Surviving the Dear Leader

THE GIRL WITH SEVEN NAMES
A North Korean Defector's Story
Hyeonseo Lee (with David John)
William Collins
304 pages; Rs 399

It is a world unto itself, so shrouded in secrecy that little is known of what life is like for the people who inhabit it. North Korea, the world's most mysterious and militarised country, doesn't let anything get past its borders, least of all information.

But every now and then, stories escape its boundaries. Often, these are tormented accounts from the country's unforgiving prison camps. But everyday life of ordinary North Koreans remains an enigma. What is it like being a child growing up under the oppressive dictatorial regime? What is family life like? What are young boys and girls taught in school?

Through her extraordinary story, Hyeonseo Lee offers an insight into this inscrutable society in her book, The Girl With Seven Names. Ms Lee's account is not that of a North Korean seeking escape from her country. Her foray out of North Korea at age 17, which changes her life forever and has her constantly redefining her identity, happens more out of a sense of adventure than the need to escape.

Ms Lee was born into a privileged family, one that had good songbun - a caste system that operates in North Korea. A person's songbun, she explains, determines the kind of life he and his family leads. A family is classified as "loyal, wavering or hostile, depending on what the father's family was doing at the time just before, during and after the founding of the state in 1948."

Ms Lee recounts a happy childhood, snowy mountains, picnics with parents and bicycle rides at Hyesan, a city in the north so close to China that all one has to do is walk across the narrow frozen Yalu River in winter to get away - provided the men guarding the borders don't spot you. But, she also remembers certain shadows that constantly hovered on them. They were portraits of the dictator and his son - "Great Leader Kim Il-sung" and "Kim Jong-Il, the Dear Leader". These portraits were omnipresent, hanging like icons in every home and on every building. They had to be cleaned with a special cloth provided by the government, would share the wall with no other picture and would be inspected by officials in white gloves once a month. A single speck of dust found on them would invite punishment for the entire family.

This feeling of being watched for the slightest slip extended beyond portraits. The secret police, through its network of ordinary citizens and seemingly benign neighbours, also kept a close watch on people. It was an existence under constant scrutiny.

Also staggering is the extent of indoctrination Ms Lee describes in the book. North Korean boys and girls are from childhood taught to believe that they are the children of Kim Il-sung, which makes them the children of "the greatest nation on earth." In school, stories of the "Great Leader" and "Dear Leader" are narrated as being magical. Kim Jong-Il's birthday is celebrated as the "Day of the Bright Star" and that of Kim Il-sung as the "Day of the Sun" and the country is described as the "Land of the Eternal Sun". Ideological education begins early and the impressionable minds soak it all in.

Ms Lee describes the subtle change that took place in her relationship with her parents when she entered kindergarten at the age of six. She says in a sense, she now no longer belonged to them; she belonged to the state.

It was a life of few luxuries. The communist regime frowned upon anything that carried a hint of capitalism. But the human spirit isn't easy to contain, as is evident from Ms Lee's account of the extent the resourceful would go to bribe officials to smuggle goods from across the border.

As she grows, doubts about the "greatest nation" begin to creep in and there comes a point in Ms Lee's life when she wants to explore the world beyond - to experience the glittering lights of China while her own country is plunged in darkness, night after night. Curiosity, with some help from a friendly soldier at the border, leads her to her uncle and aunt in China. The jaunt is meant to last a few days, until the painful realisation that she has crossed the point of no return and can never go back home hits her.

Her life with no papers and no identity in China, which ships illegal North Koreans back to their country where only horrors await them, paints a stark picture of what a North Korean defector faces. Even now, in her book, she is too scared to reveal the real names of relatives left back in North Korea. Instead, she identifies them as "Uncle Money", "Uncle Poor", "Uncle Cinema" and "Uncle Opium". The enormous risks she takes to get her mother and brother out of North Korea over a decade later is the stuff thrillers are made of. Along the way, lessons learnt in childhood pull her out of impossible situations.

The Girl With Seven Names is a spirited account of a North Korean girl who was born Kim Ji-hae, but chose to be called Hyeonseo Lee. "Hyeon" means "sunshine" and "Seo" means "good fortune". This incredible story, powerfully narrated, draws attention to the state of a nation and its people. These are people who have been forced to wear masks to survive every minute of the day - whether they are in North Korea or have escaped it. Towards the end of the book, Ms Lee writes: "I know that the mask may never fully come off. The smallest thing occasionally sends me back into a steel-plated survival mode."

That's not the way people are meant to be. But then, what choice do they have when survival is at stake?

Ms Lee's is more than the story of the girl with seven names. It is the story of a people - of a country that is part of our world, and yet isn't.