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

Under a vast Asian sky
My aunt had wanted me to bring my mother to her apartment for a day or
two to acclimatize, but we hadn’t time to waste in Shenyang. I had thought
carefully about the next section of the journey. A flight to Kunming would
have been fastest, taking just six hours, but it was out of the question. The
airport authorities would certainly scrutinize our IDs. The train would take
two full days, but ID checks on trains were even more worrying because
they would be face to face. The least perilous option was going by road. It
would be gruelling. With all the transfers and waiting times, I figured the
journey would take a week. And although there would be more police
checks, the driver usually handed all the IDs to the policeman who’d check
each with a handheld machine, but wouldn’t match them against the
owners.
We braced ourselves again. We were going to cross eight vast provinces
of China by coach.
If we encountered any more problems like the one on leaving Changbai,
we would pretend that my mother and Min-ho were deaf mutes and that I
was their guide. It was a desperate, crazy, ridiculous idea, but it was the
only one I had.
The next leg of the journey was to Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan
Province, on the Yellow River, almost 900 miles southwest of Shenyang. It
would be an eighteen-hour ride. We reached the first police checkpoint one
hour into the journey. As I had hoped, the conductor collected all IDs and
handed them to the policeman, who took them away for inspection. In our
ordeal on the coach at Changbai I thought I’d seen the soldier glance down
to the back as he’d entered. He had probably spotted Min-ho straight away.
This time, I had opted to sit up front in the most conspicuous place. We’d

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look as if we had nothing to hide. Again, we took seats on the second level,
with Min-ho at a window, me in the middle and, as the seat beside me was
taken, my mother behind me, also in the middle section. Ten minutes later,
the policeman returned and handed the cards back to the driver.
The moment the automatic door closed, we breathed again. We were in
the clear.
The three of us began talking freely. We felt rested. We’d had a good
night’s sleep at a hotel in Shenyang. So we chatted, and ate snacks. The
coach was full. By this time, if they didn’t think we were Korean-Chinese,
every passenger would have guessed we either came from a minority ethnic
group, or we were foreigners. The coach stopped twice at restaurants on the
expressway and the passengers filed off to stretch their legs, use the
washrooms, and eat.
Seven or eight hours later, the coach stopped again. It was in the early
hours of the morning and we were somewhere near Beijing. Up ahead, blue
lights revolved and flashed on the top of a police jeep. Again, the conductor
collected our passes, handed them to a policeman. Ten minutes later, the
policeman climbed in. He had the IDs in his hand. He told the driver to pull
off the road, and turn the interior lights on.
I caught a draught from the air con overhead and felt beads of cold sweat
on my brow.
The policeman looked at the top card, called out a name, and a passenger
lumbered down the aisle to claim it.
‘Name?’ he said. ‘Your residence? Where’re you going? What’s the
purpose of your visit?’ After the passenger had answered the last question,
the policeman handed over the ID.
The full horror of what was happening sank in.
He’s looking for illegals who can’t speak Mandarin.
I felt exposed and helpless. Our high-spirited conversations in Korean
had given us away. A muscle began to spasm just beneath my eye. I had to
grimace to make it stop.