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

I am Korean. Born in Seoul but raised in America since age 11. My grandparents were from North Korea so I grew up hearing lot of stories. I would 'hear' stories about North Korea after the war, their communist ways, people starving but I could not have imagined what exactly went on until I read this book. I could not stop reading once I started. I held onto my breath, cried and cheered as I read this book. This book will open your eyes and make you really appreciate for everything in life!

The book has four main parts. [1] The author’s life in North Korea. [2] The author’s life living as an “illegal alien” within China. [3] The author’s adaptation to life in South Korea, whose culture was markedly different from North Korean culture. [4] The author’s efforts to get her mother and brother from North Korea to South Korea.While the book gives the reader a basic idea of what life is like living in North Korea, it was the author’s determination, perseverance and resourcefulness that leaps off the pages and impresses the reader the most. Indeed, the book’s tone reads as if it’s of the “thriller” genre even though it’s actually non-fiction. A truly remarkable story of intelligence and courage (yet educational as well).Note: One reason for the book’s “thriller” tone was that many of the chapters end with a teaser sentence which urges the reader to immediately go on the next chapter. For an autobiographically work, I found that writing style a bit disconcerting.

I struggled to complete this book because I was never drawn into the story or the main character. Never once did I care about her fate. Never once did I care whether or not she made it to her ever changing destinations. So much of it was superficial (an unemotional retelling) and seemed contrived in the way that although she claimed to be poor, she always had money to pay for fake IDs, brokers, travel, etc.. Also, there was always someone to help her when she needed it, even when she was desperate. Could the story of this one person actually be the combined story of several persons? I'm not buying it as a first person account.

I've read several accounts of escaping from North korea. This is a good one because it covers several subjects that are not covered in other books. For example hyeonseo grew up right on the border next to the Yalu river. There is extensive discussion of cross border smuggling in the book as her mother and other relatives were participants in this trade. Being so close to the border they could also get Chinese cell phone service and calls could be made to North Korea using Chinese cells. The other thing that is quite different about her story is that she spend more than a decade in China and was continually hiding from being discovered as an illegal therr. In one period she mentioned to others that she was from North Korea and its clear somebody reported her. She withstood an interrogation by the Chinese police and was able to convince them she was Chinese due to her ability to speak Mandarin and her mastery of Chinese Characters, which she attributes to her father pushing her to study while she was in school. She has dangerous interactions with gangs, which she survives, was assaulted badly by an unknown assailant with a 1 liter beer bottle, an incident that did put her in the hospital and other adventures. One learns a bit about China and North Korea in this book. She has relatives which span several classes of North Korean society and one can get a feeling for what those strata are like. She also talks about the great amount of indoctrination she received during her education, of course this is common among the accounts of DPRK defectors. Different that most of the defectors books she does describe the challenges facing defectors in South Korea. Their education is worthless and hence most of them severely struggle to obtain a college degree, which is important in South Korea. she also describes the process by which they vet defectors as well as the interrogation techniques of the Chinese police. Once she has made it to South Korea she brings her mother and brother out of North Korea. This activity has several difficult twists which meant that the plan had to change in major ways on the fly and the challenges of getting through China to another country to defect to a South Korean embassy are shown. They chose Laos, a backwater whose insufferable bureaucracy and corrupt civil service made things hard. A very helpful Australian saves the day. The story is interesting and one learns a fair bit about North Korea and China.

This book serves as an important counterpart to another memoire "Escape from Camp 14".Whereas the Camp 14 book describes the daily struggle to survive, to scavenge through trash and dirt for a few kernels of corn - "The girl with seven names" seems so far removed from the North Korea Gulags as to make it almost trite in its accounts.This book's many pages are less filled with the horrors of prison survival or escape but rather the seemingly mundane but highly complex layers of cultures (North Korea, China and South Koera). I was not expecting this type of focus, having already read a dozen Holocaust survivor books and another dozen modern accounts of surviving the elements.At times I was annoyed at her seeming naivete or constant concern with her looks and clothes - appearing to live in a world of wealthy upper class north Korea, somehow completely unaware of the thousand compatriots living as starving animals just a few miles away. Over and over I could not make sense of her blindness to the NK regime of lies and abuse, and how her family retained its allegiance to it even after escape.But, I suppose this is why such a book has its place. She does give us a dizzying glimpse into the chaotic world of these cultres where appearance, ancestor worship, fortune tellers and unspoken cast systems dictate much of life. She did encounter all manner of lying people (military, police, prison etc...) all working off of bribes.Although I did learn much about parts of Asian culture and the life of upper cast North Koerans, her blissful ignorance made me want to quit reading - much as watching cheap horror movies where the college girls are always walking right toward the killer.Please not I am not minimizing her as a person nor what she did actually endure - I was simply more after a memoire like "Camp 14".

