Hyeonseo Lee gives us an account of her awakening to North Korea’s tyranny and oppression and her desire to escape it. The Girl with Seven Names is a chilling glimpse of life in North Korea, how she got out, and what she lost and gained in the process.

In North Korea, people are classified either as loyal, wavering, or disloyal. The caste system is called songbun, and it determines one’s social standing, the occupations and amenities available, and one’s living situation. A person’s songbun is less a reflection of individual conduct than what one’s family was doing just before the state’s founding in 1948. Those who were good communists, who supported the regime, were seen as the most loyal and therefore gained higher standing. Their children and grandchildren inherit their status.

It was impossible to rise socially in the state’s estimation, but it didn’t take much to fall. Even small infractions could be grounds for the denigration of songbun. The royal family was at the top, and political prisoners at the bottom of the pecking order. Everyone else fell somewhere in between in one of 50 or so subcategories. Elites comprised 10-15 percent of the population; they took great pains to avoid making mistakes. The hostiles at the bottom accounted for 40 percent of North Korea’s population. They had no dreams, and did the manual labor jobs that they were assigned without question.

The author’s mother had excellent songbun because her father than been involved in the resistance against the Japanese when they occupied Korea. He’d been a good communist, and worked undercover among the Japanese, relaying intelligence to his comrades hiding in the mountains.

Her mother divorced her biological father and married the man she truly loved. His songbun was good enough that the parents on both sides agreed to the union. When the groom’s side of the family found out that the bride-to-be was a divorcee and had a small child (i.e., the author), they wanted to back out. But the son was vehement about not losing her, and his parents agreed on the condition that the child’s name would be changed—not just the last name, as was customary in such situations, but the first name, too. And so Kim Ji-hae became Park Min-young. This was the first of many name changes that the author would assume.

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Lee grew up in a reasonably well-off home and genuinely believed she lived in the best country on the earth, though she knew very little of what lay beyond the borders of North Korea—other than Japan, South Korea, and the United States—who were their enemies.  She never went hungry. The small city of Hyesan where she resided lay just a stone’s throw from the China border, but it was the edge of the world as far as she was concerned.

As Lee grew up, she witnessed several things that irreparably damaged the illusion that North Korea was paradise.  

One moment branded into her memory was a public execution she witnessed when she was seven. She saw a crowd by the bridge, and a man with a dirty sack over his head, his body suspended above the ground, twitching as it swung gently in the breeze. Citizens were encouraged to attend public executions from elementary-age onward. Most people went to the executions of friends and acquaintances rather than strangers—in much the same way that people attend funerals. The executions always began with a trial, which was little more than a reading of the charges, followed immediately by either a lynching or bullet to the head.

Another crucial event was “the death of the great heart,” Kim Il-sung, on July 8, 1994. The city went into mourning. Lee wondered how this so-called god-king could just die like anyone else. Perhaps he, too, was only human. He got old and weak and died like anyone else. Everyone was expected to weep for their leader, and those whose tears appeared contrived and unfelt were mocked in school assemblies and some were even publicly executed. One well-known thug was shot through the head in the city’s landing strip; his gravest offense, however, was not his frequent smuggling of goods across the border to China, but continuing to do so while the nation was mourning the death of the “great heart.”

Another troubling experience that not only changed Lee’s perception of her homeland but forever marked North Korean culture, was the famine of 1995. Lee came from an enterprising family that made good money dealing in imports and exports across the China border. Lee did not know hunger growing up. One day, in 1995, Lee’s mother gave young Lee a letter to read. The first line was, “By the time you read this, the five of us will no longer exist in the world.”  Her mother’s coworker had received the letter from her sister in a neighboring province. The letter went on to detail their struggle, that the family hadn’t eaten in 3 weeks and they were waiting to die.

Several days later, the author was walking through a train station when she saw a starving infant in the arms of his nearly dead mother. People were walking past the dying pair like they weren’t even there. It’s a scene she can’t erase from her mind.

A million people died. Many survived by eating grass and bugs and tree bark. The new Great Leader, Kim Jong-il, in a frequently televised display of solidarity with the masses, ate simple meals of rice and potatoes, but he continued to look as corpulent as ever on the evening news. The standard greeting of “Have you had rice yet?” changed to, “You’ve already eaten, right?” Lee’s accordion instructor would come to her house to conduct lessons, and Lee’s mom would offer food, as they were not affected as severely by the famine as others. The instructor would always politely refuse, but request water mixed with bean paste. For someone who was not hungry, he would always drink down the concoction greedily. Eventually, he stopped coming to the home and the family received word that he had starved. His sense of dignity was more important to him than his life.

