Original Title: The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector's Story
Series: -
Author: Hyeonseo Lee, David John (primary contributor)
Published: October 14th, 2014
Publisher: William Collins
I don’t know much about South Korea, but recently, I discovered, to my great joy, a YouTuber whose parents were South Korean immigrants in my country, Argentina. Her name is Liliana Song, and her channel is LiryOnni. Her entire content, naturally, is about South Korea, where she’s living now, after living her whole life in Argentina. She is a fantastic bridge between Spanish speaking people and South Korean content, like k-pop, k-dramas, and occasionally, history. I will leave her link here, if anyone wants to check her out, but you should know, it’s all in Spanish. So in case you speak or understand the language, I strongly recommend her. And if not you can always activate subtitles.
It is thanks to her that I have learned about the Korean War after the end of World War II, called sometimes the Forgotten War, and the ensuing division that made the Korean Peninsula the way it is today, with the Demilitarized Zone next to the 38th parallel north. This is not exactly something you learn about in school, but it is incredibly interesting, the start of the separation into capitalist South Korea, and communist North Korea. And if we get down to the details, technically this war is not over. Only the armistice was signed on July 27, 1953, but there was no formal peace treaty. And so, the 38th parallel north became a line dividing two vastly different worlds.
I learned a lot
through LiryOnni, and this lead me to wonder about South Korea’s
maligned neighbour. Like a sibling they had turned their backs to. I
started watching TedxTalks by North Korean defectors, and reading their
stories. Hyeonseo Lee and Yeonmi Park were the first results. And one
thing is knowing that a certain place is terrible, but another thing,
completely different, is listening first person accounts of what it is like to live there. A life that is tied to an oppressive regime and
overwhelming propaganda, where you can’t think or speak for yourself,
and even basic human rights, like food and healthcare, are denied.
This
is Hyeonseo Lee’s story. She was born in North Korea in 1980 to a
loving family, with an stepfather in the military that led to a life of
constant moving and settling in new cities, but never outside the
country. Her memoir, from time to time, reads like a thriller novel. It
is written to be engaging, of course, yet knowing this is real takes it
to a whole other level. It’s a story of bravery and hardship, but her
courage is also in the decision of telling the world about her
experience. Her life in North Korea, and her subsequent escape to China,
are deeply distinctive because of her survival instinct. It’s the story
of a woman who suddenly found herself alone in an unknown world, and
had to be cunning, resourceful and smart enough to fend for herself, and
forge her own path, in a country in which she was not even supposed to
be in the first place.
I cannot describe it all. From time to
time I forgot this was nonfiction. Every word seemed to depict a world
we can only imagine in a dystopian sci fi novel. You know, a work of
fiction. And after a while, you wish it was. Because the things she
explains… They simply can’t be real.
This is the kind of story that makes me feel guilty for complaining about my own country’s situation. Because it reminds us that even though all nations have ups and downs, we still have freedom, and we can’t take it for granted. The Girl with Seven Names opens a window for us to see inside the most oppressive, secretive and hermetic state in the world, and shed some light on its true reality. Hyeonseo Lee doesn’t soften the blow, or sugar-coates the story. It’s an account of reality. About suffering, slavery, indoctrination, hunger and corruption. The North Korean system is ruthless, we all know that (or else you have been living under a rock). But it’s not the only one. The way refugees are treated in the neighbour countries like China and Laos for illegal border crossing, it’s the testament of a world that cries for help.
The stories
around the 90s famine are truly harrowing. I can’t even explain it. It
shows how people were driven by their most basic instincts to find food,
reduced to their most animalistic version. Desperation. Bribing. Eating
grass, bugs… Anything they could find. There are things I can’t even
describe. Read the book to find out more. I’ll warn you, it’s
horrifying. But it was through this that the image of “the greatest
nation on Earth” began to crumble for their population. How is it that
we are so great that we don’t even have food?
Both Hyeonseo Lee
and Yeonmi Park come from Hyesan, a border town right next to China,
where, with the right bribe, border guards turn a blind eye to the
illegal trading that takes place there, where only a river, frozen in
winter, separates North Korea from China. Hyeonseo Lee’s mother was an
expert in this. She fed her family through illegal trading and bribing,
and her name was well known in Hyesan.
