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

‘I am prepared to die’
That September 2010, I was accepted by the Hankuk University of Foreign
Studies for an undergraduate course in Chinese and English that would start
in spring the following year. Min-ho had an apartment of his own. My
mother looked for work so that she could help support me. Her previously
privileged position of authority in North Korea – at the government bureau
in Hyesan – counted for nothing in Seoul, so she took a job as a cleaner in a
small motel where rooms were charged by the hour. She received board and
lodging at the motel, with one day off per month. She was getting old, and
wasn’t used to the hard physical labour. Within a few weeks in the job, she
was changing sheets on a bed when she slipped a disc in her spine,
collapsed in agony, and soon after had to have surgery.
My mother’s brave attempt at a new life in the South began to falter. It
didn’t help that she saw Min-ho struggling, too.
Among the 27,000 North Koreans in the South, two kinds of life have
been left behind: the wretched life of persecution and hunger, and the
manageable life that was not so bad. People in the first group adjust rapidly.
Their new life, however challenging, could only be better. For the people in
the second group, life in the South is far more daunting. It often makes
them yearn for the simpler, more ordered existence they left behind, where
big decisions are taken for them by the state, and where life is not a fierce
competition.
My mother, who had arranged the paperwork for her own death before
leaving Hyesan, had also left money behind with Aunt Tall, on the
understanding that she might return. She began to miss her brothers and
sisters so much that she would weep for them every night after work. She
started endlessly recalling tales of the long-ago antics of Uncle Opium, or

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the hardships of Uncle Poor, or the business tricks of Aunt Pretty. Then,
finally, one night, she came out with it.
‘I want to go home.’
‘Omma.’ It was what I’d dreaded to hear. ‘You can’t. You know what
they’ll do.’
‘I am prepared to die,’ she said, stoically gazing into space. ‘I want to die
at home.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘I never see the sun,’ she said. It was winter, and dark when she got up
for work, and dark when she finished. ‘Did I come here for this? There’s no
meaning here, no future.’
We had this conversation in one form or another for the next few months.
She never once accused me of doing the wrong thing by persuading her to
defect, but I started to feel that I had made a terrible mistake. I had taken an
enormous risk with our lives, and at a great cost in effort and money, so that
we could be together. But despite my best intentions, my mother was now
miserable. She was caught in a dreadful dilemma: she longed to go home,
but then she would be separated from me once more.
At first I encouraged her to be patient. It wasn’t easy to adjust to life
here, I said, but she would succeed. It would just take a little time. But
when she started saying that she wanted to die in the North, I knew I could
not ignore her.
With a heavy heart I told her I would help her get back there safely, if
that’s what she truly wanted. Over several weeks, I weighed the risks. It
was unbelievable that after all we’d been through I was now trying to figure
a way of guiding my mother all the way back to North Korea. But if her
mind was made up, what choice did I have?
The return trip to the North would not be nearly as arduous as our long
journey to Seoul. We could get back to the border at Changbai easily, as
South Korean tourists, and I could hire a broker to take her over the river.
But she had to be sure – really, absolutely sure – that she could cover her
tracks when she was back there.
I lay on my bed, unable to sleep, staring at the beige blanket of the sky
over Seoul. Am I really going to do this?
‘Omma,’ I said the next day. ‘If they find out you’ve been in China,
they’ll arrest you and beat you. If they find out you’ve been here …’ I

