The Girl with Seven Names: Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

It is the summer of 1977, and Mother boards a train to Pyongyang. Her brother lives there, and she has received official permission to visit him. The train is full of young military officers, loudly laughing and talking, and they convince the passengers to play word and dice games. Mother loses her round, and the soldiers tell her she must sing. The train falls silent. Mother is just 22 years old and very beautiful. She sings a popular song from a North Korean movie, and when she is done, the train erupts in applause.

A man—Hyeonseo’s future father—approaches Mother and asks her name. He is from Hyesan, just like Mother, but has spent many years in Pyongyang. He asks if he may write her a letter, and mother agrees, giving him her address in Hyesan. They reach Pyongyang, and afterward, mother can barely recall her time there. Her thoughts are full of nothing but the man from the train. Back in Hyesan, Mother waits for Father’s letter but nothing comes. Then, one evening six months later, there is a knock on her door.

The next year passes quickly, much like a dream, and Mother and Father quickly fall in love. Father is still stationed in Pyongyang, and they write letters each week and meet when they can. It is the height of the Cold War, but North Korea is in the middle of its best years. South Korea—North Korea’s enemy—is in disorder, and the Americans have just lost a crushing war in Vietnam. Communism is on the rise, and it seems that history is on North Korea’s side.

On a trip to Hyesan, Father asks Mother to marry him, and she happily accepts. Both families have a good songbun, the North Korean caste system, which is broken into three broad categories and holds 51 degrees of status. No one is told their songbun exactly, but most people seem to know anyway. Rising in songbun is nearly impossible, but falling is easy, and one’s rank within the system decides their life and job. Mother’s family has a very good songbun, and father’s is good as well, secured with his family’s bravery during World War II. 

Grandmother is a dedicated communist, and she secured her own family’s songbun when she hid the family’s Communist Party membership cards from American soldiers during the Korean War. Many others destroyed their cards, but Grandmother hid them in the chimney and won official favor. Now, she wears the card on a string around her neck. Grandmother is unimpressed with Father’s position in the air force, and fearing for her family’s songbun, she refuses to allow her daughter to marry such a man. Grandmother meets another man—an official from the National Trading Company—through a friend in Pyongyang and arranges Mother’s marriage to him instead.

Mother is devastated and even suffers a breakdown, but in the spring of 1979, she marries the man from Pyongyang as Grandmother arranged. They marry in Pyongyang and take customary photos at the foot of the bronze Kim Il-sung statue on Mansu Hill, but no one smiles. Hyeonseo is born in January of 1980 and is given the name Kim Ji-hae. Mother leaves before the end of the year and divorces the man. Grandmother insists she put Hyeonseo up for adoption, but mother adamantly refuses. She travels to the military base in Pyongyang and is reunited with Father, who immediately accepts the infant as his own. Grandmother warns them that when a couple loves each other too deeply, one of them will die young. 

This time, it is Father’s family who objects to the marriage because Mother has another man’s child, but Father insists. His family reluctantly agrees, and Hyeonseo is given a new name: Park Min-young. The wedding is small, and Father’s family is obviously unhappy. Hyeonseo doesn’t discover the truth of her parentage until years later in elementary school, and a large part of her wishes she never did. Such a discovery has devastating consequences—for both Hyeonseo and her father.