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
In January 2001, two men come into the restaurant and ask Hyeonseo if she knows any North Koreans. The men claim to be from a South Korean television station looking for defectors who are trying to get into South Korea. Hyeonseo is suspicious and says she knows no one, but she secretly wonders if they are looking for her. She tells her roommates about the men, and they tell her that South Korea considers all Koreans citizens and routinely helps defectors establish a new lives. The men return to the restaurant each day, and after a week, Hyeonseo is still undecided if she should tell them who she is. Then, the men stop coming in.
Hyeonseo’s extreme paranoia over the true intentions of the men illustrates the trauma she has endured as a North Korean citizen and the power of the North Korean regime to reach all the way into China. Hyeonseo has no way of knowing if the men are truly interested in helping defectors, or if it is a trap engineered by the regime to round up defectors and bring them back to the country to be punished, and perhaps even executed.
Themes
One evening, Hyeonseo tells her friends that she is really a defector from North Korea. They are fascinated by her story, and Hyeonseo is soon introduced to other defectors hiding in Xita as well. She meets a young defector named Soo-jin, who is living in Shenyang with her South Korean boyfriend. After a few weeks, Soo-jin’s number in Shenyang is disconnected, and Hyeonseo worries she has been caught.
Hyeonseo’s fear that Soo-jin has been captured again underscores how dangerous it is for illegal North Koreans living in China. Defectors are routinely sent back to North Korea from China, and the Chinese government works closely with the Bowibu to identify and apprehend defectors.
Themes
Hyeonseo sees Soo-jin six months later on a street in Koreatown, and Soo-jin tells her that she was arrested and kept for three months in a Bowibu holding camp. Soo-jin was eventually released, but she knows that China isn’t safe, and she must get to South Korea. Soo-jin says she was betrayed by a mutual friend, and Hyeonseo never sees her again. Hyeonseo is instantly paranoid and tries to remember exactly who she told about her real identity. A week later, two men arrive at the restaurant and ask for Hyeonseo by her alias. The men identify themselves as the police and insist that Hyeonseo come with them.
The fact that Soo-jin is released from the Bowibu holding camp and not repatriated back to North Korea suggests that she isn’t really who she says she is. From Hyeonseo’s arrest not long after, readers can infer that Soo-jin is, at the very least, an informer working on behalf of the Bowibu and the North Korean government, if not an actual member of the Bowibu.
Themes
