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

by Hyeonseo Lee

  My old dorm friend, Ji-woo, thought the family of my jilted ex-fiancé was behind the attack. Mrs Jang might have been seeking to avenge the family’s honour for my humiliation of Geun-soo before the wedding.

  This thought troubled me very much. But the more I considered it, the less likely it seemed. The manner of the attack, and the choice of weapon – a one-litre bottle of beer! – wasn’t something the family would stoop to. I credited Mrs Jang with more class.

  The timing, just two weeks after my police interrogation, suggested that it was more likely to be connected to the informer who’d told the police I was a North Korean, and who provided them with my name and place of work. This is speculation, but the informer might have suffered consequences for wasting police time with a ‘false’ report, and was taking revenge.

  Once I was on the mend, I went back to work at the restaurant, but I was no longer enjoying the job. The comfort of my routine had been shattered. I was now mistrustful of everyone. I became paranoid whenever a customer tried to chat with me.

  I missed my family more than ever. I longed for my mother’s affection. I wanted to cry in her arms after what had happened to me. I longed for Min-ho’s company. There was not an hour of the day when I did not think about them. Before the police interrogation, I had started to make friends in Shenyang, but now I kept to myself. Once again, I was alone.

  In my new neighbourhood, I found myself using the same laundry as some of the policemen. Sometimes I saw the handsome Inspector Xu. He didn’t recognize me. One of the regulars in the laundry was a Korean-Chinese officer who always smiled at me. I tried to think whether he’d been in the background when I’d been interrogated, but I wasn’t sure and I couldn’t ask. He seemed nice. His name was Shin Jin-su and he held the rank of sergeant. He was a little older than me. Not good-looking, but impressive in his uniform. One evening in the laundry he asked if I’d like to have dinner. My instinct was to smile and decline, but after all that had happened in the last few weeks, I was frightened and cynical. A voice in my head said: Why not? A policeman ally could be useful.

  We began dating. It was the autumn of 2001. Our dates were nothing fancy. We’d go to a McDonald’s or a KFC. One evening, he seemed tired but in high spirits. ‘I’m exhausted,’ he said. ‘And starving.’ He was stuffing a Big Mac and fries into his mouth and wiping the grease from his lips with the back of his hand.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Rounding up North Koreans since dawn.’ His mouth was full. ‘We caught so many I had to skip lunch.’

  He described how some of them cried and begged when they were cornered, and seemed to think I’d find this as funny as he did. ‘Please don’t send me back,’ he said, putting on a high-pitched North Korean accent.

  I had to control my face to hide my anger. The woman you’re looking at is one of them, you bastard.

  I knew I had no real affection for him, that I was using him for protection. But far from being clever, I realized I was courting danger.

  I would have to end my relationship with Police Sergeant Shin Jin-su. But while I sat there listening to him boast about his role in the round-ups, it gave me satisfaction to know that I finally had a North Korean plan of my own.

  Almost four years had passed since that final call from my mother. On each anniversary of that date a valve in my heart would open and flood me with sadness. But as the fourth anniversary approached, in the winter of 2001, I had hope for the first time. Four years of frugal living meant that I had saved enough to pay a broker to find my family in Hyesan. Even if a reunion with them could not be arranged, I was desperate to get a message to them. To tell them I was alive, and thinking of them every day; to ask them if they were safe; to say that I loved them very much.

  I had no choice but to travel to Changbai, turn up at Mr Ahn’s house, and hope the Ahn family still lived there. Their phone number had not been in service for years.

  That is why I also formed a Plan B.

  A wealthy Korean-Chinese businessman who came to the restaurant for dinner most weeks often chatted to me. He was generous and much liked by the staff. One evening he noticed that I seemed low. He was relaxing after dinner with a cigarette and a whisky. On an impulse, I told him I had relatives in North Korea that I needed to speak to. ‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’ he said. ‘I have contacts, I know people.’

