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    The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story
    The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story
    The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story
    Audiobook10 hours

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

    Written by Hyeonseo Lee and David John

    Narrated by Josie Dunn

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

    An extraordinary insight into life under one of the world’s most ruthless and secretive dictatorships – and the story of one woman’s terrifying struggle to avoid capture/repatriation and guide her family to freedom.

    As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of millions trapped by a secretive and brutal communist regime. Her home on the border with China gave her some exposure to the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom and, as the famine of the 1990s struck, she began to wonder, question and to realise that she had been brainwashed her entire life. Given the repression, poverty and starvation she witnessed surely her country could not be, as she had been told “the best on the planet”?

    Aged seventeen, she decided to escape North Korea. She could not have imagined that it would be twelve years before she was reunited with her family.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers
    Release dateAug 2, 2019
    ISBN9780008378806

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    Reviews for The Girl with Seven Names

    4.5/5

    251 ratings26 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This book is interesting and talks about a girls life after leaving North Korea.
    • 4/5
      “I grew up knowing almost nothing of the outside world except as it was perceived through the lens of the regime. And when I left, I discovered only gradually that my country is a byword, everywhere, for evil. But I did not know this years ago, when my identity was forming. I thought life in North Korea was normal. Its customs and rulers became strange only with time and distance.”

      Hyeonseo Lee tells her life story from childhood in North Korea, moving with her family within the country, living under a false identity in China, and eventually gaining asylum in South Korea. She was able to help her mother and brother migrate later, though they faced complications and were imprisoned in Laos. It portrays the North Korean culture and the difficulties they endure, while being told it is the best country on earth.

      It is organized around the various names she assumed during her life. It is incredible how many obstacles she encountered before she was even thirty years old, including a brutal attack, an arranged marriage, sex trafficking, interrogation by the police, and being held hostage by a gang. It is a beautifully written story. The author has a talent for storytelling. This is one of the better North Korean defection memoirs I have read.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I had found another book by a North Korean defector on a freebie list and reading the reviews of that one, this came up as being a much better book - more engaging and interesting.

      I have to admit I was swept up into the story of Hyeonseo Lee's life - hence why I finished it in one day and was up late doing so.

