The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story (29 page)

To prevent the creation of a North Korean ghetto, the South Korean government disperses defectors to towns and cities all over the country. We can’t choose where we are sent. Ninety-nine per cent would prefer Seoul but, given the shortage of housing, only a few were selected. Each of us was given a grant of 19 million won (about $18,500) for housing expenses.

I desperately hoped to live in Seoul. I thought my best chance of finding a job was there, and it was where Kim lived. I thought of him every day at Hanawon. I daydreamed about him in classes. I tried to picture his apartment in Gangnam, what it would be like to meet his family, his stylish friends, how he spent his Sunday mornings – with espressos, and jazz music, and stock-market news.

My mood plunged, however, when I realized that only ten people out of hundreds would be chosen for an apartment in Seoul.
Ten people.
So to avoid any accusations of unfairness, Hanawon selected the people destined for Seoul by a transparent lottery of numbers placed in a box. In a packed auditorium, a staff member shook the box, as if it were a game show, and picked out ten numbers. One by one, he called them out:
126, 191, 78, 2, 45
…
Each winner threw up her arms, cried with happiness, and was embraced by her friends.

I was only half listening. The whole spectacle depressed me. I was trying to imagine where else I might get sent in the country.

201, 176, 11 …

The man was looking around the auditorium. ‘Eleven? Who has it?’

The west coast wouldn’t be so bad.

‘Eleven? Come on.’

A memory came to me of a summer on the beach near Anju, and my father telling me how the moon made the tide go out.

I felt a sharp pain in my arm. The woman next to me had poked me. She was pointing at the number in my hand. ‘Eleven – that’s you.’

I was met off the bus by Mr Park, the smiling policeman who’d taught us about personal security at Hanawon. ‘You’ve moved to my neighbourhood,’ he said. ‘I’m here to help.’ He was in his early forties and was from the Security Division of the National Police Agency. His calm authority reminded me a little of my father. He helped me find my feet, and to do the paperwork to apply for my South Korean ID and passport. Mr Park remains one of the most warm-hearted people I have ever met in South Korea.

My new home was a small, unfurnished, two-room apartment in the Geumcheon district of southwest Seoul, near Doksan Subway Station. I was on the thirteenth floor of a twenty-five-storey block. It had a view of similar blocks and the street. There was a large hill behind it. This was not an affluent neighbourhood.

Red Cross volunteers had shown me to my apartment. When they said goodbye, and my metal door closed, echoing down the corridor with a clang, I was alone. Not in hiding, but free. I stood at the window for a long time, watching life go by below, and the shadows of the buildings lengthen as the sun moved into the west. I didn’t know what to do, I realized. I could go out and buy a mattress and a television and watch soaps all day; I could let laundry and unwashed dishes pile up; I could stand here and wait for summer to turn to autumn, and autumn to winter. The world would not interfere. Freedom was no longer just a concept. Suddenly, I felt panicked. It was so frightening and unsettling that I called Ok-hee and asked if I could stay at her apartment that night.

Ok-hee was very relieved to see me. After we’d embraced and congratulated ourselves on achieving our dream, we sat on the floor and ate instant noodles. Her own experiences since arriving in Seoul made a sobering story. Despite living for years in Shanghai, as I had, Ok-hee was not finding life here easy. She told me of an experience she’d just had after a job interview. The interviewer told her that he would call her to let her know the company’s decision. After days without hearing, she phoned the company and was told that they hadn’t called because it was impolite to reject someone directly.

North Koreans pride themselves on their directness of speech, an attitude that had been encouraged by Kim Jong-il himself. Foreigners are often taken aback by the bluntness of North Korean diplomats. Ok-hee’s experience was the first hint I got that the two Koreas had diverged into quite separate cultures. Worse was to come. After more than sixty years of division, and near-zero exchange, I would find that the language and values I thought North and South shared had evolved in very different directions. We were no longer the same people.