  He discreetly introduced me to a Chinese broker with experience of getting people out of North Korea – those who could afford his fee. He was a small, tough man who seemed honest. He spoke in the cautious manner of someone with a realistic attitude to risk. But I also thought I would not want to get on the wrong side of him. He asked me what I wanted to achieve. ‘A reunion with my mother and brother,’ I said. I reasoned that having this second channel would increase my chances of success.

  Plan B would turn out to be a disastrous mistake.

  Chapter 28

  The gang

  The frail woman who opened the door was Mrs Ahn. In four years she had aged a decade. She clasped her hands to her mouth when she saw me, and told me on the doorstep that Mr Ahn was very sick – bedridden, and unable to stand without help.

  His ‘jolly fat fish’ face was unrecognizable. It was contorted in pain. He had difficulty speaking.

  Mrs Ahn explained that North Korean border guards had caught him delivering contraband on the Hyesan side of the river, bundled him into a sack, and took him to their station. They said they knew he helped people to escape, and beat him black and blue. They knew he wouldn’t say a thing to the Chinese police because he was a smuggler. ‘He should never have gone back over there after that,’ Mrs Ahn said. But he did, and was almost caught a second time when the guards spotted him. They aimed a shot at him as he fled back over the river, and he suffered a gunshot wound to his arm. On top of his injury, he now had severe diabetes.

  This was shocking enough, but her next piece of news horrified me. Their next-door neighbour, Mr Chang, who had been so angry that time I phoned him, had been convicted of selling North Korean women as brides and prostitutes for Chinese men. That explained his reaction to my call. He was under investigation by the Chinese police at the time. He died soon after starting a ten-year prison sentence, and his wife had gone insane. Mr Chang was a human trafficker? To think that I had almost knocked on his door that night after crossing the river, but instead chose Mr Ahn.

  Mrs Ahn had no news of my family. Min-ho had not visited in years. Cross-river trade had gone quiet for a long while, she said, since an event that had occurred two years ago, in 1999. The Party chief of Hyesan had complained to Kim Jong-il that the city was becoming a hotbed of capitalism, and a brutal crackdown was ordered by Pyongyang. Many traders were arrested and executed in people’s trials at Hyesan Airport.

  I felt sick suddenly. I had never thought that my mother and Min-ho might be dead.

  Mrs Ahn’s kindness had not changed. She said she would get one of the smugglers to search for my family and, if he found them, arrange for Min-ho to come over the river to meet me in Changbai. I said I would pay the smuggler a fee.

  It was dark when I had arrived, and dark when I left early the next morning. I did not see Hyesan across the river, but I sensed its presence. I smelt it. The yontan smoke, and fresh-cut lumber. The unearthly stillness.

  All I could do now was return to Shenyang, go back to work, and wait.

  On a freezing-cold Saturday morning a few weeks later, I was in my apartment when Mrs Ahn called. She said the smuggler had located my family, and Min-ho had crossed the river. What she said next made me almost scream in her ear. ‘He’s standing right here.’

  There was a fumbling sound as she handed over the phone.

  ‘Hello?’ a voice said.

  I held my breath. Who is this?

  ‘Nuna, it’s me,’ the voice said, using the Korean word a boy uses for an older sister. Something was wrong. It sounded nothing like Min-ho. I turned to the window. I was picturing my brother in the reflection of the glass.
When I’d last seen him he was a boy of ten. Now he was fourteen. ‘Nuna, trust me,’ the voice said. ‘Do you remember the time I sneaked over here in the school vacation and couldn’t get back because the river flooded?’

  Finally I exhaled. It’s him. I began to giggle stupidly and cry at the same time. I felt such a surge of love for him.

  ‘Your voice is so changed,’ was all I could manage to say.

  ‘So is yours.’

  On the way to the train station I withdrew all my savings and converted it into US dollars. It came to about $800. Some of this I would use to pay to Mrs Ahn’s smuggler as a fee; the rest I would give to my brother and mother. I thought dollars would be handier for them to use as bribes in North Korea. I took the train from Shenyang to Changchun, then the bus to Changbai. It was expensive, but much quicker.

  On the fast, silent train, watching the hills slip by, my mind was filling with elated thoughts of seeing Min-ho, when my phone rang again.