      Thank you for sharing your story with us.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      A memoir more like a thriller than most memoirs. It's a story of her escape not only from North Korea but from her indoctrination as a schoolgirl - North Korea is the best country in the world and the Kim despots are like gods. At 17 she hatched a plan to escape across the river from her village to China, and there was horrified to come to realize that she had been brainwashed. She was able to pass as Korean-Chinese by learning Chinese, amazingly, by watching TV. Eventually she crossed to South Korea using a complicated plan she devised, and then managed to bring her mother and brother there.She is not only courageous but she must be brilliant, becoming fluent not only in Mandarin but in English - so much so that this book is beautifully written. Hard to put down.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      The author was born and grew up in North Korea. She escaped to China, just a river crossing away, when she was seventeen. I'm not sure that "escaped" is the right word to use although ultimately that was the result. Although she crossed during the night into China, she thought she would go back to her mother and brother in a few days. It was only after she had been in China where she stayed with a business associate of her mother's, that she began to understand it was impossible for her to return without reprisals for everyone in her family. Being in China was the beginning of her understanding that the world was not as she had been taught. Reading the account of her life over the next decade is compelling, harrowing and quite often frightening. One of the values of Lee's book is that for readers who live free, it makes the way people living in a totalitarian regime that creates false history and world events is similarly compelling, harrowing and quite often frightening.
    • 4/5
      Interesting and intriguing memoir of a North Korean defector. She also has done a TED talk about her experiences.Included many insights of life in North Korea and difficulties faced by those who want to defect.
    • 5/5
      I enjoyed this book immensely. I had never read a book about life in North Korea and this one did not disappoint. The perseverance of Hyeonseo is truly admirable. I followed along her adventures till the very end. Recommended.
    • 3/5
      Hyeonseo Lee grew up in a fairly privileged family in North Korea and was semi-insulated from the horrors of the North Korean regime. Although she witnessed a hanging and saw some effects of the famine while travelling to visit relatives, she was preoccupied with dancing to illegal South Korean pop music and wearing foreign clothes to school rather than her uniform. Because her family lived on a border town, her mother made some extra money smuggling Chinese goods and her brother played with Chinese boys on both sides of the river separating the two countries. She decides that she too wants to experience the excitement of crossing into China before she turns eighteen and is no longer protected by being a minor. So without telling her mother, she heads out for some adventure.Thus begins Lee′s life as a defector. After a couple of close calls with human traffickers and a Chinese gang, she settles down in Shanghai into a comfortable life translating for South Korean executives. One day she boards a plane for Seoul with her Samsonite luggage and seeks asylum. A few years later she arranges to bring her mother and brother to Seoul as well. They have a much more harrowing, and seemingly more typical, experience. But thanks to a wealthy stranger, they too make it to South Korea.Lee′s story is smoothly told, and she is clearly intelligent as well as lucky. She has become a voice for North Korean defectors, has spoken at the UN on human rights abuses, and given a TED talk. But despite its polish, or perhaps because of it, I found myself questioning parts of her narrative. Compared to the memoirs of other North Korean defectors, her experience does not appear to be the norm. Interested readers might also check out [Nothing to Envy] which relies on interviews with dozens of North Korean defectors.
    • 4/5
      Another story of North Korea which is adding to information about this little known country. The story is quite extraordinary. She kind of just slipped away. A young girl she already was strong and aware and was able to survive. Read for bookclub, March 2021.
    • 5/5
      I feel that everyone needs to read Hyeonseo Lee's story and be more informed about what is happening in North Korea. Those poor people...there are just no words. I'm just so thankful that she managed to escape, to get her family out and is brave enough to tell her story to the world.
    • 4/5
      Interesting book about North Korea.
    • 4/5
      This is a fascinating true story of how 17 year old Hysonseo Lee defects from North Korea in the 1990s. For twelve years Lee struggles to hide her identity for fear that she will be deported back to North Korea. Her journey takes her to China and eventually to South Korea. Ultimately, after facing tremendous challenges and hardships, Lee is able to get her brother and mother out of North Korea and is reunited with them in South Korea.
    • 4/5
      Amazing true story of a young woman who escaped from North Korea in 1997. I could not put it down as the situations she went into and had to survive were beyond any that I've heard of. Our life is so different from hers and seeing how she came to terms with the intense programming of her native country was inspiring!
    • 3/5
      I didn't find the writing style conducive to believing this story was important. Too much emphasis on trivial detail distracted from what should have been highpoints of the narrative. Interesting view of a culture that believes that luck controls the outcome.
    • 4/5