The propaganda was beginning to fray at the edges for Lee. If the Chinese were really so poor, as she’d been taught in school, why did Chinese shows (illegally obtained and viewed) depict families with advanced amenities like microwaves and washing machines? Lee’s mother washed their clothes in the river by their house. If North Korea was as wealthy and prosperous as televised reports of North Korean military might and bounty suggested, why did the government cut power each night when China did not? There was always a glow of neon lights across the river at night. If North Korea was the best country on earth, why were beggars filling  the streets and people dying of starvation? The Dear Leader’s explanation was that the famine (or “arduous march” as the propaganda machine spun it) existed because of crippling sanctions the dirty Yankees had placed on North Korea. The sanctions, in conjunction with poor harvests and unexpected floods, had created a perfect storm. The more accurate assessment was that the Soviet Union had recently collapsed and Russia was no longer subsidizing costs for their comrades in North Korea.

The indoctrination intensified as Lee became a teenager, but horrendous tragedies kept the regime’s narrative from sticking completely. She could see China from her bedroom window and became increasingly curious about what lay beyond North Korea’s borders.

Lee is careful not to disclose precise details of her escape, but it did involve crossing the river at her hometown into China.

It started as an act of youthful rebellion. Lee wanted to cross the river into China before she turned 18, as the consequences for being caught became far more severe once one became a legal adult. Growing up, it was easy to cross the river. Hyeson was far enough removed from Pyongyang’s iron grip that minor infractions were mostly overlooked. From the city’s high ranking officials to the social riffraff, many were eager to capitalize on opportunities for contraband trading along the China border. “Free market” and “profit” were dirty words, but many in the town turned a tidy profit and crossed the river frequently in order to do so. Even Lee’s younger brother had done so with his friends on numerous occasions. One night, in the dead of winter, Lee cautiously slipped and slid across the frozen river into China, and made her way to her aunt and uncle’s house in Shenyang.

The city of Shenyang made North Korea’s capital of Pyongyang look like a backwater town. 8 million people resided in the bustling metropolis, connected by eight-lane highways and filled with beautiful, well-constructed skyscrapers that glittered at night. The power stayed on all night. There was tremendous variety in the stores. The portion sizes at restaurants were colossal compared to what Lee was used to. When she watched TV, she didn’t have draw the curtains or keep the volume low and fear the neighbors reporting her.

Her aunt and uncle had not heard about the death of Lee’s father years earlier. Lee told them about his arrest, interrogation, hospitalization, and eventual death. After a moment of brooding silence, her uncle railed against everything she had learned about North Korea, its history, and its politics.

He told her that the history lessons she’d been taught in school were all laughably false. Their so-called “Dear Leader,” Kim Il-sung, had not vanquished the Japanese through tactical brilliance. It was the Soviet Red Army that ousted the Japanese from North Korea, and instated Kim Il-sung as the leader. It wasn’t South Korea that invaded the North, but the North that had been the aggressor. Moreover, the Yankees and South Korea would have leveled North Korean forces handily if China had not come to North Korea’s aid. Oh, and that cabin in the mountains where Kim Il-sung was supposed to have been born is a total myth. He was born in Siberia, where his father was a soldier in the Soviet Red Army. Kim Il-sung wasn’t even a real communist: He enjoyed the choicest foods and drinks from foreign countries, owned palaces, and had a harem of women at his beck and call. North Koreans were strictly forbidden to gossip about their leader, so her uncle’s airing lurid details of the Dear Leader was a shocking display of impropriety.

For the first time in her life, she was hearing someone criticize North Korea. It was disorienting and she wished he’d stop. She thought her uncle had lost his mind, but the more time she spent outside of North Korea, the clearer it became who had been duped.  

Lee thought she’d be with her relatives for only a short while. A month sped by and she was anxious to return, but right before she left, her mother called her. It was a brief phone call, less than a minute long. Her mother informed her that it was not safe for her to return. The day after she’d left, the government of North Korea announced a census, which would account for all missing persons and require explanations for their absences. Lee’s mother had told the officials that her daughter was visiting relatives in another province. But rumors were already circulating that Lee was now in China. To put an end to the rumors, the mother informed the police that her daughter was missing, and had made plans to move to another part of the city where the rumors  would not follow the family.

Lee would not be reunited with her family for another 14 years.

Lee’s aunt and uncle were kind to let her stay in their home in China for six months, but she began to feel she was becoming a burden to them. Her homesickness grew intense, as did her nightmares that the Bowibu (North Korea’s secret police) had arrested her family. As a means of hastening Lee out of their lives, her aunt and uncle encouraged a relationship with the son of their friend, who was just a few years older than she. Through connections, they got her a Chinese ID, which she would receive after the wedding, an event that the boy’s domineering mother was planning without waiting for Lee’s approval.

