Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Girl with Seven Names, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Oppression, Human Rights, and North Korea
Identity and Nationality
Family
Kindness
Summary
Analysis
Apparently, a group of officers from the Military Security Command, a form of secret police concerned only with the military, were waiting for Father when he crossed the Friendship Bridge back into North Korea. Hyeonseo and her family hear nothing of Father’s whereabouts for 10 days and are told only that an investigation is ongoing into his business conduct. During this time, Mother is tearful and sad, and she tells Hyeonseo a story about Aunt Old and her children, which Hyeonseo has never heard before.
Hyeonseo’s family is told nothing about the specifics of Father’s arrest, which suggests the state doesn’t really have a good reason for holding him. Again, it’s clear that the state has full power to subject its people to unjust treatment for any reason at all. Mother’s devastation again underscores the importance of family and the deep love she obviously feels for Father.
Themes
In the late 1960s, Aunt Old married a Korean-Chinese man against Grandmother’s wishes and had three children. Her husband soon grew tired of North Korea and wanted to go back to China, but Aunt Old refused. He returned alone, but was apprehended at the border and sent to a prison camp without a trial. Grandmother made arrangements for Aunt Old to get a divorce and put the three children up for adoption—the only way to save the family’s songbun after a spouse is imprisoned. No one in North Korea talks openly about the gulags, which are different from the collective farms not far from Hyesan.
A gulag is a political prison camp, and people usually aren’t ever released from them. The fact that Grandmother gives up Aunt Old’s children just to save the family’s songbun highlights the importance of status in North Korean society, and it also doesn’t bode well for the fate of Hyeonseo’s family now that Father has been detained by the government and accused of disloyalty. Hyeonseo is likely too old to be put up for adoption, but Father’s arrest will probably have a very negative impact on the family’s songbun.
Themes
Hyeonseo can feel her resentment for her father soften, and two weeks later, they are told that he has been released to a hospital in Hyesan. Mother goes to visit him and is shocked by his appearance. He is skinny and looks old, but he tries to ease their fears. The investigation is still ongoing, and he has been accused of bribery and abuse of position. Father slips into a deep depression—an illness that is not considered legitimate in North Korea—and is sent back to the hospital in Hyesan. Hyeonseo and Min-ho are sent to stay with Uncle Cinema, who comes home one day and tells them their father has died.
Father’s haggard appearance suggests that he wasn’t treated well by the authorities while he was detained. He was likely beaten, tortured, and starved into making any sort of confession the regime deemed punishable. Father’s exact offense is never revealed, but the fact that he slips into such a deep depression implies he is innocent—at least of any major crime or offense.
Themes
Father’s death makes Hyeonseo realize what a mistake she has made in treating him so badly. He raised her like his own child, and she considered herself his child. She loved him, and now he is gone. The hospital death certificate claims Father overdosed on Valium, committing suicide—which is considered the ultimate form of defection in North Korea and is detrimental to a family’s songbun. Mother manages to bribe the hospital staff and gets Father’s death certificate reclassified to reflect death by heart attack. In the following weeks, Hyeonseo grows closer with Min-ho, and she begins to think that perhaps their new house really is cursed.
Father’s death prompts Hyeonseo to reexamine the crucial role that family plays in her life. Sadly, Hyeonseo realizes this importance too late to right the wrong between her and her father; however, her growing closeness with Min-ho suggests that she is determined not to let the same thing happen to their relationship. Father’s death and the regime’s opinion of suicide again reflects the regime’s power and the repression of the people. Suicide is the ultimate snub to the regime and is considered extremely disloyal.
Themes
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