The Girl with Seven Names -- Hyeonseo Lee

Under each arm he was holding two flat, rectangular objects.
He wasn't thinking of our possessions, or our savings.
He'd rescued the portraits.
...
The whole street had seen my father save the portraits,
an act of heroism that would win a citizen an official commendation.

When I was growing up Hyesan was an exiciting place to be.
Not because it was lively - nowhere in the country was noted for its theatre scene, restaurants or fashionable subcultures.
The city's appeal lay in its proximity to the narrow Yalu River, Korea's ancient border with China.
...
marvellous foreign-made goods - legal, illegal and highly illegal
...

The story of the nativity of their son, the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il, brought me out in goose bumps.
His birth was foretold by miraculous signs in the heavens - a double rainbow over Mount Paektu,
swallows singing songs of praise with human voices, and the appearance of a bright new star in the sky.

He could travel for days without resting.
He could appear simultaneously in the east and in the west.
In his presence flowers bloomed and snow melted.

Police grabbed her at once and frogmarched her to the pole.

She said she hadn't realized until then that it was as easy to kill a person as to kill an animal.

His image was omnipresent, in murals of coloured glass, in statues of marble and bronze, in portraits on the sides of buildings
...

Or a friend and I would strike a deal where she would criticize me one week,
and I would criticize her the following week with some prearranged made-up charge.
And so my friend would stand and say: 'Our Respected Father Leader said that children must focus on their studies
with dedication in their hearts and a clear mind.' Then she'd point at me. 'In the last week I have noticed that
Comrade Park is not listening in class.' I would hang my head and try to look chastened.
The next week would be my turn.
That way we stayed friends.

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.
...
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.

I thought the old woman's prophecy meant that I would have a career as a professional accordionist and marry someone from another province.
Maybe I would live in Pyongyang.
That would be a dream come true.
Only privileged people lived there.
I fantasized about this for weeks until an event occurred that obliterated my daydreams and cast a shadow over my whole childhood.

In North Korea family is everything.
Bloodlines are everything.
_Songbun_ is everything.
_He's not my father_.

I did not see much point to this, when I had clothes and boys to think about.
I did not know that a time would come when I would thank my father in prayers for making me study Chinese.
It was a gift of great fortune from him.
One day it would help save my life.

Propoganda seeped into every subject.
In our geography lesson we used a textbook that showed photographs of parched plots of land, so arid that the mud was cracked.
'This is a normal farm in South Korea,' the teacher said.
'Farmers there can't grow rice. That's why the people suffer.'
Maths textbook questions were sometimes worded emotively.
'In one battle of the Great Fatherland Liberation War, 3 brave uncles of the Korean People's Army wiped out 30 American imperialist bastards. What was the ratio of the soldiers who fought?'

...
with tens of thousands chanting 'Long life!' over and over -
'MAN-SAE! MAN-SAE! MAN-SAE!' -
the adrenalin was electrifying.