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

Lost in Laos
I screwed my eyes shut. This can’t be happening to me.
‘Which police? Chinese?’
‘Laotian.’
‘Where? When?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know?’ My voice rose to a shout. ‘Where are they and what
are you going to do?’
‘There’s nothing I can do, little Miss,’ he hissed. ‘They were stopped at a
checkpoint by police. We could have rescued them. You didn’t give me
enough money.’
‘I gave you 50 per cent – as agreed.’
‘We were working with police and one of the guards at the checkpoint. If
you’d given me a hundred per cent of the money, I could have paid to have
them let go. But you didn’t.’
With a tremendous effort I kept my anger under control. Anger would
only cloud my thinking, and I had to think.
‘All right. OK. Where do you think they are?’
‘Probably Luang Namtha.’
‘Luang Namtha?’ Where the hell is that?
‘The first town, about twenty-five miles from the border.’
I ended the call, and covered my face with my hands.
Until two days ago, I hadn’t known Laos existed. I had never even heard
the name. Or maybe I had forgotten it. Laos was one of North Korea’s few
remaining allies in the world, and still communist. The Lao People’s
Democratic Republic, to give it its official name, would have congratulated
the Dear Leader on his birthday each year, and this would have been

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reported in the media. Pyongyang makes headline news of diplomatic
pleasantries – the regime’s attempts to suggest that the ruling Kim is loved
and admired the world over.
Laos. I couldn’t even picture it. Just a dark place on the far edge of China
that had swallowed my mother and my brother.
The taxi pulled over. There were people everywhere wheeling luggage.
All the strength had gone out of me. My voice sounded wan. ‘Please take
me to the coach station.’
‘You said the airport,’ the driver exclaimed.
‘I know. But now I’m going to Laos.’
He turned and peered at me as if I needed a psychiatric ward, not a coach
station.
‘All right,’ he said slowly, starting the car again.
I called Min-ho but his battery had died or the phone had been taken
from him. How can I contact them now? Somehow, I would have to find
him and my mother by myself.
I felt so weak when I reached the coach station I could barely lift my
backpack. I removed all the cold-weather clothing and gave it to the taxi
driver. He was grateful, and again looked at me oddly.
My journey ended at noon the next day, at the last station in China. My
mother and brother had been here twenty-four hours earlier. During the long
ride, and with some dinner, my energy had started to revive. I asked for
directions, hoisted my backpack, and walked toward Laos.
The Chinese passport control was in a modern building surrounded by
low hills dotted with tropical trees. The sky was a beautiful, washed blue, I
noticed, clearer than anything I’d seen in Shanghai or Seoul. Vast white
clouds sailed over the hills.
About twenty people were waiting in line to have their passports
stamped. A few were backpacking white Westerners in high spirits. I looked
at them with envy. They were inhabitants of that other universe, governed
by laws, human rights and welcoming tourist boards. It was oblivious to the
one I inhabited, of secret police, assumed IDs and low-life brokers.
Standing apart from them was one white man no one could miss. He was
in his early fifties, strongly built, and extremely tall, looming head and
shoulders above everyone else. He had that pinkish skin and sandy-coloured

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hair that North Korean kids would gawp at on the rare occasions they saw a
Westerner. He and I seemed to be the only lone travellers.
We crossed the border. The contrast with modern China was stark. The
Laotian passport office was a squat, mud-colour building. It was clear at
once that this was a poor country. We filed on board a sputtering twenty-
seater bus. The tall white man got on also, folding his legs awkwardly
between the wooden seats.
Bouncing through the hilly countryside on this boneshaker, I stared again
at the clean turquoise sky. It made the vegetation seem extravagantly lush –
hardwood trees and rubber trees, by the look of them, and fields of sugar
cane, and wild flowers everywhere, enormous purple hibiscus and golden
jasmine hanging down from the canopies of the trees. In a more relaxed
frame of mind I probably wouldn’t have noticed such things so keenly, but
in my anguish I was seeing all this as beauty denied to me. I would not have
any chance to enjoy it.
Laos is one of those big, small countries, like Korea. It’s a little larger
than both Koreas combined, and much longer than it is wide, about 650
miles from north to south. It is landlocked and poor and surrounded by
better-known countries – China, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma and Cambodia.
I had entered the country at its northernmost tip and was heading south.
The journey to Luang Namtha took an hour. When I got off, the tall white
man and three or four others got off too.
Luang Namtha is the capital of the province of the same name. There
were many Westerners about, wandering the markets, and lounging on
hostel verandas. Apart from the police station and one or two guesthouses
the town was made up of single-storey houses, with telegraph wires
crisscrossing every street. I had to find a local who could help me, so I
asked directions for the local Chinese restaurant. The owner was a tubby,
friendly family man, who reminded me a little of Mr Ahn.
‘I’m looking for two North Koreans who were arrested yesterday,’ I said
in Mandarin. I gave him a big smile. ‘If you can help, I’ll eat my meals here
every evening.’
He laughed. ‘Well, start at the immigration office,’ he said. ‘There’s a
holding cell there.’ Straight away he offered to take me there on the back of
his scooter. His name was Yin, he said.

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The immigration office was closed and looked deserted. I stood outside,
tilted my head back, and shouted: ‘Omma-ya! Min-ho-ya! Na-ya! (Mother!
Min-ho! It’s me!)’ Nothing.
‘Let’s try the police station,’ the man said.
The police shook their heads when we asked them. No North Koreans
here, they said. Our last stop was the prison, some distance away. The
police told us this place was for real criminals. I didn’t expect my family to
be here. It was a compound of single-storey buildings surrounded by a high
mud wall. Again, I yelled as loudly as I could: ‘Omma-ya! Min-ho-ya! Na-
ya!’
Outside the main gate, off-duty guards were sitting around with some
local girls. They had taken their uniform jackets off and were drinking beer
from bottles and laughing. ‘No North Koreans here,’ they said, ‘just drug
dealers and murderers.’ They added that this was not the sort of place
someone like me should be visiting.
Darkness falls fast in the subtropics. Yin offered to take me to my
guesthouse, saying it was dangerous for me to walk alone in the street. I
thanked him and told him I’d be fine. I was clinging to any hope now. I
thought there might be a chance that my mother and Min-ho had escaped
and were wandering around. As I approached the lights of the town, the
traffic increased – tuk-tuks slowed down beside me; the drivers shouted and
whistled at me in Lao and stirred up clouds of dust and exhaust fumes. I
walked around for hours, looking at every face I saw.
It was a Friday night. My search could not resume until after the
weekend. I had no choice but to stay in town.
On Monday morning I went straight to the immigration office. A group
of men in dark green uniforms were sitting about on the benches outside.
The place seemed sunk in torpor. I sensed straight away that nothing here
happened quickly. They eyed me with suspicion. I introduced myself as a
volunteer from South Korea who’d come to Laos to help two North
Koreans. I showed them my passport and the visa.
None of them stirred. I thought no one had understood me.
Then one said: ‘Yes,’ in Mandarin, and swatted a fly from his face. ‘Two
North Koreans were caught at the border and brought here.’

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Chapter 47