The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story

Even if you don’t like me, I love you so much,

Even if I can’t wake up, I love you so much …

I adored this mush. It was about teenage love, and touched my heart in a way that filled me with longing. It was changing me, making me feel I was growing up. I got nothing like this from North Korean music. Our country had pop music of its own, but with songs called ‘Our Happiness in our General’s Embrace’ or ‘Young People, Forward!’ I cringed to listen to it.

I taught myself to play ‘Rocky Island’ on my accordion. I took care to play quietly, keeping the door and windows shut, but one morning while I was practising a hard knock sounded on the front door.

I froze.

One of our neighbours was on the doorstep. He was on his way to work. He told me he had heard me playing.

A pool of cold fear gathered in the pit of my stomach. Was he going to denounce me, or just warn me? But to my great surprise he smiled and told me that hearing that song made him emotional and gave him energy. Then he got back on his bicycle and rode off. It was such a weird thing to say. I wonder now if he knew full well it was a South Korean song and was reaching out to me, giving me a signal, like a secret handshake.

A few months later, by the time the illicit pop cassettes had gone up in flames with the house, I knew all the songs off by heart. The melody and lyrics of ‘Rocky Island’, especially, would be a great comfort to me in the times ahead.

The South Korean pop songs had given me a vague awareness of a universe beyond the borders of North Korea. If I’d had more awareness in general I might have spotted clues indicating that the world outside was undergoing dramatic changes – changes so great that the regime was being put under stresses it had never experienced before. I was oblivious to the fact that the Russians had allowed communism to collapse in the Soviet Union, ‘without even a shot fired’, as Kim Jong-il would put it. But this was affecting our country in ways that were starting to become impossible for the regime to conceal. My parents’ jobs and business dealings meant that we had enough food. I had not yet noticed that the rations of basic food essentials provided by the Public Distribution System were dwindling or becoming irregular, nor had I paid attention when the government launched a widely publicized campaign in 1992 called ‘Let us eat two meals a day’, which it said was healthier than eating three. Anyone who hadn’t yet figured out a moneymaking hustle of their own was still depending on the state for essentials, and they were beginning to suffer.

As it happened, our next move as a family took us to the very edge of that world outside, as close to it as anyone could go, as if fortune was contriving to make us look outward. Our new house faced directly onto the bank of the Yalu River itself. I could throw a stone from our front gate over the water into China.

Chapter 11

‘The house is cursed’

Our new neighbourhood was a cluster of single-storey homes separated by narrow alleys. The house was larger than previous houses we’d lived in, painted white, with a tiled roof, and surrounded by a white concrete wall. It had three rooms, each the width of the building, so that we had to go through the kitchen area to the main room and through that to the back room, which is where the four of us slept.

My mother had paid a lot of money for it. Officially, there is no private property in North Korea, and no real-estate business, but in reality people who have been allocated desirable or conveniently located housing often do sell or swap them if the price is right.

The location of this house was perfect for my mother’s illicit enterprises. She could arrange for goods to be smuggled from just a few yards away in China, straight over the river to our front door. For security against the rampant thievery she had the wall around the house built higher, to about six feet, and bought a fierce, trained dog from the military. The entrance was through a gate in the front wall, that we kept heavily locked. We had to pass through a total of three doors and five locks just to come and go. In front of the house was a path that ran along the riverside, five yards from our front gate, along which the guards patrolled in pairs. Uncle Opium and Aunt Pretty dropped by and congratulated my mother. The location couldn’t be better, they said.

Min-ho was extremely excited about this new home. It was a warm, mild autumn and the day we moved in he saw boys his own age playing in the river, mixing with Chinese boys from the other side, while their mothers washed clothes along the banks. To most North Koreans, the borders are impassable barriers. Our country is sealed shut from neighbouring countries. And yet here were five-, six- and seven-year-old boys splashing and flitting between the two banks, North Korea’s and China’s, like the fish and the birds.

The next day my mother went to introduce herself to the neighbours. What they told her made her heart sink to her stomach. She returned to the house looking angry and pale.

‘The house is cursed,’ she said, slumping to the floor and covering her face with her hands. ‘I’ve made a terrible mistake.’

A neighbour had told her that a child of the previous occupants had died in an accident. My mother thought she’d been lucky to find the place, but in fact the occupants were selling in a hurry to escape the association with tragedy and bad luck. I tried to comfort her, but she shook her head and looked tired. Her superstitions ran too deep to be reasoned with. I half-believed it myself. Many of my mother’s beliefs were rubbing off on me. I could tell she was already thinking of another expensive session with a fortune-teller to see if she could get the curse lifted.

My mother quickly furnished the house, once again doing her makeover. People who could afford them had started buying refrigerators coming from China, but my mother was reluctant to attract attention. This meant daily shopping for food, almost all of which she obtained at the local semi-official markets, not from the Public Distribution System. Her director at the government bureau where she worked had recently been sent to a prison camp after inspectors had found food in his home that he had been given as a bribe, so my mother was especially careful. We never stocked up on rice – seldom keeping more than twenty or thirty kilos in the house.