Lee considered him a nice, but uninspiring boy. He was his mother’s lap dog and did whatever she told him. The promise of a Chinese ID, the security of a wealthy family running a successful business made her seriously consider the option, but when it became clear that this arrangement meant she would never be able to see or even contact her family again, she decided to strike out on her own. Just weeks before the wedding, Lee packed her bags, trashed her cell phone, and left without a word to her aunt, uncle, the boy, or his mother. She took a taxi to the city’s Koreatown, where, after narrowly escaping a sex slavery ring, she landed a job as a waitress.

While living on her own, she was in constant fear of being deported to North Korea. A grim fate awaited any who were returned to North Korea. It usually meant jail, torture, and public execution. Some escaped North Koreans became informants for the Chinese police, turning in their own in exchange for money and security.  Eventually, the Chinese police caught her. Someone had accused her of being North Korean. Officials interrogated her, testing her language abilities and trying to trip her up. She was one grammar mistake or cultural faux pas away from being put in prison or sent back to North Korea. Lee had been studying Mandarin assiduously for several years, watching TV, learning the Chinese characters, perfecting her accent. She was terrified during the examination, but did her best to subdue any signs of anxiety. Her efforts paid off. The police eventually determined that the report had been a false one and that she wasn’t North Korean. They apologized for their mistake and said she was free. She immediately found a new dormitory right next to the police station where she’d just been interrogated. She figured the police would not be looking for North Koreans in their own backyard.

These were just a handful of the trying events that Lee endured while in China. After 10 years there, she managed safe passage into South Korea. The transition was more difficult than expected. Though she was able to speak her mother tongue, the cultural divide was significant after many decades of hostile silence between the nations. This was a season of identity crisis. She had no country she could claim as her own, and the longer she spent in South Korea, the more she learned of what North Korea was really like. Proficiency in English was a must in South Korea, and so Lee began to learn yet another language.

While in South Korea, Lee received another distressing phone call from her mother. North Korean police had intercepted remittances that Lee had tried to wire to her family. Consequently, her family would be moved to a remote, inhospitable location in the countryside as punishment. She decided to plan her family’s escape.

The plan involved her taking a flight to China, returning to the China-North Korea border, guiding her family across 2,000 miles of Mainland China until they arrived in Southeast Asia. It was a seven-day bus ride. They were almost caught multiple times. At one point during the bus ride, a Chinese official boarded the bus asking for ID cards. The author stood up and told the officer that these people were deaf and dumb and that she was their caretaker. Lee had been talking in Korean for hours with her mother and brother, but no one on the bus ruined her cover. Fortunately, the officer bought it and they went on their way. Although Lee paid most of her money to bribe Laotian border officials, her family was still arrested and jailed in Laos. Multiple times. Eventually she ran out of money and could no longer pay the fines and bribes officials were demanding. Lee considers this the lowest moment of her life.

Miraculously, an Australian man at the visa office asked her what was wrong. Lee had never spoken to a white man before. In halting English and with the aid of a dictionary, the author explained her situation, and he immediately took her to the ATM and withdrew enough money to satisfy the bribes and fines required to get the family and two other North Koreans out of prison.

Lee speaks of this moment as life-changing. After spending years enduring fear, betrayal, disappointment, manipulation, and lies, her view of people had become bleak and cynical. Any act of kindness was a trick or a debt to be collected on later. For someone to give selflessly and sacrificially without expectation of anything in return opened up a window to a world where people could be kind and do good simply because it was good to do so. Malice and treachery could be the exception rather than the rule. Through that experience, people looked less cruel and Lee was able to receive love from others. It was new, but felt so natural.

“Hyeonseo” is the name that the author has given herself. It was not given to her, or one that extenuating circumstances required her to adopt. It is her seventh and final name. “Hyeon” means sunshine. “Seo” means good fortune. It signifies her desire to live in the light and not return to the shadows.

Lee thanked the generous stranger for liberating her family. When she asked him why he’d done so, he told her that he didn’t do it for her per se, but for North Korea. This man’s response has stayed with the author. His act of unexpected kindness became a symbol of hope that North Koreans have for a different life. Cut off from the outside world, North Koreans have no true standard of comparison. Most defect from North Korea not because they hunger for freedom, but simply because they’re hungry. They often go to China, but still hold to the deep-seated belief that defecting to South Korea would be an obscene betrayal of their “Great Leader.” This is one of a number of complications to reunification of the Koreas, and encouraging understanding between South Koreans and North Korean defectors.

After speaking out against North Korea’s tyranny at influential global forums like TED Talks and the United Nations, the bad press became widespread enough that North Korea’s Central News Agency denounced Lee as a terrorist, reporting that the West should be ashamed and embarrassed at the way they opened their arms to criminals. This is more bark than bite. And behind it is fear. Dictators often are more fearful than we realize; they feel the precariousness of their position. Unlike democracies, tyrants don’t have the benefit of multiple voices to strengthen policy. They have only one truth—their own voice. Reunification will not be easy. It will take hope and effort from people on both sides of the border, as well as the international community more generally.