The next day Kim flew home from Shanghai and came straight to my apartment. I melted when I saw him. It had been three months. We spent a long time simply hugging, pressing our faces together, whispering how much we’d missed each other. I’d missed his touch, his fragrance, his calming voice. He’d grown his hair longer. If it were possible, he was more handsome than he was before.

Later he took me to a big cinema complex in Yongsan. He suggested buying snacks to take into the theatre, and asked me what I wanted. I read the illuminated menu above the counter. It was in Korean. I couldn’t understand a word. What were
na chos, pop corn
, and
co la
? Of course I knew these snacks, from China. But English transliterated into Korean words baffled me. And, as I soon found, there were many more. When people mentioned that they were in the
elebaytoh,
leaving their
apateu
to catch a
tekshi
to a
meeting
, I felt embarrassed. I had no idea what they were talking about. I needed to learn. In fact, I needed a new education.

I had grown up in a communist state where the Fatherly Leader provided for all. The most important quality for all citizens was loyalty, not education, nor even the capacity for hard work. Social status was fixed by the
songbun
of one’s family
.
In South Korea, too, social status matters a lot, but here it is not hereditary. It is determined through education. And although education is a great leveller in South Korea – even the children of the wealthy get nowhere if they do poorly at school – it brings with it oppressions of its own. It is partly the reason why South Koreans are, according to surveys, the unhappiest people in the developed world.

Everyone I seemed to meet was desperate for a good education in order to avoid sinking to the bottom of the pile. In the stampede to avoid this fate, 80 per cent of school students go on to university. Even K-pop stars and athletes take degrees to avoid being perceived as the other 20 per cent. Mothers enrol their children in extra tuition from kindergarten to give them a competitive edge. The pressure mounts so much that school years can be torture. Because so many are awarded degrees, extra credentials are needed if a job candidate is to shine – proficiency in English, and so on. If, after all this struggle, a student gains a position in one of South Korea’s star conglomerates, such as Hyundai, Samsung or LG, then they have made it.

North Korean defectors flounder because the education they received back home is worthless in a developed country. If they are too old to return to school, they have to opt for menial work. If they are young enough, they find themselves lagging far behind, and lacking confidence. I had been vaguely aware of this while living in Shanghai, but the reality began to bite during those first weeks in Seoul. I knew then what they meant at Hanawon when they said life would be ‘challenging’. Without a university degree, I would be no one.

Because North Korean defectors are usually in low-paid, low-status jobs, they are looked down upon in South Korea. The discrimination and condescension is seldom overt, but it is felt. For this reason many defectors try to change their accents and hide their identity when looking for work. I was deeply hurt when I learned this. I had kept my identity secret for years in China. Would I have to hide it here, too?

With Kim’s help, my adjustment was going more smoothly than it was for the other defectors I’d known at Hanawon, some of whom were looking for service industry or blue-collar-type jobs where they’d be fed at work. I didn’t want to do that. I was done with waitressing. I wanted a life that wasn’t day-to-day and hand-to-mouth. This took a little time to figure out. After a few weeks, I made the decision to enrol in a six-month course to become a certified tax accountant. I was good with figures, and thought this would position me well for a job. My fellow students were all women. I would soon learn from them how hard it was for South Koreans themselves to be happy in their own society.

Many of them had failed to find jobs with prestigious companies and had become depressingly resigned, believing that fate was against them. Minor flaws – being too plump, or too short – and misfortunes in love became exaggerated and were perceived as causes of failure. Still, I couldn’t help feeling sympathy for them. Every country has worries of its own. Sometimes their complaints sounded like plotlines from TV melodramas.

Within only weeks of being reunited with Kim, I began experiencing a romantic melodrama of my own. When Kim and I had lived in Shanghai, our feelings for each other were so strong I was convinced we would marry. I’d waited for him to propose. But after two and a half years, he had not proposed. Now, I understood what had been stopping him.

