Their perilous 2,000 mile journey from North Korea to Vietnam, where they planned to claim asylum in the South Korean embassy, was supposed to take around a week: it took more than six months and involved all kinds of dangers, including immersion in the shady world of people smugglers, brokers and corrupt officials. She vowed to get her mother out (her brother was engaged to be married, so it was more complicated to help him), but through a bizarre set of circumstances managed to smuggle both of them out.
It follows her life as an illegal immigrant in China, where she spent 10 years working low-level jobs, until she was able to get herself to South Korea, where she claimed asylum.īut throughout this time, always looking over her shoulder, changing her name (yes, seven times), learning Mandarin to fit in, buying a fake ID and keeping one step ahead of the authorities, she was constantly aware that she had left her mother and younger brother behind, whom she missed terribly. The book charts Hyeonseo’s journey to freedom. Her father was in the military and her mother smuggled goods from across the Chinese border and made a living selling them, so there was always food on the table - even during the Great Famine, where one million North Koreans died of starvation - and new clothes to wear.īut not long after Hyeonseo’s father died, she made a fateful - and terribly naive - decision: to cross the border and visit relatives in China for a few days, thinking she could return without any consequences.
She came from a relatively comfortable family. The Girl with Seven Names: Escape from North Korea by Hyeonseo Lee is an inspiring and harrowing true life story about escaping a brutal regime and then having the courage to get your family out too. I will never truly be free of its gravity, no matter how far I journey.
It is more like leaving another universe. Leaving North Korea is not like leaving any other country. Non-fiction – Kindle edition William Collins 320 pages 2016.
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