#ReadAroundTheWorld. #North Korea

This is a gripping powerful memoir by Hyeonseo Lee about her life in North Korea and her eventual escape to South Korea.

Lee was born in 1980 and grew up in Hyesan, North Korea, with her parents and brother Min-ho. Her family was relatively affluent by North Korean standards and her mother’s trading kept them from the starvation faced by many families in the 1990 famine which caused the deaths of 240,000 to 420,000 people. Lee describes conditions under the North Korean totalitarian dictatorship, with neighbours spying on each other and reporting any perceived disloyalty to the regime, which demanded an almost religious fervour and adherence to the Kim family personality cult. North Korean children were brought up to revere their leaders, Kim II Sung and his son King Jong II and believed they were living in the best country in the world. After the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the withdrawal of its support, North Korea spiralled into economic decline and famine. Its isolationist policies mean North Koreans live in total ignorance about life in the rest of the world, even South Korea. It is also widely thought to be the country with the worst human rights record in the world.

Hyeonseo crossed the border to China aged 17 and due to the political dangers was unable to return. After 10 years of living in China trying to pass as Chinese she eventually fled to South Korea and applied for asylum. She then embarked on a daring and fraught mission to rescue her mother and brother from North Korea through China and Laos.

I found this a very impacting story of great bravery and hardship. I appreciate the insight it gives both into the difficulties of life in North Korea, but also the difficulty adjusting to life outside of this regime, with the loss of simplicity and the familiar. The audio narration was excellent and I would highly recommend this book. ( )

A recount of her escape from North Korea. Quite a story of all she went thru and what her mom and brother had to also endure when she got them to escape also. Her story turned out well, but most do not. Kirkus: The ably reconstructed story of the author?s convoluted escape from North Korea, detailing the hardships of life there and the serendipity of flight.A supremely determined young woman, Lee chronicles her life in North Korea and her defection in her late teens in 1998. With the assistance of co-author John, she re-creates a picaresque tale of incredible, suspenseful, and truly death-defying adventures, which eventually led her to asylum in South Korea and then America. The author grew up largely in the northeast province of Ryanggang, bordering the Yalu River with China, and her family home was in Hyesan. Her father was a privileged member of the military, and her enterprising mother was a successful trader on the black market. The family, including younger brother Min-ho, did not endure the hardships of famine like people of low songbun, or caste, but the author learned that her father was not her biological father only shortly before he died by suicide after being trailed by security, beaten, and imprisoned in her mid-teens. Her mother had previously married and divorced another man. At age 17, the lights of China, directly across the river, beckoned, and the author managed to cross and establish contact first with a trading partner of her mother?s, then dissident relatives of her father?s in Shenyang. While the author had no intention of leaving her mother, it was apparent that it was too dangerous for her to return. Her relatives shielded her for a few years, trying to arrange a marriage with a wealthy Korean-Chinese man, from whom the author fled at the eleventh hour. Working as a waitress in Shanghai afforded some invisibility, though she was always susceptible to con men and security police. As the narrative progresses, the author?s trials grow ever more astounding, especially as she eventually tried to get her mother and brother out of North Korea.Remarkable bravery fluently recounted.

Quali sono i motivi che spingono a scappare da uno stato totalitario come la Corea del Nord? Ci possono essere tante motivazioni, ma Hyeonseo Lee si ritrova fuori del suo Paese per il motivo più apparentemente frivolo che si possa immaginare: è giovane, incosciente e curiosa di sapere cosa c’è al di là del confine nordcoreano. Mentre in un paese democratico te ne vai a zonzo in un edificio abbandonato, pericolante e interdetto al pubblico, rischiando la vita in maniera piuttosto stupida, in uno totalitario lasci che la tua voglia di ribellione giovanile ti porti al di là del confine senza prendere particolari precauzioni. Evidentemente l’imprudenza che dimostriamo da giovani non ha confini…

Così, Lee scappa dalla Corea del Nord quasi per caso e durante la sua fuga ha diversi colpi di fortuna: della qual cosa ci rallegriamo, ma il pensiero corre a tutte quelle persone che invece sono state sfortunate e che sono adesso in qualche buco dimenticato a sperare di morire presto. Perché in certe circostanze la morte non è davvero il peggio che ti possa capitare…

Ho letto molte recensioni nelle quali si rimprovera Lee di peccare di troppa ingenuità e credo siano molto ingiuste. Lee era una ragazza cresciuta in un mondo con regole molto diverse da quelle che ha trovato poi nei vari Paesi toccati dalla sua fuga, era giovane e penso che durante queste vicissitudini a volte abbassi la guardia solo perché sei stanca di tenerla alta e vuoi fidarti solo per avere tregua e riprendere fiato.

La ragazza dai sette nomi è un’autobiografia dalla quale è difficile staccarsi finché non si arriva l’ultima pagina (ho fatto le due di notte per finirlo) perché si vuole un lieto fine per Lee e la sua famiglia, perché si vuol saperne di più di un regime così attento a lasciar trapelare poco di sé e perché si vuol capire quanto possa essere terrificante la libertà per chi non l’ha mai avuta. ( )

This book is impossible to put down. ( )

This is an account of the author's childhood growing up in the North Korean town of Hyesan, on the banks of the Yalu river that borders China. The horrors of life in North Korea are vividly recounted, but in some ways in a matter of fact way, as these experiences were normal for anyone growing up there in the 80s and 90s, with no point of comparison - witnessing her first public execution at the age of 7 and seeing starvation during the 90s as the economy collapses after subsidies from the fallen Soviet Union dry up. She escapes to China in late 1997 just before her 18th birthday and spends several years in Shenyang and Shanghai, including various narrow escapes, but she shows great resourcefulness and is able to thank her lucky stars that she learned some Chinese characters as a child. She eventually ends up in South Korea. She eventually succeeds in persuading her mother and younger brother to escape. But there are powerful drivers pulling the family members in all directions - her mother, now in her 50s, has grown up, married, raised children and lived her life in a society with an utterly different mentality and after a while yearns to return to the North, regardless of the risks of capture, imprisonment or death; and her brother pines for his fiancée, whom he fails to persuade to follow him into China, owing to the risk it will cause for her parents. The author encapsulates the dilemmas in her introduction: "..... I still love my country and miss it very much....Even for those who have suffered unimaginably there and have escaped hell, life in the free world can be so challenging that many struggle to come to terms with it and find happiness... a small number of them even give up, and return to live in that dark place, as I was tempted to do, many times." Migration, even to what is objectively a much better life situation, still carries with its own contradictions and conflicted emotions. ( )