The one luxury we did buy for the new house was a Toshiba colour television, which was a signal of social status. The television would expand my horizon, and Min-ho’s, dramatically. Not for the ‘news’ it broadcast – we had one channel, Korea Central Television, which showed endlessly repeated footage of the Great Leader or the Dear Leader visiting factories, schools or farms and delivering their on-the-spot guidance on everything from nitrate fertilizers to women’s shoes. Nor for the entertainment, which consisted of old North Korean movies, Pioneers performing in musical ensembles, or vast army choruses praising the Revolution and the Party. Its attraction was that we could pick up Chinese TV stations that broadcast soap operas and glamorous commercials for luscious products. Though we could not understand Mandarin, just watching them provided a window onto an entirely different way of life. Watching foreign TV stations was highly illegal and a very serious offence. Our mother scolded us severely when she caught us. But I was naughty. I’d put blankets over the windows and watch when she was out, or sleeping.

We were now living in a sensitive area, politically. The government knew that people living along the river often succumbed to the poison of capitalism and traded smuggled goods, watched pernicious foreign television programmes, and even defected. Families living in this area were monitored much more closely than others by the Bowibu for any sign of disloyalty. A family that fell under suspicion might be watched and reported on daily by the local police. Often, subterfuge was used to catch offenders. One morning not long after we’d moved in, a pleasant and friendly man knocked on the door and told my mother that he had heard that the Yankees paid a lot of money for the returned remains of their soldiers killed during the Korean War. He had some bones himself, he said, disinterred from various sites in the province. He wondered if my mother could help him smuggle them across the border.

My mother treated requests for help with extreme caution. She knew how undercover Bowibu agents operated, dropping by with intriguing propositions. They had all kinds of tricks. We’d heard of one high-ranking family who had got into serious trouble when investigators turned up at their children’s kindergarten and asked brightly: ‘What’s the best movie you’ve seen lately?’ and a child had enthusiastically described a South Korean blockbuster, watched on illegal video. On this occasion, however, her superstitions were her best defence. She didn’t want to be haunted by the disturbed spirits of American soldiers, and told the man she couldn’t help.

In mid-November, a few weeks after we had moved to the new house, the first snow had been falling all day in fine grains that stung our faces. We were huddled on the floor for warmth, wearing our coats indoors, when my father arrived home. Each time he returned from China he brought with him small luxuries that were out of reach for most people. Sometimes he came with good-quality toilet paper, or bananas and oranges, which were almost never available at home. This time he was carrying such an enormous package that I failed to affect my usual boredom in his presence. I was too curious to know what it was. It contained gifts for Min-ho and me. Mine was a larger-than-life doll with silky white-blonde hair, blue eyes and a pale Western face. She had the most beautiful dress, of patterned gingham trimmed with lace. She was so large I could barely carry her. I had to prop her up in a corner next to my bed. My mother said she could hear me chattering to her. Min-ho’s gift was a hand-held Game Boy video game. His little face was overawed. This was something so new. We knew of no one else who had anything like it.

I can only think of that doll now with immense sadness. I was a little too old for a doll, but it was such a beautiful, generous gift. I realize now that my father felt he had lost me and was trying to reconnect with me, somehow. He knew something had gone badly wrong between us, and he had probably figured out what it was. I certainly did not deserve the gift.

It was the last thing he ever gave me.

Chapter 12

Tragedy at the bridge

I was about to turn fourteen, by the Korean way of measuring age. It was January 1994, the beginning of an eventful and tragic year that made me grow up quickly.

I was now almost as tall as my mother. I was fit and active, playing a lot of sport, which I enjoyed very much – ice skating, becoming good enough to represent the school in a tournament, and taekwondo indoors when the weather was cold. I was a good runner, and had run the Hyesan half-marathon.

My birthday, however, got the year off to a terrible start.

I had long been pushing my luck with my appearance. The teachers had never taken much notice when I didn’t wear the school uniform – they knew they could depend on my mother when the school needed cash donations, or fuel for heating. But I was not a child any more, and my nonconformity was becoming conspicuous.

The inevitable happened.

A new teacher had joined the school a few months previously. Her name was Mrs Kang, and she taught physics. She was a young woman, with small, sharp eyes and a shrill voice. On the day of my birthday she wished us good morning, and noticed me immediately. Every girl was in school uniform and all had short hair, no longer than shoulder length. I stood out a mile in my pink Chinese coat and my perm, and a new pair of tall, fashionable boots.

Her eyes froze on the boots, and I knew I’d gone too far.

‘Why are you wearing those?’ She was addressing me in front of the whole class. ‘And for that matter, why aren’t you ever in uniform, like everyone else?’

