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The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector's Story
The Girl with Seven Names A North Korean Defector's Story Author:Hyeonseo Lee As a child growing up in North Korea, Heyonseo Lee was one of millions trapped by the world's most secretive and brutal communist regime. From the indoctrination she received in kindergarten to her forced service in the Socialist Youth League at age fourteen, the state controlled every aspect of her life. When the Great Famine struck in the 1990... more »s and she witnessed the chaos, starvation ad repression all around her, she began to doubt 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 words 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, her escape and the courage she found as a lonely, vulnerable teenager to make a 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 imaginable. Hyeonseo is now an acclaimed speaker and campaigner on the international stage, and this strong, brave and eloquent book reflects her remarkable spirit and the horrors of her past, and offers the first credible account of ordinary life in North Korea.« less