Kim had grown up in Gangnam, the affluent, fashionable district on the south side of the Han River. His family had profited greatly from the boom years, becoming millionaires from soaring property values. He was highly educated and his parents were also graduates of prestigious universities. As crucial as education is in South Korea, it is not an end in itself. It is the means toward status, and social status is the insurance against the fear that everything may one day turn upside down. In a country that went from being third-world to the world’s fourteenth-biggest economy in the space of one lifetime, hunger and instability are still lingering memories. If all else fails, a person with status will have family and connections to fall back upon. Kim’s friends came from similar backgrounds. Some were well-known actors and models – part of Seoul’s beautiful set. When we’d go for a night out, some of the girls my age would arrive in luxury Western sports cars. Their parents had impressive job titles in the Korean conglomerates. Yet I had nothing – no family, no job, no degree, no money. I had no
back
, as the South Koreans say, from the English word ‘background’, meaning that I had no connections, no support.

I didn’t feel sorry for myself. I’d shared a similar belief system in North Korea. Uncle Poor had grown up in a high-
songbun
family, but he’d ignored family advice, married the girl from the collective farm, and had sunk in the social scale. Kim could rebel against his parents, run away with me, and marry me. We might even be happy for a year or two. But the romance would fade. The disappointment he had caused his family would gnaw at his conscience. Life with me would wear him down until, as I imagined had been so with Uncle Poor, he’d conclude that his marriage had been a big mistake.

Kim had realized this before I had – probably when we were living in Shanghai – and had been trying to think of a way forward.

‘I want you to go to university,’ he said, driving me home after one of these nights out with the beautiful set. ‘If you could pass the exams to be a doctor or a pharmacist, it would really please my parents.’

I stared ahead and said nothing. I had not even been introduced to his parents.

The next day, however, I investigated. The medical courses were expensive, and only the very brightest students passed the exams. Worse, the NIS had told me that because I’d left North Korea without graduating from secondary school, I would have to take a two-year course to become sufficiently qualified merely to apply for college. This titanic effort to please Kim’s parents would take a decade.

In that summer of 2008, I watched the Beijing Summer Olympic Games on television with Kim and a large group of his friends at an apartment in Gangnam. When the South Korean athletes were winning, they cheered tumultuously, as did everyone watching in nearby apartments. I heard the roars rising across the whole neighbourhood. They chanted ‘
uri nara!’
(Our country!) and ‘
daehan minguk!’
(Republic of Korea!) I was cheering, too, but I couldn’t shout
uri nara
. I tried to, because I wanted to fit in, but my heart went quiet, and the words wouldn’t come out.

My heart was rooting for North Korea. I was proud to see my country winning gold medals. But I couldn’t cheer. North Korea was the enemy.

Later, I turned down Kim’s offer of dinner and went home to my little apartment, where I could still hear distant cheering and celebrations from the other blocks. The experience had depressed me. That night I lay awake on my mattress, watching the reflected glow of the city on the clouds. The sky over Seoul was a thick amber broth that obscured the stars. In Hyesan, I could see the Milky Way from my bedroom window.

The Olympics sparked a full-blown identity crisis in me. It had probably been building for a while, fuelled by the insecurity I was feeling over Kim, and by my lack of education.

Am I North Korean? That’s where I was born and raised. Or am I Chinese? I became an adult there, didn’t I? Or am I South Korean? I have the same blood as people here, the same ethnicity. But how does my South Korean ID make me South Korean? People here treat North Koreans as servants, as inferiors.

I wanted to belong, like everyone else around me did, but there was no country I could say was mine. I had no one to tell me that many other people in the world have a fragmented identity; that it doesn’t matter. That who we are as a person is what’s important.

As if reaching for a well-thumbed book, my mind turned again to thoughts of going home to North Korea. But now that I was a South Korean citizen it was illegal for me to go to the North. If I did go, at best the North would parade me for propaganda purposes as someone who’d rejected the South (this happened with some people who decided to go home); at worst I’d be imprisoned or shot.