      The Girl with Seven Names, Hyeonseo Lee, David John, authors, Josie Dunn, narratorHyeonseo Lee had not meant to escape from North Korea or her family. Although it was dangerous, she had only wanted to secretly cross the river into China to visit with some relatives before her 18th birthday. She had planned to return in a couple of weeks at which time she would get an official ID card. However, life intervened in the form of a government census. Her mother was forced to report her missing. She had unwittingly put her mother and brother in danger. Her 18th birthday had come and gone, and now if she were to return she would be responsible for her actions and would be punished. She was trapped in China.Growing up, Hyeonseo Lee had been a happy and well loved child. In school, she learned what all the other children learned. North Korea was the greatest country in the world. The leaders were like G-ds and even their pictures were valued more than any other possession. The students were brainwashed. They were taught to hate South Koreans and Americans. There were rules about dress and behavior. They were trained to denounce each other for any perceived infractions. Those families would then simply disappear, more often than not. Neighbors turned each other in for extra rations. The fear was pervasive. They had no real freedom, but they also had no real responsibility. The government was meant to provide everything, education, health care, food and shelter, although it was minimal, at best, and many went hungry.This memoir is the remarkable story of Hyenonseo Lee’s journey to freedom after finding herself trapped in China without proper identification papers. Without any skills or visible means of support, she was forced to rely on her courage, her wits and her relatives and family friends to survive. She was willful and resourceful, and when she felt trapped, she simply picked up and moved on, without a plan, even abandoning those who helped her, if necessary. Fortunately, most often, luck intervened and prevented tragedy from overtaking her. Her story, though, is harrowing and hard to believe. Time after time she escaped from the most dangerous situations because of the kindness of strangers or simply serendipity. After more than a decade, and many hair-raising experiences, she was finally granted asylum in South Korea.Still, she was alone there, and separated from those she loved. She despaired and would often dream about bringing her mother and brother to her. It would not be without great expense and grave risk to all of them. Escaping from North Korea was dangerous, even for those who had special relationships with the border guards, like her brother who was a smuggler. In the Asian countries mentioned in the book, North and South Korea, Laos, Vietnam, and China, bribery was a way of life. Smuggling of goods and humans was a common business. Brokers, sometimes unscrupulous, were paid to guide those seeking asylum out of the country. Bribes needed to be arranged so that border guards would look away. Government officials took money, as well. Sometimes the commitments were not honored and the money was lost and the asylum seekers were imprisoned and sent back to uncertain fates. No one could be trusted. People eagerly turned each other in to the authorities. Escape often depended on lucky breaks.For almost two decades, Hyeonseo bounced from job to job, relationship to relationship and from one precarious situation to another. What her story reveals is the constant fear that the North Koreans live with daily. It reveals their distrust of everyone, since everyone is a possible enemy. It reveals their ignorance of all things other than North Korea. It reveals their hatred for America. North Koreans are brainwashed by a system that allows no outside information to influence their lives. It was cell phones and the internet that combined to open up Hyenonseo’s eyes to the world outside and that allowed her to maintain contact with her family throughout her years of exile.After reading the memoir, I thought that the author either exhibited extreme courage or extreme naïveté. On the one hand, her cleverness allowed her to escape many an ordeal, but on the other, her lack of worldliness prevented her from being suspicious at appropriate times which exposed her to danger that might have been avoided. That said, I do not think there are many who could have successfully accomplished all that she has been able to accomplish in the two decades of her wandering, although, in order to accomplish her goals, she often compromised others. Luckily, things seemed to work out in the end.There is a great deal of significance given to names in the book. First, a good name was very important in North Korea. Second, the author changed hers, for a variety of reasons, seven times before she found freedom. Thirdly, she also had a unique way of describing her relatives with names that revealed something about them, like Uncle Poor, Uncle Opium, Aunt Pretty and Aunt Tall.While the book is really informative, and I learned a great deal about the hardships and the dangers the North Koreans face, I don’t think the book fully brought out the magnitude of the danger. So much happened over the almost two decades of her trials and tribulations, but sometimes the story moved on before I fully absorbed it or understood exactly how it really played out.
    • 4/5
      Lee Hyeonseo begins to question very early the propaganda that engulfs her in North Korea. As she sees everyone around her struggle in their daily lives and the “great leader” stay well-fed and fat, she decides to cross the river to China. That moment of curiosity of what lies across the river soon becomes a life-changing decision that leads her to a very difficult path to freedom and the loss of what she once believed was the reality of her North Korean world.
    • 4/5
      A must read to understand the mind-set of North Koreans, especially in the US's current situation with North Korea. What I found astounding is how early the brainwashing starts and the picture in the Kindergarten classroom of a North Korean soldier bayoneting 3 enemies!
