Every Falling Star: The True Story of How I Survived and Escaped North Korea

Sungju, completely dazed and trying to process the events of the past few weeks, finds a place to sit in the market. He watches a group of boys walking around and pickpocketing. Eventually he gives in to his hunger and asks a woman selling fresh bread if she could give some to him, wishing she could see from looking at him that he once lived in Pyongyang and that he’d pay her back one day when he could. She doesn’t give it to him at first, and Sungju goes back to his cardboard, praying to Chileseong. Eventually she comes over with bread but tells him he can only have it if he leaves because he is scaring her customers away. She calls him a kotjebi, a word Sungju is still unfamiliar with.

When night falls, Sungju tries to fall asleep in his spot on the ground at the market, but he is kicked by a man who tells him to leave before the shangmoo take him away. When he calls the boy a kotjebi, Sungju asks what it means. The man tells him it means that he’s a street boy and that the only person lower than a kotjebi are the “nightflowers,” another name for sex workers.