  A man’s voice said: ‘My men have found your family.’ It was the Chinese broker. That took the smile off my face.

  I had almost forgotten about Plan B.

  It seemed the most absurd bad luck that both channels had worked and I would now have to pay for both.

  ‘When will you come to Changbai?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I lied.

  When I arrived at the Ahns’ house, a young man was sitting at Mr Ahn’s bedside. He stood up when he saw me.

  Whenever I thought of Min-ho, I saw the smooth-faced kid brother with the cute grin. This young man looked nothing like him. He was taller, and fuller, but I recognized my mother’s face in his. He was staring at me with intense curiosity. Then he gave that grin I remembered, as if to say See? Not a kid any more. To him, I appeared very strange. I was wearing tight jeans and had brown highlights in my hair, a style truly alien in North Korea. We studied each other across Mr Ahn’s living room, taking each other in, as if across an expanse of years.

  ‘It’s really you,’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’ He spoke with a man’s voice.

  Then we both laughed at the same time, came together, and I hugged his face to mine. I could not believe I had my brother in my arms.

  Before I’d even had a chance to ask about our mother a knock sounded on the front door.

  Mrs Ahn opened it. Four men were outside. I knew the moment I saw them that I had trouble.

  They were dressed in black jackets and jeans. One of them had face piercings. These were not locals from Changbai. They were from a gang.

  ‘Are you Soon-hyang?’ one of them called, spotting me behind Mrs Ahn. He had a shaved head. ‘We’re the ones who found your family.’

  The Chinese broker hired these thugs?

  I stepped outside to face them and tried to keep the alarm out of my voice. ‘I’ll be in touch with you tomorrow,’ I said.

  ‘No, you have to come with us now,’ the shaven-headed one said. ‘Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.’

  Mrs Ahn looked shocked.

  I left my phone and my bag, and went with them. Min-ho wanted to come. I told him to stay. I had to handle this.

  The men took me to an unfurnished apartment in a block on the other side of Changbai. The shaven-headed one led me into a bare room, and closed the door. He stood so close I could feel his breath, and spoke directly into my face.

  ‘We found your family. Your mother said your brother had already left to meet you at that old man Ahn’s house. Whether you needed us or not makes no difference to me. We’ve done our part. Now you pay.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Seventy thousand yuan.’

  My blood froze. That was almost $8,500 and many, many times more than I had.

  ‘I don’t have that kind of money.’

  ‘Your rich-ass businessman friend in Shenyang is paying,’ he said. ‘The broker was clear about that.’ He handed me a cellphone. ‘Call the businessman. Tell him to transfer the money.’

  My heart sank to my stomach. As misunderstandings went, this one couldn’t be bigger.

  ‘This has nothing to do with the businessman,’ I said. ‘I’m the one who has to pay. He was just being helpful. I hardly know him. I can’t ask him for money.’

  ‘Then you have a problem.’

  ‘What problem?’

  ‘I’ll put it this way. If you don’t pay, we’ll take you back to North Korea.’

  Chapter 29

  The comfort of moonlight

  Sympathetic people I’d met in China would sometimes express their bewilderment that the Kim dynasty had been tyrannizing North Korea for almost six decades. How does that family get away with it? Just as baffling, how do their subjects go on coping? In truth there is no dividing line between cruel leaders and oppressed citizens. The Kims rule by making everyone complicit in a brutal system, implicating all, from the highest to the lowest, blurring morals so that no one is blameless. A terrorized Party cadre will terrorize his subordinates, and so on down the chain; a friend will inform on a friend out of fear of punishment for not informing. A nicely brought-up boy will become a guard who kicks to death a girl caught trying to escape to China, because her songbun has sunk to the bottom of the heap and she’s worthless and hostile in the eyes of the state. Ordinary people are made persecutors, denouncers, thieves. They use the fear flowing from the top to win some advantage, or to survive. And although he was Chinese, and not from North Korea, I was seeing a prime example in this criminal in front of me, standing inches from my face. He had it in his power to rescue people, to be a hero. Instead he was using the terror of the regime to benefit himself and add to the misery of others. He had me on a cliff edge. Pay me, or I push.