    • 5/5
      This book should be compulsory reading.Hyeonseo's sympathetic yet clear-eyed portrayal of life inside North Korea is eye-opening.We all need to read this book because we need to understand the mindset of North Koreans.We all need to read this book because we need to understand the plight of illegal immigrants.We all need to read this book because we all need to understand how hard it is to permanently live somewhere that is not your home and without your loved ones and friends.(And it's well written too.)
    • 4/5
      What struck me most about this story is not the major acts of bravery or the astounding instances of luck, but how leaving North Korea presented more personal challenges. It is hard to live with freedom when it is something you never had; making choices and taking responsibility for those choices. It is hard to leave family at any time, but leaving and knowing you will never see them again must take such a toll. Learning that everything you'd been taught about your country and its leaders is a lie, as is most of what you'd been told about foreigners. What a toll it must take on an individual's sense of self, having to question everything you'd been taught to believe. Ms. Lee bravely faced many physical dangers and displayed remarkable intelligence and courage. Her inner courage, too, is much to be admired.
    • 3/5
      "The hours in each day when we were not being watched, by someone, were few"By sally tarbox on 27 June 2017Format: Kindle Edition"The hours in each day when we were not being watched, by someone, were few"By sally tarbox on 26 June 2017Format: PaperbackQuite an interesting account of a N Korean defector. Min Young (later she took the name Hyeonseo Lee) lived a relatively privileged life in N Korea, with a stepfather in the military, a clever mother able to make a living in trading over the border (illegal but the guards could be bribed) and relatives in China.She describes her childhood near the border - the conformity, the secret police, the almost religious devotion to the leader - and the executions and famine. As a rebellious teen, she planned a 'holiday' over in China by crossing the river by night. How her life panned out here - and later in S Korea - and how her later effort to help her family escape fared, makes an at times nailbiting read.
    • 4/5
      The author shows that if you live under tyranny, being machiavellian can let you rise to the top.
    • 5/5
      Der lange Fluchtweg einer mutigen und tapferen Frau. Unglaubliche Geschichte
    • 4/5
      The Girl with Seven Names by Hyeonseo Lee is an inspiring story of courage and bravery as one woman struggles to keep her family together after separation that included varying periods of incarceration for each of the three-member family. It is an incredible (as in hard to believe) story but if a reader wanted to check the authenticity of some of the incidents cited, it could be easily done by examining public media reports. Imagine a Korean woman (Hyeonseo) meeting a western traveler in Laos who voluntarily gives money to Hyeonseo to aid in paying corruption money to get Hyeonseo’s mother and brother out of a Lao prison. There was not an exchange of favors for money and the traveler had no assurances of ever being repaid. The incident happened, the traveler was repaid, and the story was reported by the Australian press.Hyeonseo was 17 years old when she decided to cross the border between North Korea and China. It was illegal but because she was under 18 years old, her punishment would be a slap on the wrist. If over 18, it would be jail time. She decided to take the risk because she thought it would be her last chance to see the town across the river, a town that seemed to always have electricity, far different than her own. She crossed the river, met a trading partner colleague of her mother and asked for help to make a trip to Shenyang to see a distant relative. While there she received a call from her mother. A day after crossing the river, the North Korean government began a census. It was noted that she was missing; her mother reported her as missing in an attempt to cover up the illegal crossing. She could not go home to North Korea; her eighteenth birthday had come and gone, she was stuck in China.Hyeonseo was stateless, she had no identification papers in China. She stayed for such a long period of time with her relatives that there was thought of marriage just to get an ID and avoid repatriation by China. Hyeonseo thought marriage was just another type of incarceration. She had escaped, even if unintentionally, from North Korea; now she would escape from marriage. Leaving her relatives secretly, she went to another Chinese city with a Korean expatriate community where she fell into a trap set by human traffickers. Escaping from that, she went to yet another Chinese city where she purchased false ID and settled into an acceptable job. However, she felt she would never be accepted by the Chinese, she had false identification papers, and she missed her family. How could she reunite with them or even communicate with them without putting them in danger from the north Korean government?Each time she changed location in China, she changed names. She would continue to do this in an attempt to avoid capture by an increasingly more efficient bureaucratic surveillance system. Missing her family and feeling unaccepted by China, she finally resolved to go to South Korea. She felt she would better fit into that society. But entry to South Korea would also have to be done illegally. Once she arrived in South Korea, she could claim political asylum, but getting there would involve subterfuge.She got to South Korea, she got her mother and sister out of North Korea, the three of them eventually got to the United States. This is not a spoiler. The excitement in the novel is with the tricks and subterfuges necessary