“Perhaps it would be even
harder for them to understand that I still love my country and miss it
very much. I miss its snowy mountains in winter, the smell of kerosene
and burning coal. I miss my childhood there, the safety of my father’s
embrace, and sleeping on the heated floor. I should be comfortable with
my new life, but I’m still the girl from Hyesan who longs to eat noodles
with her family at their favourite restaurant. I miss my bicycle and
the view across the river into China.”
There is no mention of the
regime here. It’s sensory memory, it’s what’s familiar and close to
her, what she grew up with. The fond memories of childhood before being
aware of the hell you are really in. The loving family that never left
you, and in despite of the many problems and hardships they had to
endure, remained tight knit.
Life in North Korea isn’t easy. But
it’s simple. You are told what to think, how to dress, how to cut your
hair, how your house should be, who to love and who to hate, and what it
is right, and what is wrong. If you tread carefully, nothing will
happen to you. If you know your place, you’ll be safe.
Yeonmi
Park, in her TEDxTalk, asks the audience “If you don’t know you are a
slave, if you don’t you are isolated or oppressed, how do you fight to
be free?”
It’s slavery through ignorance. Keeping people in the
dark sustains the regime. Because, how do you know it is dark, if you
never saw what light looks like? It’s easy not to fight for freedom,
when you are not even aware of your chains.
“The images
conjured for us of tanks rolling across the border and slaughtering our
people in their homes moved us all to floods of tears. The South Koreans
had made victims of us. I burned with thoughts of vengeance and
righting injustice. All the children felt the same. We talked afterwards
of what we would do to a South Korean if we ever saw one.”
Propaganda
is everywhere, at all times. From the early school days, kids learn to
hate South Korea, Japan and the United States. And even though the
situation is changing a little through the introduction (illegal, of
course) of international content (like k-pop, k-dramas, and Hollywood
movies), and the small opening of the country to tourists (as long as
they don’t have South Korean or American passports), there’s still a lot
that remains unchanged.
If you can’t relate to Hyeonseo Lee’s
story, consider yourself lucky. I myself was born free, with the
possibility of education through school, but also through reading books
for my own entertainment, listening to music and watching as many movies
as I want. And it’s enough for me to feel a renewed love for my
country. It’s not perfect, of course. None is. But here, I don’t know
the hardships of war. Here, no one will publicly execute me for
prioritizing my life over the president’s portrait, or send me and my
family to a prison labor camp simply for using the Internet, watching an
international movie or listening to foreign music. I won’t starve,
because I have access to food, and I’m healthy enough to work for it. I
don’t have to fear a nuclear war. I can leave the country whenever I
want without recurring to corrupt brokers, fake IDs, bribing or illegal
border crossing. I can access higher education and learn languages if I
want to. And so much more.
And if the fact that it is North Korea’s reality isn’t the testimony of a rotten system, then I don’t know what it is.
Yet in this dark place, in which love, as Yeonmi Park says, has the one and only meaning of “love for the Dear Leader”, Hyeonseo Lee’s motivation was love. Love for her family, for the need we can all understand of having them by your side. As much as the government tries to stifle it, twisting it to turn it into their own version of what it should mean, love is ever present in the stories told by North Korean defectors. Love for their parents, their siblings, their aunts and uncles, their children… A love that we can all understand, in despite of living in a vastly different reality. A love that makes them assume terrible dangers to take their families to safety, willing to do anything to give them a chance to truly live. And that is something not even this regime could stifle. There’s still hope.
It reminds me a quote by Aphrodite, that I read in Rick Riordan’s The Lost Hero.
“My
point is that love is the most powerful motivator in the world. It
spurs mortals to greatness. Their noblest, bravest acts are done for
love.”
People are brainwashed in North Korea, and that’s just
reality. But the fact that there are so many defectors tells that they
are not stupid. Defecting is way more complicated now than it used to
be, mostly after COVID-19; the border is even more watched than before.
But people still find ways to leave and reach South Korea, where they
want to go not only for safety, but because of their shared language.