  I said it again. ‘I don’t have that kind of money. If you can reduce the fee, I’ll see what I can do. But if you can’t, there’s nothing I can do.’

  I felt utterly resigned. He must have seen it in my eyes, because he left me alone and conferred with the others. The apartment had cheap plaster walls. I could hear most of what was spoken in the next room.

  ‘If you want money from her, you can’t touch her,’ one of them said.

  Shaven-head came back into the room. He said I would have to stay here until a solution was found. He would send to Mr Ahn’s for my bag.

  I hoped the neutral look on my face hid my panic. My phone and all my cash were in that bag. I did not want them to get their hands on the cash – or I’d have nothing to give Min-ho and my mother, or to Mrs Ahn for the smuggler’s fee.

  I asked Shaven-head if I could use his phone. He told me to talk in front of him so he could hear what I was saying.

  I called my own phone’s number but no one at Mr Ahn’s answered it. I called it again. And again. Shaven-head lost interest and went to talk to the others.

  Come on. Please. Someone answer.

  Min-ho later told me that he and Mr Ahn had heard the phone ring but couldn’t see what to press to answer it. Neither of them had seen a cellphone before. Finally, they figured it out. Min-ho answered.

  In a low, urgent voice I told him to leave the wallet in my bag but take out all the cash, pay Mrs Ahn the smuggler’s fee, and go as quickly as he could back across the river to Hyesan.

  One of the gang returned with my bag. Min-ho had done as I had asked.

  Later that day Shaven-head lowered the gang’s fee to 60,000 yuan ($7,250) and told me not even to think of leaving until it was paid.

  There was no lock on the room where they kept me, so they took turns to guard me outside the door, while the others slept in the room connected to the only exit. Escape was impossible.

  That evening one of them brought back a takeaway meal of skewered lamb and dumplings. My hope was that if I held out they would continue to lower the fee. I was too ashamed to play the only card I had – calling my uncle and aunt in Shenyang. I thought I would rather face my fate in North Korea. After the disrespect I had shown them, how could I ask them to pay a fortune to a criminal gang?

  I played for time,
telling Shaven-head I was messaging people, appealing to various contacts to see if I could raise the money.

  By the third evening they’d had enough of takeaways and took me to a local restaurant, where I was wedged between two of them in a dining booth. I can’t imagine what other customers thought I was doing with these thugs. The gang knew that an illegal like me wouldn’t try anything stupid, like calling for help. If I did, I’d be in even worse trouble.

  From their accents I knew that the one with face piercings was Han Chinese. He scared me the most. Violence crackled about him like static. I tried to avoid his eye. He kept looking at me in a way that made me feel naked. Two of the others were Korean-Chinese. They were more normal in appearance. I gathered that they were from a gang based in Yanji. They also dealt in fake leather goods and amphetamines. They were respectful toward Shaven-head. I couldn’t place his accent. Dandong, maybe.

  Later, after they’d closed the door on me in the bare room, they opened beers and toasted each other with shots of soju. I heard the constant flick of a lighter and guessed they were smoking a drug. Whatever it was, it wasn’t calming them. The talk became competitive and aggressive, and soon turned ominously coarse. My stomach began to knot.

  Then the one with the face piercings reminded them that they had a twenty-one-year-old girl in the next room.

  There was silence for a moment. I heard him say: ‘What’s she going to do?’

  Please no.

  Until this moment I’d been in that strange calm emergency mode I’d been in at the Xita Road Police Station, keeping my fear under control, as if I wasn’t quite there. Now I was losing it. My breathing became shallow. My body began trembling and refused to stop. If they entered the room now I would start screaming.

  I heard movement, as if they were getting up off the floor. I pressed myself into a corner. I would beg and plead.

  They were talking again. Face-piercings asked why the hell were they treating me so well. One of the Korean-Chinese said: ‘She’s like our client. If you mess her up we might lose the fee.’