to make the many, many escapes.The first one-third of the book Hyeonseo writes of her childhood in North Korea. She writes of struggles to survive hunger on the parts of most of the population. After the death of her father, she writes of her mother’s successful attempts to establish herself as a black market trader and a government official willing to accept bribes and gifts that were at the heart of North Korean bureaucracy. Her success allowed Hyeonseo to escape much of the hunger that the general population endured. While in China she discovered some of the horrible truths about life under the North Korean regime. Things she considered normal everyday coping strategies to deal with an authoritarian regime were deplored by every country outside North Korea. Her former government and leaders were laughing stocks to the rest of the world. She asked herself a question. How could such a world exist? She answered the question and it is an answer that fits for all corrupt and authoritarian governments in the world today. What is the answer? I won’t reveal it. That would be a spoiler. Read the book.I read this book in preparation for a writer and reader convention I will attend in Bali, Indonesia at the end of October 2016. One of the authors I will meet is a Korean lady who went undercover as an investigative journalist in North Korea. It would be nice if I could ask an intelligent question. Hyeonseo also gave A TED talk. Google to find it; it is an inspiring twelve-minute talk.
    • 5/5
      Hyeonseo Lee was born and raised in North Korean. The city she lived was quite prosperous, second only to the capitol city of Pyongyang, where the ruling elite lived. Because Lee's city was separated from China only by a narrow river, the city's prosperity was built on smuggling goods from China and sending them onward to Pyongyang. Many of Lee's relatives, including her mother, made their living by smuggling. Lee grew up in the totalitarian state, where all thoughts were absolutely controlled. The ruling Kim’s were regarded as gods with mythologies built around them. North Korea propaganda assured her that North Korea was the most prosperous nation in the world, and that it's enemies, especially its arch-enemies, South Korea, the US and Japan, were so jealous as to stop at nothing to bring the country down. Citizens of Korea had no way of disputing this as access to information is absolutley controled.Lee began questioning this however, after seeing people dying in the streets from famine, as well as noticing that although North Korea seldom had electricity, the lights from nearby China shown brightly. It’s little wonder then, that Lee decided to cross the river into China and see a bit of the world before she turned eighteen. She was under the impression that by doing it before she reached her legal majority, she would be considered a child and there would be no sanctions against her even if she was caught. Lee expected to be gone only overnight, helped by her mother’s smuggling contacts to visit some distant cousins in China. In reality, it was the last time she would live in North Korea, as a return there could result in her own and her family’s deaths. Her life as an illegal Korean in China was very hard and required quick wits and multiple identities. If she had been discovered, China would have immediately deported her back to North Korea and almost certain death. If she could reach South Korea, she would have political asylum, but it was a difficult road that she travelled as she was determined to also free her younger brother and mother. And interestingly enough, South Koreans view North Korean refugees as very low class. I found this to be a vivid portrait of life in North Korea and the experiences of those who manage to escape. . One of the book's most stunning statements was that North Koreans have no personal idea of human rights – the entire notion, which we cherish but often take for granted, is foreign to the citizens of North Korea, who exist only at the pleasure of the regime.Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      This is the true story of a girl who defects from North Korea. Her search for freedom requires frequently changing her identity while hiding in plain sight. A must read for anyone who takes their freedom for granted.
    • 5/5
      Wow, just wow!If I hadn't known that this was a true story, I wouldn't have believed it could have happened. If it had been a thriller I'd have been saying 'Come on, you expect me to believe this?!' The number of near misses and strokes of luck were incredible - but at the same time it made me realise how many North Korean defectors must fail along the way. If it is this difficult and so many people are just trying to trip you up, then it is amazing that anyone succeeds.Hyeonseo Lee didn't even mean to leave North Korea, she realised that she could get away with things as a child, that would become illegal once she turned eighteen. So she decided to take her last chance to visit China, just over the river from her home, while she was still seventeen. Unfortunately she timed her visit badly and was away for a vital census - now it was impossible for her to return.For the next ten years she lived a life of deception and secrecy in China, missing her mother and brother intensely. She had to learn Mandarin Chinese and unlearn her North Korean habits, for fear they would give her away. Defectors are regularly returned by the Chinese government and their fates, once back home, are beatings and torture in prison camps.Hyeonseo's memoir describes how she eventually decides to live in South Korea, a country that she had been indoctrinated to think of as 'The Enemy' all her life, and how she makes a harrowing journey to bring her mother and brother to South Korea too.This is a truly amazing story of courage and it is worth viewing her twelve minute TED talk on You Tube as well.Also read:Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick (5 stars)