The Girl With Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story

Memoir by Hyeonseu Lee

This was a riveting read! The glimpse into life in North Korea was jaw-dropping, and the author’s courage and perseverance in seeking a better life was inspiring.

Note: there was some swearing and brief mention of sex and human trafficking, but in my opinion this would be an eye opening book to read and discuss with high school students.

Some notable quotes:

“we can do without almost anything–our home, even our country. But we will never do without other people, and we will never do without family.”

“One of the tragedies of North Korea is that everyone wears a mask, which they let slip at their peril.”

“I was six when I entered kindergarten in Anju. And although I was far too young to notice it, this marked a subtle change in my relationship with my parents. In a sense, I no longer belonged to them. I belonged to the state.”

“Ideological indoctrination began on the first day… I was too young not to believe every word… Even the toys we played with were used for our ideological education.”

“When the accusations started to fly and fingers started to point, this was the only time, ironically, that we called each other ‘comrade’.”

“History lessons were superficial. The past was not set in stone, and was occasionally rewritten… Lessons were taught with great conviction. Teachers were the only ones to ask questions in class… We were not required to formulate any views of our own, or to discuss, or interpret ideas in any subject… Propaganda seeped into every subject… I burned with thoughts of vengeance and righting injustice… Tales of heroes struggling against oppression were permitted as long as they fitted the North Korean revolutionary worldview, but any inconvenient details got blotted out.”

“Starvation and necessity were forcing a radical change of mindset. I saw it for myself in Hamhung. People were unlearning lifetimes of ideology, and reverting to what humans have practised for thousands of years–trade.”

“My earnings were my hard work and long hours; my savings were comforts deferred. North Koreans have no way to relate to this. In the outside world, they believe, money is plentifully available to all.”

“The Kims rule by making everyone complicit in a brutal system, implicating all, from the highest to the lowest, blurring morals so that no one is blameless.”

“freedom–real freedom, in which your life is what you make of it and the choices are your own–can be terrifying.”

“They carried that darkness in them, so strongly that it obscured their hopes for the future.”

“North Koreans who have never left don’t think critically because they have no point of comparison–with previous governments, different policies, or with other societies in the outside world.”

“My most basic assumptions about human nature were being overturned… Not only did I believe that humans were selfish and base, I also knew that plenty of them were actually bad–content to destroy lives for their own gain… All my life, random acts of kindness had been so rare that they’d stick in my memory, and I’d think: how strange… He showed me that there was another world where strangers helped strangers for no other reason than that it is good to do so, and where callousness was unusual, not the norm…. From the day I met him the world was a less cynical place… I started feeling warmth for other people. This seemed so natural, and yet I’d never felt it before.”

“One of the main reasons that distinctions between oppressor and victim are blurred in North Korea is that no one there has any concept of rights. To know that your rights are being abused, or that you are abusing someone else’s, you first have to know that you have them, and what they are. But with no comparative information about societies elsewhere in the world, such awareness in North Korea cannot exist. This is also why most people escape because they’re hungry or in trouble–not because they’re craving liberty… If the North Korean people acquired an awareness of their rights, of individual freedoms and democracy, the game would be up for the regime in Pyongyang.”