Before I could stop myself the words were out. ‘Why do you have a problem? My mother doesn’t.’

The room tensed.

‘How dare you talk back to me!’ She was shrieking, and marching up to my desk. ‘You want to look like some rotten capitalist? Fine!’ She swung her arm out and slapped me hard across the face.

I put my hand to my cheek. The blood was singing in my ears. I was shaking, and outraged. My mother had never slapped me. I stormed out of the class, and ran home in tears.

That day, for the first time in a long time, I yearned for the comfort and security my father always provided, but he was away again, on a business trip to China. Each time he came home he seemed more and more tired and subdued. My mother said he wasn’t sleeping. Something was wrong. He’d told her he thought he was being watched.

I realize now that having the nerve to wear those boots and perm my hair was just a symptom of a deeper and general disillusion I was feeling. I was falling out of love with the ‘organizational life’ and the collective activities that no one in the country was exempt from. Now that I was fourteen I was no longer a Pioneer, and had to join the Socialist Youth League. This was another important milestone. We were told to start thinking of our futures, and of how we would serve our country. My childhood was over.

Members of the Socialist Youth League had to undergo military training. I had to put on army fatigues and learn how to shoot with live ammunition at a firing range in Hyesan. I hated this so much, and my mother was so nervous about me being surrounded by children with guns, where accidents could easily happen, and sometimes did, that she got me excused by bribing the school authorities with cash.

Ideological indoctrination intensified. As model communist youths we were now expected to deepen our emotional bond with the Great Leader, and start learning about the Party’s ideology of juche (loosely translated as ‘self-reliance’), which promoted our country’s isolation and rejection of all foreign influences.

I was now part of a Socialist Youth League ‘cell’ within my secondary school. Fortunately, I managed to avoid joining the Maintenance of Social Order Brigade – the vigilantes who monitored the streets for citizens whose ideological purity had lapsed. By 1994 there were several additions to the list of banned items. Now the youths were cracking down on anyone caught wearing clothing with Western lettering, which was in vogue in China.

By the time spring came there was no avoiding the revolutionary duty we all had to undertake: the pilgrimage to the sacred sites surrounding Mount Paektu. The mountains of Ryanggang Province were where Kim Il-sung fought as a guerrilla against the Japanese in the 1930s and 1940s. To mark this significance, three of the province’s eleven counties were renamed after the great man’s wife, father and uncle. Young Pioneers and Socialist Youth from all over North Korea visited this ‘outdoor revolutionary museum’, with its statues and monuments to the Great Leader’s victories, and a nearby village called Pochonbo, where in 1937 he had led a band of 150 guerrillas in an attack on the local Japanese police station. The battle is famous in North Korean history as the great turning point in the struggle for Korean independence, and stunning proof of Kim Il-sung’s tactical genius, winning victory in the face of overwhelming odds.

Our guide showed us bullet holes on the old police station, circled in white, and a cell where the Japanese had tortured communist partisans. None of this impressed me. I just wanted to get out of there. With a tremendous effort I had to control my face to hide my boredom.

Only when I finally saw, with my own eyes, the preserved log cabin beneath the pines on the slopes of Mount Paektu, the site of the secret guerrilla base where Kim Jong-il was born, did I feel like a child again, just for a moment. I remembered painting the cabin, and the star in the sky, and the rainbow over Mount Paektu. This magical story still had the power to move me.

The disaffection I was feeling meant that my relationship with Min-ho wasn’t getting any better. He was at elementary school in Hyesan. He’d hear from the boys in his year what a cute girl their older brothers thought I was. He must have thought they were talking about someone else. I still wasn’t friends with him in the way I should have been. Deep down I wanted an older brother to protect me, not a kid I had to watch out for. He was now seven years old and developing quite an adventurous streak – I strongly suspected him of making secret forays of his own to the opposite bank of the river. He could be dogged, too. Given a chore, he’d get on with it. His school once gave the students an absurd quota of ten kilos each of berries to pick. He was the only one to hit the target. In that sense he was quite unlike me, who would find excuses to avoid physical work and not get my nice clothes dirty. The one thing we both had in common was the Hyesan stubbornness, like our mother’s.

A few days after the visit to Mount Paektu I came home from school to find my mother pacing around the house in a state of high anxiety.

‘Your father’s still not back,’ she said, folding and unfolding her arms.

My father was supposed to have returned from his business trip to China the previous day. She said he had seemed particularly anxious before leaving.

Two days went by and still he did not return.

By the third day my mother was a wreck. She could not relax, sleep, eat, or sit still. She tried several times to contact the bureau of the trading company where he worked, but each time was stonewalled and told to wait for information.

Another day passed in a dismal limbo. Min-ho was constantly asking if someone could check where our father was.

Finally, a work colleague from the trading company called at the house.

The news was not good.

My father had been arrested four days ago at the Friendship Bridge as he crossed the border back into North Korea.

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