And now, you would think that crossing the border into China, as most
North Korean defectors do, it’s all that’s needed for them to be free.
Well. Wrong. It’s just the beginning of a journey that, like in this case,
can take years, with countless dangers along the way, from prison and
deportation, to human trafficking, and a death sentence in a prison
camp, in which not only you will be punished, but also three generations
of your family, for daring to defy the regime. This, of course, if you
don’t drown or die of hypothermia while crossing the frozen Yalu River, or are
discovered by the border patrols and shot to death. Chinese, Vietnamese,
and Laotian authorities are perfectly aware that there are North
Koreans among them. But also human traffickers are, and they can spot
them quickly, offering them jobs and basically taking them as slaves, a
terrible fate, especially for women. I don’t have to tell you why. You
know what I mean.
Again, I wish I could be talking about a work of fiction.
If
they are fortunate enough to get to South Korea, they won’t be sent
back. They are taken to places like Hanawon, where they have access to
food, medical attention, and training to start a new life. South Korea
may not be perfect, as it is a place with a lot of competition, social
pressure, and insanely long work hours. But it’s not the hell North
Korea led their people to believe it is. And it’s a free country. Hyeonseo Lee’s
story is a testament to this hardship. Of doing anything in your power
to survive. Running. Lying. Deceiving. But also learning, and growing.
Changing her name seven times was, in her case, the way she found to
survive in a world in which she was unwelcome, hiding her true
nationality in a country in which she was an illegal migrant and, if
discovered, could be sent back to her country, to a horrible fate, if she couldn't pay for the silence on the matter. Each of her names mean
something different. The girl who crossed the river at night to get to
the lights in China. The girl who escaped her fate as a forced bride.
The girl who learned Chinese as she could, without formal education, to
open her own path in a world in which she was an intruder… Each of them
is a piece in the puzzle of her identity, meaning something different, a
distinct part of her life that, put together, show the whole picture of
her journey, her struggle, her love and loss… Her life, basically. But
also shows that we are not just us alone. Our identity is also shaped by
the people around us and the moments we live with them.
That is
why I say that even though her bravery is unmatched, there’s also a huge
courage in the decision of sharing her story with the world, to expose
the long, harrowing journey she went through, and the struggle to find
her family and bring them through such dangers to freedom. Her story
sheds a much necessary light on the world of not only North Koreans, but
also on the way the world sees them. It’s an ideology devastated
country. It’s a real life dystopia.
I think it is necessary for
us to know about stories like Hyeonseo Lee’s. Because even her journey
had silver linings. The kindness showed to her by a stranger in Laos who
paid for her family’s fine to get them out of jail was not only
life-saving, it was also unexpected. After a life of hearing that people
from outside North Korea were not to be trusted, and a decade of lying
about herself, learning the hard way that she could trust no one, this
man, by the name Dick Stolp and from Australia, showed her that there’s
still people who care for her country’s situation, and even though it
strikes fear in everyone, there’s still people who want to help, even
through small acts of kindness. There is compassion in this world, even
when it’s hard to find. People like him, from time to time, restore my
faith in humanity.
This book is a message for all of us, but also
for the powerful men that lead the world. Because they don’t starve.
They will not suffer deportation and imprisonment in a labor camp along
with their families. They won’t have to see their families die after
days of starvation. They will not be detained for illegal border
crossing, making international phone calls, using the internet, or
listening to music. As long as they keep power, they will never truly
understand what their people go through. They play their games, and, as
always, the people living under their thumb are the target of the
consequences of their decisions. People who have to do whatever they can
to survive, and are punished for it. It’s good that Hyeonseo Lee
decided to tell us her story, not just because it’s remarkable, but also
because it’s necessary to register it. Her experience is harrowing and
terrible, painful, and intricate, but it has a happy ending. And even
though she got to be free, she hasn’t turned her back to North Korea,
and keeps working as an activist for human rights.
She has seen
hell, and yet, it didn’t kill her kindness, her compassion, and her
loving spirit. And for that, she deserves respect.
Thank you for reading. Be sure to check the videos and YouTube channels I put here.
***
See you next time!
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