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didn’t need to say anything. We both knew what her fate would be. I looked
her in the eye. ‘I need to know your plan will work.’
‘It will work,’ she said. ‘I know exactly who to bribe at the records office
and he’s all right. Then your Aunt Pretty will help me move to a new city.
No one will ever know I’ve been away.’
That seemed to decide it. Min-ho was very unhappy about this. He
missed home as much as our omma did. He was having adjustment
problems of his own, and didn’t want to lose his mother, too.
Over the next week I began to plan her journey. But when I tried
discussing dates and practicalities with her she became reticent, distracted,
as if she were preoccupied with some inner turmoil.
At the same time, I was trying to convince Min-ho to try for university.
He was restless and disaffected. My greatest fear was that he’d turn to
crime. Smuggling in North Korea may have been illegal, but the police
gave it a nod and a wink, and, informally, it was a socially accepted form of
business. But in South Korea, society would not tolerate it. The idea of
college terrified Min-ho. He looked brought down whenever I mentioned it.
His worthless North Korean education had put him years behind other
students his age. I told him to take a year to think about it.
He had already found a job on a construction site, which he tackled with
his usual doggedness, working so hard that he was promoted to team leader
within weeks. After six months, however, he quit, telling me that if he
didn’t do something now, he’d spend the rest of his life on building sites.
He would try for university. I was enormously relieved and pleased by this,
and it was quickly followed by more good news.
‘I won’t go back,’ my mother said abruptly one morning.
I’d guessed she’d been having doubts, and had stayed quiet hoping
they’d take root.
‘I’d miss you and your brother too much,’ she said. ‘I’d be able to see
your aunts and uncles and your cousins, but I’d miss you so much that I’d
be in double agony.’ She’d been staying at my apartment that night. Later,
when she had gone to work, I cried miserably. My relief was marred by the
fact that I’d condemned her to experience loss and regret for the rest of her
life. I was acutely aware that I had done this to her.

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By the spring of 2011, it had been nine months since my mother and Min-
ho had been living freely in Seoul. Just when I thought both of them were
beginning to settle down and adjust to the reality of their new lives, another
drama occurred that almost tore us apart all over again.
Min-ho had re-established contact with Yoon-ji, his fiancée, and called
her regularly. He wasn’t giving up on her, and over many conversations had
convinced her to join him in the South, making all the complex preparations
with brokers to get her across China. I did not deter him. He knew the
dangers. But he had his heart set.
He applied for his passport, got a Chinese visa, and went to get her, but
by the time he reached Changbai, she had changed her mind. She didn’t
want to create problems for her parents, she said.
A few days later, on my first day at university, he called me. It was a
beautiful spring day. I was crossing the campus, looking at a map to locate
my faculty building.
‘I’m in Changbai.’ His voice rang strange, as if we were in a dream. ‘I’m
looking across at Hyesan right now.’
‘You shouldn’t go that close. Someone might recognize you.’
‘Nuna, I’m very sorry to tell you this. I’m going back.’
‘That’s not funny.’
‘I cut my hair today, dumped my jeans, and bought trousers that look
North Korean.’
My blood froze. ‘What? When?’
‘Now. I’m crossing back now.’
I screamed. ‘Min-ho, you can’t.’
‘Yoon-ji’s mother will take care of everything. It’ll be like I never left.’
I tried to focus. I had to stop him. I felt a horrible tension building in my
head.
‘Min-ho, listen to me. Once you go over, you can never come back.
Think about this.’
‘I have no future in Seoul,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if I can handle college.
In Hyesan, I can marry Yoon-ji. I know what to do to make money.’
‘You’re not sure, because you’ve just arrived and it’s still scary. But after
a year or two, you’ll be fine.’
He fell silent and I could hear him breathing deeply, that trick he had
when he wished something wasn’t happening.

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‘Min-ho. You’re my brother. I can’t lose you again now. You’re the man
in our family. Think of Omma. What will this do to her? We’ve had a hell
of a journey, and we’re still not finished. It’s hard, but we can overcome
this. You and me, we’re young. We can do anything. Remember how hard it
was to get here? But we did it. You want to throw that away?’
‘What about Yoon-ji?’ His voice was faint and so sad.
It was the dilemma all three of us had. Every choice we made cut us off
permanently from someone we loved.
‘She’ll be all right.’ I came in hard, addressing what I guessed lay behind
this – his underlying fear that he would never find a woman in South Korea
interested in him. ‘There are many girls here. I have friends. I’ll start
introducing you. They know you’re my hero.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Or we can go to America together. We can get our degrees and go to
America. There’s uncertainty in Korea, but America’s the country of
freedom.’
‘America? Why the hell would I go there?’
‘We can do anything, Min-ho. We can go anywhere. We are free people.
We only have to set our heart on it, and we can do it.’
We talked like this for over an hour. Slowly he came back to reality. The
whole time I was walking in circles in the middle of a quadrangle, with
students flowing around me, chatting, pushing bicycles.
‘I think of the path along the river all the time,’ he said. ‘I miss knowing
what I’m doing.’
‘I know.’
‘But you’re right. I’ll come back. I’ll try again.’
He hung up. I found a bench and sat down. My whole body was shaking.
I felt like a pilot who’d narrowly averted a plane crash.

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Chapter 53