I don't think I've encountered such an emotionally moving book, more than a few times I've verbally said 'oh no...' before something bad happens and dreaded to read on, but unable to resist. It's so incredibly heartbreaking and yet enlightening to hear about the terrors of the North Korean regime from a woman who was once loyal to it, only to realise the truth about her country and escape. Genuinely, every person NEEDS to read this book because it will make you feel so incredibly lucky to be living a free life, safe from starvation, torture and oppression. This is the only book that gives me butterflies because it it so tense and nerve wracking. She and her biographer took me on a rollercoaster of hopefullness and hopelessness, and I have an undying respect for this amazing woman after hearing her story unlike any other.

‘The Girl with Seven Names’ is the story of a girl who grows up in North Korea believing that it is the greatest nation in the world.The story tells of her childhood living a relatively comfortable life by North Korean standards. However when famine strikes in the 1990s, she begins to notice what was happening to her people.When she was 17 almost as an adventure she risks crossing to China across a frozen river. She then realises that if she returned it would cause massive problems for her family so she remains in China.Slowly she also understands that her country is run by a brutal, totalitarian regime. The book then tells of her struggles to adapt and survive in China living largely as an illegal immigrant and then her flight to South Korea.Finally the book tells of her efforts to get her mother and brother to escape and live in South Korea too.Hyeonseo obviously showed immense strength and bravery, overcoming often life-threatening challenges to enable herself, her mother and brother to escape.However all three of them, her mother especially, struggle with living in South Korea and miss ‘home’.I loved Hyeonseo’s descriptions of day to day life in N Korea and her accounts of her flight to freedom. However I did sometimes get frustrated with her choices and believe although she was strong and brave she was also amazingly lucky at times.Nevertheless a brilliant and thought- provoking book. I would thoroughly recommend it.Hyeonseo now speaks out about the darkness and repression of the North Korean regime around the world.

I was made aware of this book after reading a short summary in The Sunday Times. This is the true account of the defection of a North Korean teenager and her remarkable journey through China and eventually into South Korea. The courage and strength she demonstrated was nothing short of astounding. She then went on to manage the escape of her family single handed. This in itself was a compelling account of selfless bravery and determination, but given that her life prior to these events had been severely restricted in terms of individual thought or deed under a brutal dictatorship, she achieved these feats singularly ill equipped to do so.

This book, had it not dealt with North Korea and the sensitivity this country arouses, should have by now been made into a film. Intrigue, serendipity, tragedy, despair and lots of varied visual images (from the bleakness of communist Korea to 21st century capitalist Shanghai) - it has all these in abundance. At one point I asked myself if it could be true - only to be reminded of my own experiences in a developing country where I had to resort to smuggling out currency and illegally applying for an extension to my visa to facilitate this. As a linguist I must also highlight the brilliant translation - it is word-perfect with some spectacularly chosen phrases (illuminated neon signs high up on buildings at night in modern-day China described as (if I recall rightly) 'atolls of light in a sea of darkness'). Perhaps the Winter Olympic Games of 2018 may produce a thaw (pun unintended) in the North-South relationship. Then let's see this brought to the big screen.

Knowing nothing about North Korea and no one who came from there, I was fascinated to have the chance of reading one young woman’s story. And remembered afterwards that indeed I had heard of her for she had now become an internationally known speaker. The book was a real eye opener about a closed dictatorial society. A frightening truth about a country none of us have visited. She looks back on her early and relatively happy life in North Korea and slowly brings us to understand a growing level of dissatisfaction with life in general and the cruel differences between the comfortable blinkered lives of party adherents and the struggle to survive by those who do not toe the line or who fall out of favour.The author, obviously a bright enquiring adolescent grasped these differences and saw, literally on the other side of the river, that life could be different. And better. Therein starts the long, arduous journey to be free of the Korean tyranny. Read the book and find out how!Much of the events and most of the speech will have been recreated from her memory but it reads well and keeps the reader wondering what the next step could possibly be.That the author has found her feet and happiness, and has opened the west’s eyes to this extraordinary dictatorial régime is simply fascinating. I’m really glad I purchased this title.