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

by Hyeonseo Lee

  Under a vast Asian sky

  My aunt had wanted me to bring my mother to her apartment for a day or two to acclimatize, but we hadn’t time to waste in Shenyang. I had thought carefully about the next section of the journey. A flight to Kunming would have been fastest, taking just six hours, but it was out of the question. The airport authorities would certainly scrutinize our IDs. The train would take two full days, but ID checks on trains were even more worrying because they would be face to face. The least perilous option was going by road. It would be gruelling. With all the transfers and waiting times, I figured the journey would take a week. And although there would be more police checks, the driver usually handed all the IDs to the policeman who’d check each with a handheld machine, but wouldn’t match them against the owners.

  We braced ourselves again. We were going to cross eight vast provinces of China by coach.

  If we encountered any more problems like the one on leaving Changbai, we would pretend that my mother and Min-ho were deaf mutes and that I was their guide. It was a desperate, crazy, ridiculous idea, but it was the only one I had.

  The next leg of the journey was to Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan Province, on the Yellow River, almost 900 miles southwest of Shenyang. It would be an eighteen-hour ride. We reached the first police checkpoint one hour into the journey. As I had hoped, the conductor collected all IDs and handed them to the policeman, who took them away for inspection. In our ordeal on the coach at Changbai I thought I’d seen the soldier glance down to the back as he’d entered. He had probably spotted Min-ho straight away. This time, I had opted to sit up front in the most conspicuous place. We’d look as if we had nothing to hide. Again, we took seats on the second level, with Min-ho at a window, me in the middle and, as the seat beside me was taken, my mother behind me, also in the middle section. Ten minutes later, the policeman returned and handed the cards back to the driver.

  The moment the automatic door closed, we breathed again. We were in the clear.

  The three of us began talking freely. We felt rested. We’d had a good night’s sleep at a hotel in Shenyang. So we chatted, and ate snacks. The coach was full. By this time, if they didn’t think we were Korean-Chinese, every passenger would have guessed we either came from a minority ethnic group, or we were foreigners. The coach stopped twice at restaurants on the expressway and the passengers filed off to stretch their legs, use the washrooms, and eat.

  Seven or eight hours later, the coach stopped again. It was in the early hours of the morning and we were somewhere near Beijing. Up ahead, blue lights revolved and flashed on the top of a police jeep. Again, the conductor collected our passes, handed them to a policeman. Ten minutes later, the policeman climbed in. He had the IDs in his hand. He told the driver to pull off the road, and turn the interior lights on.

  I caught a draught from the air con overhead and felt beads of cold sweat on my brow.

  The policeman looked at the top card, called out a name, and a passenger lumbered down the aisle to claim it.

  ‘Name?’ he said. ‘Your residence? Where’re you going? What’s the purpose of your visit?’ After the passenger had answered the last question, the policeman handed over the ID.

  The full horror of what was happening sank in.

  He’s looking for illegals who can’t speak Mandarin.

  I felt exposed and helpless. Our high-spirited conversations in Korean had given us away. A muscle began to spasm just beneath my eye. I had to grimace to make it stop.

  This is it. We’re finished.

  I looked over to see if my mother and Min-ho had caught what was happening. Min-ho was surreptitiously sipping from a cheap bottle of Maotai, the Chinese liquor. The rank, sickly smell of it had already reached my bunk. He’d said his strategy, if questioned, was to be drunk. He quietly screwed the cap back on and closed his eyes. His lips were pressed tightly together. I felt immensely sorry for him, and for my mother. This was all my doing. They could be safe at home now. They will pay the price for my selfishness.

  Min-ho’s distraction strategy was not going to work.

  ‘Chang-soo.’ The policeman was calling the name on Min-ho’s ID. The name was Korean but he was pronouncing it in Mandarin. Min-ho’s eyes were still shut. There was nothing I could do.

  He called the name out again. No response. Then he called it a third time, irritated now. I pushed Min-ho, pretending to wake him. The other passengers watched as he climbed down from the bunk. I could see his legs wobbling. He was moving slowly as if stepping forward to be shot. My heart was bleeding for him.

  But I could not do as a broker would have done – shrink back into my bunk, look out of the window, and abandon him to his fate.

  I’ll take the bullet for him.

  ‘What is your name?’ the policeman asked in Mandarin. Min-ho stood helplessly in front of him with his head lowered. He said nothing. The policeman looked at the card and looked up at him.

  ‘He’s deaf and dumb,’ I said in Mandarin, climbing down from my bunk.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘We’re together,’ I said. He found my card.

  ‘Really? He’s deaf and dumb?’ The policeman was holding my ID and Min-ho’s out in front of him. ‘Yours is in Chinese. But his is foreign.’

  ‘That’s Korean script,’ I said. ‘For Korean-Chinese from the northeast the ID is in both languages.’

  ‘Never seen that before.’

  ‘She’s right,’ the conductor chipped in. I turned my head and saw the driver tap the watch on his wrist in a show of irritation. ‘The cards are all like that in the Korean autonomous provinces.’

