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

Every aspect of North Korean life is repressed. Critical thinking does not exist in North Korea. Loyalty to the regime is the only relevant trait. Children are conditioned to love the ruling family more than their own family, showing that even North Koreans’ love is repressed. Lee’s former society is one in which all aspects of humanity are repressed to allow room for the immense space occupied by unquestioning loyalty to the governing regime. Persons are not persons, but rather pieces of a whole, conditioned from birth to value the collective above their own selves. 

Lee speaks more of individualism than freedom. She spends much time in China, and what China provides for Lee is not freedom, but individualism. As an illegal immigrant in China, Lee’s freedom is shackled by the shadows in which she must live and the limits placed on her opportunities. Lee’s freedom is limited in the workplace, in the arranged marriage she flees, and by police and gangs. Lee’s illegal status also limits her freedom of movement by dictating her move to Shanghai, where she believes she can disappear. In South Korea, Lee is also not free. Her circumstances of birth limit her career options and prevent her from marrying the man she loves; her love is again repressed as subservient to the social system in which she lives.