The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story by Hyeonseo Lee Page A

and the clean air. She did not think an industrial city was a good place to bring up Min-ho. Once again, we looked forward to the move. My parents talked incessantly of Hyesan and of the people there.
    We were going home.
    Min-ho, my mother, and I all waved goodbye to my father, and to Hamhung, from the train window. My father would follow in a day or two. That journey home would not have stuck in my mind but for a drama we experienced on the way that made a lasting impression on my mother and me.
    On the way north we had to change trains at a town called Kil-ju on the east coast. Train stations in North Korea have a rigorous inspection of travellers’ documents, with passengers often having to pass through cordons of police and ticket inspectors. No one can board a train without a travel permit stamped in their ID passbook, together with a train ticket, which is valid for four days only. The documentation is then checked all over again at the destination station. A woman ticket inspector examined my mother’s ticket and told her brusquely that it had expired. She was the type of official most North Koreans are familiar with – a mini Great Leader when in uniform. She took my mother’s ID passbook and ticket and told her to wait.
    My mother’s face fell into her hands. Now we had a problem. She would have to get permission from Hamhung again before we could buy new tickets. That would take time and she had two children in tow, and luggage. We were stranded. Min-ho was crying loudly. My mother took him off her back and held him and together we slumped onto a bench inside the station. I held her hand. We must have looked a desolate bunch, because a middle-aged man in the grey cap and uniform of the Korean State Railway came up to us and smiled. He asked what the matter was. My mother explained, and he went to the ticket inspector’s office. The woman was not there, but he brought back my mother’s ticket and ID passbook, and gave them to her.
    In a low voice he said: ‘When the train stops, jump on. But if she comes looking for you, hide.’
    My mother was so grateful that she asked for his address so that she could send him something.
    He held up his palms. ‘No time for that.’
    The train was creaking into the station, bringing with it a reek of latrines and soldered steel. It screeched to a stop and the doors began flying open.
    We boarded. The carriage was crowded. My mother quickly explained our predicament to the passengers and asked if we could crouch down behind them. Sure enough, a minute later we heard the voice of the ticket inspector, asking people on the platform about us. Next thing we knew she had entered the carriage.
    ‘Have you seen a woman with a baby and a little girl?’ She was shouting. ‘Did she get on the train?’
    ‘Yes.’ Two of the passengers in front of us said this in unison. ‘They went that way.’
    The woman got off, still looking left and right for us. We heard her asking more people on the platform. We were holding our breath. Why wasn’t the train moving? A minute seemed to pass. Finally we heard the shrill note of a whistle. The train shunted forward, couplings banging together. My mother looked at me and finally exhaled. She’d been terrified Min-ho would start bawling again.
    Kindness toward strangers is rare in North Korea. There is risk in helping others. The irony was that by forcing us to be good citizens, the state made accusers and informers of us all. The episode was so unusual that my mother was to recall it many times, saying how thankful she was to that man, and to the passengers. A few years later, when the country entered its darkest period, we would remember him. Kind people who put others before themselves would be the first to die. It was the ruthless and the selfish who would survive.

Chapter 7
Boomtown
    Our new home in Hyesan was another house allocated to us by the military. Our neighbours were other military officials and their families. The