  The novelty of the Korean script had distracted the policeman from the ID’s photo and date of birth. He still looked suspiciously at Min-ho. Then he handed back the card.

  Suddenly, a loud, ape-like grunting noise behind me distracted everyone. My mother had clambered down from her berth. She was gibbering as if unaware she was making any sounds, and waving her arms about in a show of extreme annoyance, or as if she’d skipped her medication. The performance was so startling the policeman took a step backward.

  He swore. ‘Another one?’

  ‘She’s with me, too,’ I said, sounding apologetic. ‘I am guiding them both.’

  Reluctantly, the policeman gave back our cards without further questions. The entire coach was watching this bizarre piece of theatre. They’d heard us chatting for hours. They might have been too surprised to speak, but not one of them gave us away. I had fifty-two accomplices to a crime, and they were all total strangers.

  A minute later the coach was back on the expressway. Min-ho and my mother looked like people just spared the firing squad. Behind me I could feel the heat of the other passengers’ stares. I wanted to turn and say something by way of an excuse, or to thank them, but I was too embarrassed and scared. The rest of the journey lasted eight hours. My mother and Min-ho did not utter another word.

  We arrived in Zhengzhou in the late afternoon and from there travelled to Guilin, the capital of Guangxi Province, unnoticed among a group of tourists on their way to see the famous karst hills along the Li River. We dozed for much of the twenty-four-hour journey. Occasionally I’d pull back the curtain and see a vast Asian sky over endless low hills. The chill northeast was far behind us. We emerged in subtropical China. Another overnight ride westward, and on the morning of the seventh day we reached Kunming, in Yunnan Province.

  I was feeling a mounting sense of purpose and excitement. We were so close to the edge of China. The border to freedom. We were going to make it. We were going to pull this off.

  Reverend Kim’s broker was waiting for us in the ticket hall of Kunming coach station. He was a tanned, middle-aged Chinese man dressed in black jeans, a cheap leather jacket and tinted glasses. He introduced himself as Mr Fang. I had an instant bad feeling about him.

  I was his client, and was paying for his services, but from the moment he greeted us he behaved as if we’d been sent to irritate him, and
he was doing us a favour. I watched him glance at my mother and shake his head. She had once ranked highly in her society and was the wife of a senior military officer, but in this fellow’s eyes she was an empty-handed old woman on the run. His body language showed contempt; his manner of speaking even more so.

  I’ll admit that, as a Korean, I’m sensitive to how I’m treated. In our hierarchical culture, everyone is either above or below you. Honorific language is used with anyone further up the hierarchy. The safe bet when meeting strangers is to use polite forms, until you can place their age, or status. But this man began speaking to us in language reserved for kids. He was especially dismissive of Min-ho.

  ‘That fool’s taking his time,’ he said when Min-ho was in the station bathroom.

  If we’d been in Seoul, I’d have told him plainly to his face to watch his manners, but I kept my anger banked down. I could not allow my feelings to interfere with our goal. I forced myself to treat the situation as another type of checkpoint, to be passed with calm nerves and composure. My family’s safety came first.

  Mr Fang’s Korean was so thickly clouded with Mandarin that I had to keep asking him to repeat himself. I’d never heard Korean so mangled. In the end I had to ask him to speak in Mandarin, which further annoyed him.

  My mother and Min-ho, meanwhile, were not reacting well to the fug of humidity we’d stepped into off the coach, or the pervasive reek of gasoline fumes. To make matters worse, the oily fried food we’d been eating at expressway restaurants all the way from Shenyang was taking its toll. Their bodies weren’t used to it. They now had stomach cramps. Min-ho, who possessed such sinewy strength, had become listless and wan at the very stage of the journey he needed to be taut and alert.

  Mr Fang led us to a guesthouse for the night. It was the cheapest kind of lodging, in a rough neighbourhood of old, single-storey houses separated by narrow, litter-strewn dirt alleyways. When I turned on the bathroom light, tiny lizards darted across the walls; the shower head was a spigot with a sock tied over it.

  Mr Fang sat down on a bed. Payment was the first thing he mentioned. Without asking if we minded whether he smoked in our room, he lit a cigarette.

  I took out my cash. From my experience of gangs and brokers I knew that the worst thing I could do was betray any sign of desperation, or appeal to his pity. I spoke as if this was a controlled, manageable situation.

  ‘When I arranged this with Reverend Kim, we only planned for my mother. But there was a problem and my brother had to come with us. Right now I only have the money for one person.’

  ‘We had an agreement.’

  ‘We still do,’ I said. ‘As soon as I return to Seoul, I’ll pay the extra to Reverend Kim. He can transfer it to you.’

  The man swore under his breath. ‘That’s not going to work, little Miss.’

  ‘It will, because I’m giving you my South Korean ID card.’ I took it from my wallet and handed it to him. ‘You keep it. You and Reverend Kim now know exactly who I am, and where I live, and can come after me if I don’t pay. And I will pay.’

  The ID was the only thing I had that might persuade him to trust me.

