Friday, March 29, 2024
BOOK REVIEWS

Korean Book Review: The Girl With Seven Names

Hyeonseo Lee is The Girl with Seven Names. And in this non-fiction international bestseller she describes her unusual escape from North Korea. I imagined this book would be pretty gloomy, but somehow it isn’t. The tone is matter-of-fact as Hyeonseo Lee retells her remarkable story which starts from her childhood in North Korea.

There are different ways to escape from the north. Here’s a video of a soldier desperately running through the JSA (Joint Security Area) and across the border with his comrades shooting at him from behind. The Girl with Seven Names found another way to cross the border.

She has to become resourceful and goes from an innocent girl to a street smart woman. As a paperless illegal she has to navigate her way through ID checks, corruption, informers, and scams. And she changes her name many times.

The long journey to the South

Her story begins with the alarming details of life in the North, then navigates through a mix of corruption and kindness that she meets along the way. Finally it touches on the realities of adjusting to a totally new life.

This wasn’t a dramatic overnight escape. She left the North for China in 1997, but didn’t reach South Korea for another ten years. So part of her story takes place there.

The Girl With Seven Names (William Collins, 2015)

The Girl with Seven Names book cover

See more from dramasrok about life in Korea on Facebook Pinterest and Instagram 

Her descriptions of life in the North seem reminiscent of Orwell’s 1984. Government messages delivered through speakers inside the home. Children taught to snitch on each other. The details of life are interesting. Only government approved cloths must be used to wipe the portraits of Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung. Portraits hang in each household and citizens will risk their lives to protect them getting damaged.

But behind the scenes not everyone is a completely law abiding citizen. Hyeonseo lives near the Chinese border where smuggling and bribes are rife.

related posts:

A Kim Jong il Production: An Amazing but true story

Visiting the DMZ on Liberation Day

You can’t live without other people

A thought-provoking point she makes is that we can do without all sorts of material things. But we can’t do without other people – for help or support. She is desperately lonely without her family and will do anything to be with them again. She often has to rely on others which unfortunately doesn’t always end well. The corruption of the officials in Laos making money off the helplessness of defectors is infuriating. I shed tears.

But her problems don’t stop when she reaches the South. They just change. Now she has to deal with freedom and making a new life. Discrimination is an issue.

Having believed the lies of the Kim regime, she is shocked at the wealth and development she finds in the South. But she discovers that, for very different reasons, it’s not so great here either. In one of many thought-provoking moments, she points out that the people of South Korea are (according to statistics) THE unhappiest people in the developed world. She sees the unhappiness in her rich neighbours even though she comes from a country where human rights are unheard of and the people are starving.
The Girl with Seven Names book cover

A Happy Ending

Still, it’s a happy ending. Now the street smart young woman with little education has to try to fit in to a country where education is everything. I wanted to hear more about the difficulties in adjusting to life in South Korea – from using everyday technology to the deeper issues of living in a democratic country. We get a taste of this. Her mum struggles with technology and feels sorry for ‘the man who has to work inside the ATM machine’. It’s poignant but amusing. But that’s not what this book is about. Perhaps more of this will be in a sequel?

This is a story of dealing with the cards you’re dealt whilst looking after the people who are important to you. I found it moving.

Visiting the DMZ on Liberation Day

More on Korean Literature: 

What is the most important post war Korean novel?

What’s a good book on Korean Buddhism?

Who are some contemporary female writers?

Leave a Reply