyone.’
I wished I could tell him why I had lied about my name, but I couldn’t. I
went home filled with self-loathing. Wherever I go, even in a country as big