  He seemed to weigh the card in his hand for a moment, gauging its value, then slipped it into his jacket pocket.

  ‘They leave tomorrow,’ he said, nodding to my mother and Min-ho. ‘They will be guided early in the morning over the border. Into Laos.’

  Where? ‘No, we’re going to Vietnam.’

  ‘That was the plan, but two days ago a group of North Koreans was caught in Vietnam and sent back to China.’

  I glanced at my mother. She wasn’t following the Mandarin, but she could see the alarm in my eyes.

  ‘The Vietnamese used to allow you people to go to South Korea,’ he said. ‘We don’t know why this has changed, but it means that route is not safe now. We can’t risk it. We’re switching to Laos.’

  My head was spinning. ‘Where’s Laos?’

  ‘Next to Vietnam. Same distance from here. Seven hours away.’

  ‘Is it safe?’

  ‘Safe?’ He gave a snort. ‘Nothing is guaranteed. But we’ve been doing this a long time. We can get you across the border and to the South Korean embassy in Vientiane.’ He saw another blank look on my face. ‘That’s the capital. I’ll get your mother and brother there.’ He took a final drag on his cigarette and flicked it through the open window, trailing orange sparks.

  ‘Well, I’m going too,’ I said.

  ‘No, you’re not.’ He shot me a look of glinting suspicion, as if I were trying to steal his trade secrets. ‘You’re going back to Seoul.’

  ‘I’m not leaving them. They need me.’

  ‘They’ll be in safe hands.’

  ‘They don’t speak Mandarin and they don’t know about anything outside of North Korea. I’m staying with them.’

  ‘Too dangerous. You’ll be a liability, little Miss.’

  My fists clenched. If he calls me that one more time …

  ‘Everything we’re doing is illegal,’ he said. ‘With a South Korean passport you can enter Laos for fifteen days without a visa. They don’t even have passports.’ He gestured casually at my mother and Min-ho. ‘If you’re caught with them you’ll be arrested for helping illegals. They’ll think you’re a broker and put you in jail. You’ll be no help to anyone there. They need you to arrange things for them in South Korea.’

  ‘I could travel on my Chinese ID,’ I said.

  The moment the words were out, I knew this was a bad idea.

  He seemed to read my mind. ‘And if something goes wrong, do you want to get sent back to South Korea, or to China? If the Chinese figure out you’re a defector, too …’

  The thought was left hanging in the air.

  He had me. There was nothing I could say.

  Every hour of the day for the past week, I had been my family’s sole lifeline. But now control was being taken from me. I would have to leave them in the hands of a man I absolutely did not trust.

  At dawn the air was already humid and noisy with the cries of unfamiliar birds. The alley smelled of rotting garbage. It took us just minutes to prepare ourselves. My mother would take only a small bag, and gave me her winter clothes. I went out to buy toiletries for her and Min-ho. I checked the remaining cash in my wallet. I did not have much left, and still had to buy my plane ticket to Seoul.

  I went with them to the coach station. I gave Min-ho 1,000 yuan ($150). I wrote my South Korean cellphone number down for him and my mother and told them to memorize it.

  We said our goodbyes. I did not want to let go of their hands, but Min-ho gave me his grin and said: ‘Nuna, we’ll be all right.’

  I watched the coach until it had turned the corner and disappeared from view. Please be safe. The dice were rolling again. Now it was all in Fortune’s hands.

  I stayed behind in Kunming until I’d heard from Min-ho, who called that evening. They had arrived at the border without incident. They would cross at dawn, when Mr Fang would bribe the guards. At 5 a.m. he called again.

  ‘We’re in Laos.’

  Relief washed over me like warm spring water. The end of the journey was in sight. For days my nerves had been wound to breaking point. Now, as the tension drained from my body, I was so tired I could barely move.

  I found a post office and mailed back the two borrowed IDs. Then, with some hesitation, I called my boyfriend Kim in Seoul. I hadn’t spoken to him for more than a week, and had told him nothing about what I was going to do. I had not answered his worried text messages. When I told him where I was, however, his shock was greater than his hurt.

  ‘Where?’

  In the background I heard the business meeting he was in go quiet.

  I briefly told him what I’d done, and that my family was now in Laos, heading for the South Korean embassy.

  There was a stunned pause on the end of the line. Finally he said: ‘I don’t know what to say.’ Then I heard that gentle laugh. ‘Come back quickly.’ He thought
I was insane, he said, but I heard the note of admiration in his voice. ‘I’ve got to hear all about this.’

  I sat in the back of the taxi satisfied that I’d accomplished a difficult mission. And I couldn’t wait to get out of the grime and humidity of Kunming. We were approaching the departures terminal when my phone rang.

  It was Mr Fang. I didn’t hear him at first because a plane roared so low overhead I could see the streaks of rust on its fuselage. All I got was the word problem. My stomach turned to stone.

  ‘Problem?’

  I was staring at the back of the taxi driver’s head, with the phone at my ear.

  ‘The police picked them up.’

  Chapter 46

  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 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.