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

 

My nerves are shot. Gone. Bye bye. Hope to have them back again some time.

The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector's Story, a memoir written by Hyeonseo Lee, details the decade plus of efforts, both her own and many others, after defecting from North Korea to obtain a legally free status and life in South Korea.

There's literally no way for me to talk about this book without spoilers, other than to say, if we were listening to her inner monologue during this journey to freedom, it might look something like this:

Here's my plan. I'm gonna do it. It'll be very dangerous and I might get caught. If I get caught bad things will likely happen to me and my family. I can't trust anyone. I have to do it anyway. I have no choice. Oh no! (Fill in the blank with some terribly unpleasant, unplanned for circumstance). OK, I didn't see that coming. I'll do this other thing and hope that works. Whew ... it actually worked. Now on to the next terribly dangerous situation that will put me and possibly my family in peril.

Repeat. Over. and over. and over.

It was traumatic just to read it, as it almost felt like vicariously experiencing events through her, and I desperately wanted everything to be OK, not only for her but for her family. As a reader, having an idea of where things end doesn't seem to do anything at all to relieve the stress of the journey. At least not for me. Kudos to you if you handle it better than I do. There were parts of this book I'm not sure I was even breathing during. Watching someone struggle, suffer and despair that they've lost everything truly important to them is horrible. The scary part is that the book opened my eyes to the fact that there are untold numbers of North Koreans refugees just like her, who go through similar or worse things every day in their own efforts to find freedom.

I admit, during brief moments while reading, not feeling very sympathetic to the author , because I couldn't understand why she made so many of the choices she did. Many of them seemed born of supreme self-centeredness, but to be fair, I didn't grow up in a dictatorship and can't begin to get into the mind of someone who did. Perhaps she felt those were her only good options. No judgement. To her credit, she seems to be the first to admit that those choices were costly to a lot of people and always seemed to repay those she imposed upon. I think her life now, as a free person advocating for the human rights of her native country's people, has more than paid off whatever debt she may have had. She's remarkably brave and she's done a wonderful job telling her story. I can't imagine it was a pleasant experience to relive and bare to the world.

★★★★