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
Geun-soo is the son of Mrs. Jang, one of Aunt Sang-hee’s friends from her Korean-Chinese social circle. Aunt Sang-hee suggests Geun-soo and Hyeonseo go out for ice cream, and Hyeonseo is mortified. He is 22 and rich, and his parents own a chain of successful restaurants. Over the next months, Hyeonseo and Geun-soo go on many dates, but Hyeonseo isn’t attracted to him in the least, although he is very kind. He knows that Hyeonseo is North Korean, but he believes her name is Chae Mi-ran, and she doesn’t correct him. The relationship isn’t serious, but it does get Hyeonseo out of the house and gives her a reason to practice her Mandarin.
Hyeonseo’s forced relationship with Geun-soo further reflects her oppression as a woman and a North Korean, even though she has already escaped. Hyeonseo has few options, even living in China. She can never live openly as a North Korean in China. If she is caught by the Chinese government, she will be repatriated back to North Korea, where she will be severely punished. Plus, Hyeonseo’s status as a woman dictates that she must one day get married.
Themes
Geun-soo takes Hyeonseo to meet his mother, Mrs. Jang, who soon talks about opening a new restaurant for Geun-soo and Hyeonseo to manage. Geun-soo hasn’t proposed yet, but Hyeonseo knows it is coming and begins to feel trapped. Two years pass, and it is the end of 1999. Mrs. Jang says casually that she has visited a fortune-teller, who has recommended a summer wedding. Hyeonseo tries to tell herself that Geun-soo is all right and marriage won’t be so bad, but she has little choice in the direction her life is taking. Within days, Geun-soo obtains a new ID card for Hyeonseo, which claims she is a Korean-Chinese woman named Jang Soon-hyang. The new card says Hyeonseo is 20, the legal age to marry in China.
Hyeonseo’s feelings of being trapped and her lack of control in the direction of her own life further highlight her oppression as a North Korean woman hiding in China. The new ID card Geun-soo obtains for Hyeonseo and her new name, Jang Soon-hyang—Hyeonseo’s fourth name—further splinter her identity and strip her of her North Korean heritage. As Jang Soon-hyang, Hyeonseo is no longer North Korean, but Korean-Chinese, which is completely at odds with who she really is.
Themes
By 2000, Uncle Jung-gil gives Hyeonseo a new cellphone just as the wedding plans really begin to pick up. Hyeonseo asks Mrs. Jang if she can use her new ID to visit her family in North Korea, but Mrs. Jang says it is too dangerous. She could be caught, and then they will all be implicated. Hyeonseo knows she can’t marry Geun-soo. In the summer of 2000, with the wedding just weeks away, Hyeonseo walks out of Uncle Jung-gil and Aunt Sang-hee’s apartment complex, dropping the chip from her new cellphone into a nearby trash can.
Hyeonseo’s desire to visit her family in North Korea despite the danger illustrates the importance of family in her life and in the book. Furthermore, Mrs. Jang’s fear that Hyeonseo will be caught and they will all be implicated suggests that the punishment for aiding a North Korean defector in China is stiff. Since Hyeonseo drops the chip from her phone into the trash—making it impossible for anyone to reach her—it seems that she isn’t coming back and doesn’t want to be found.
Themes
