Hyeonseo Lee, a child growing up in North Korea. was one of the millions trapped by the world’s most secretive and brutal communist regime. From the indoctrination she received in Kindergarden to her forced service in the Socialist Youth League at age of fourteen, the state controlled ever aspect of her life.
As the great famine struck in the 1990s, she witnessed the chaos, starvation and repression all around her, seeds of doubt emerged, her longest held belief – was her country, as she had always been told, the best on the planet?
In 1997, aged seventeen, Hyeonseo Lee escaped North Korea for China her mother’s first word over the telephone to her lost daughter were “don’t come back”. The reprisals for all of them would have been lethal.
The Girl with Seven Names is the story of Hyeonseo’s life in North Korea is the story o Hyenseo’s life in North Korea, her escape and the courage she found as a lonely, vulnerable teenager to make life for herself in China. In this deeply moving memoir, Hyeonseo discovers that a life on the run with no identity, no reason to exist, is no easier than life inside North Korea.
Twelve years and two lifetimes later, she returned to the North Korean border in a daring mission to spirit her mother and brother to South Korea, on one of the most arduous, costly and dangerous journeys ever imaginable. Hyenseo is now an acclaimed speaker and campaigner on the international stage, and this strong brave and eloquent book reflects her past and offers the first credible insight of ordinary life in North Korea.
She escaped from North Korea and later guided her family out of North Korea through China and Laos.
The Girl with Seven Names, Escape from North Korea by Hyeonseo Lee with David John 320 pages paperback £8.99
Harper Collins