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
Hyeonseo spends another year in Shanghai and finds a good job as an interpreter at a cosmetics company. Except for Ok-hee, all of Hyeonseo’s friends are South Korean. It is 2006, and Hyeonseo is 25 years old, when her friends suggest they go to a swanky sky-bar in the city. There, Hyeonseo meets a handsome South Korean man named Kim, who is visiting on business from Seoul. Hyeonseo and Kim begin dating, and he finds new reasons to prolong his trip to China. Weeks pass, and Hyeonseo is suddenly dreaming of going to South Korea again.
Hyeonseo is obviously dreaming of going to South Korea because she is falling in love with Kim. However, Hyeonseo doesn’t have any rights, and she can’t simply go to South Korea to be with her South Korean boyfriend. What seems so simple for some is completely out of the question for North Korean women like Hyeonseo.
Themes
The first time Hyeonseo tells Mother about her desire to go to South Korea, Mother doesn’t take the news well. She can’t understand why Hyeonseo would want to go to the country of the enemy. Hyeonseo explains she has no real connection to China. At least in South Korea she will be in Korea again. Hyeonseo doesn’t tell her that she has fallen in love with a South Korean named Kim. Hyeonseo begins to look for a new broker who can help her get a South Korean ID, but they all want too much money. She decides all she really has to do is get to the airport in Seoul and then claim asylum as a North Korean. Now, she just has to tell Kim the truth about who she really is.
The fact the Hyeonseo hasn’t told her boyfriend, whom she loves, that she is North Korean illustrates just how far she is forced to go in denying her true identity. Hyeonseo should be able to freely share things with Kim without any fear of consequences or arrest, but she can’t. This again illustrates Hyeonseo’s oppression and suggests that as a North Korean, she has few of the human rights that are often taken for granted elsewhere. Mother’s belief that South Korea is the enemy again reflects how effective the regime’s indoctrination is.
Themes
