The Girl with Seven Names. Hyeonseo Lee
was kept constantly busy with some kind of after-hours organizational meeting or mind-numbing activity, such as ideological ‘study groups’ or ‘discussions’, which often involved memorizing the speeches of the Great Leader and the Dear Leader, or attending lectures that could last for hours after work, on everything from the revolutionary history of the early Party and new techniques for pig rearing, to hydroelectric power and the poetry of Kim Jong-il. This was part of the communist way – to ensure that no one could ever deviate into a selfish, individualistic or private life – but it was also a system of surveillance. Perpetual communal participation meant that the hours in each day when we were not being watched, by someone, were few.
I had begun elementary school in Anju, but now I had to join a new one in Hamhung, which filled me with apprehension. My mother had real trouble getting me to enter the building on my first day. The children seemed rough, and had a different accent; there was no ‘village’ feel as there had been at the school in Anju. Banners in the school corridors made our priorities clear: ‘Let us study for our country!’ and ‘Always be on the alert for Marshal Kim Il-sung!’
But I was outgoing, and curious about my new classmates. I soon made some good friends among the girls. That came from the confidence a loving family gave me.
It was at school in Hamhung that I received my initiation into ‘life purification time’, or self-criticism sessions. These have been a basic feature of life in North Korea since they were introduced by Kim Jong-il in 1974, and are the occasions almost everyone dreads. They start in elementary school and continue throughout a person’s life. Ours were held every Friday, and involved my entire class of forty students. Our teacher presided. Everyone took turns to stand up, accuse someone, and confess something. No one was excused for shyness. No one was allowed to be blameless.
It must have been humiliating and painful for the adults, standing up to criticize a colleague for some work-related or personal failing in front of the whole workforce. But there was only so much for which young children could be held guilty. The atmosphere in class was deadly serious. The teacher would not tolerate the mildest levity, even though the accusations were often ludicrous. The formula was to open the session with a commandment from Kim Il-sung or Kim Jong-il and then stand up and accuse the child who had violated it. When the accusations started to fly and fingers started to point, this was the only time, ironically, that we called each other ‘comrade’.
These sessions could create an atmosphere of great fear and bitterness, even among children. But often, through a humanity we all possess, adults and children alike would find ways of taking the poison out of them. If I couldn’t face accusing someone I’d sometimes accuse myself, which was permitted. 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. My mother would make a similar pact with colleagues at her workplace; so did Min-ho when he got to elementary school. The sessions taught me a survival lesson. I had to be discreet, be cautious about what I said and did, and be very wary of others. Already I was acquiring the mask that the adults wore from long practice.
Often, students would find themselves criticized unexpectedly. When this happened, they took revenge. In rare cases, it could be lethal. On one occasion, in my final year of secondary school, a boy in my class pointed at another boy and said: ‘When I went to your house, I saw that you had many things you didn’t have before. Where did you get the money to pay for them?’ The teacher reported the criticism to the headmaster, who reported it to the Bowibu. They investigated and found that the family had a son who had escaped the country and was sending them money from South Korea. Three generations of the family were arrested as traitors.
Like the ever-present danger of informers, I took the self-criticism sessions to be part of normal life. But I also had the sense there was nothing positive about them; they were entirely negative.
The biggest milestone of my youth came at the age of nine, in Hamhung. With all other children my age, I entered the Young Pioneer Corps, North Korea’s communist youth movement. Ceremonies were held at schools all over the country on the same day, with parents and teachers assembling at large public places for the occasion. This is considered one of the proudest days in a North Korean’s life.
Joining the Pioneers is compulsory between the ages of nine and fourteen, but not everyone is accepted at the same time. First, there is a formidable test of memorizing: I had to show that I’d learned the Young Pioneer’s rights and duties by heart. From now on, I followed the orders of the Great Leader and the Dear Leader, no matter where, no matter what. I must think and act in accordance with their teachings. I must reject and denounce anyone who directed me to do anything against their will. I was good at memorizing, and passed the test easily. And as I’d done well in the most important subjects on the school curriculum – the revolutionary history of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il – I was selected for the first induction ceremony of the year, on Kim Jong-il’s birthday, 16 February, in 1989.
A few days before the ceremony my mother bought me a pair of new shoes especially for the occasion. They were foreign-made and from a dollar store – a special shop for people who had access to foreign currency and wanted to spend it. I was so excited about these shoes that, in order to calm me down, she let me take a peek at them. They were patent-leather Mary Janes, fastened with a buckle, and were a luscious deep red – nothing like the cheap state-issue shoes we all wore, and which only came in black. My mother wouldn’t let me take them out of the box until the night before the ceremony.
At the ceremony we were to receive a red cotton scarf and a small silver Pioneer badge to pin on our blouses. To me the scarf was the mark of a grown-up and meant that I was no longer a kid. But this excitement was displaced unexpectedly by my anticipation of the red shoes. The wait was agonizing. The night before the ceremony I slept with them next to me on the bed – I woke a few times to check they were still there.
When the morning came at last I was ecstatic. The event was held in my school hall. The walls were adorned for the occasion with paintings and collages that the children had made – of the secret guerrilla base in the forests of Mount Paektu where the Dear Leader was born, and of the new star that had appeared in the heavens on the night of his birth. Amplified speeches boomed from the headmaster and the teachers on the stage, whose centrepiece was an enormous bouquet of kimjongilia, a fleshy red begonia that is the flower of Kim Jong-il. Everyone then stood to sing the ‘Song of General Kim Jong-il’, and finally the Pioneers stepped up to the stage to receive, with great solemnity, their scarves and badges. The parents in the audience applauded each one.
I walked up to receive mine, bursting with pride for my red shoes. It surprises me now to think that there were no repercussions. All present in the school hall must have noticed them. It did not strike me until years later what an unusual gift they were. Most kids at the ceremony – several hundred of them – were wearing the state-issue black shoes. My mother was a cautious woman, but, consciously or not, she was encouraging a distinct individualism in me.
We took many group photos and family photos. It was a proud day for my parents. My father wore his air force uniform. My mother was carrying Min-ho, aged two.
Classmates not selected for that day’s ceremony had to wait until the next ceremony on Kim Il-sung’s birthday, 15 April.
One girl I was friendly with had not been accepted for the February induction and was often absent from class. For some reason our teacher decided that she and some of the girl’s friends should visit the girl’s home to see if she was all right. It was in a run-down area of the city where hoodlums hung about. The housing was very squalid. Our visit was a terrible mistake. Her house was bare, and smelled of sewage. She had obviously hoped to hide her poverty from us, but there we were, crowded into one of her two small rooms, staring at our feet while our teacher, flushed with embarrassment, suggested to her mother that our friend should try to attend school every day.
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