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’s family’s new home in Hyesan is another military-issued apartment, but it is nice by North Korean standards, and Mother immediately begins papering the walls and replacing the furniture. Illicit trade from China—including Western clothing and Japanese electronics—has grown in the past few years, and mother is excited to open her trade again. Goods come over the shallow sections of river, or over the Changbai-Hyesan International Bridge, known as the Friendship Bridge to the locals. Restaurants selling hot and cold noodles are always packed, and the state beauty parlor is equally busy. Women frequently perm their hair; however, coloring or dying one’s hair is prohibited.
Communism usually connotes an image of forced uniformity and a strike against individualism, but even so, it seems ridiculous that the state should care if a woman dyes her hair. Furthermore, it is difficult to understand how dying one’s hair can be considered capitalist decadence while a perm is not, but this still reflects the oppression of the North Korean people. They are controlled with arbitrary rules and forced to turn to illegal trade.
Themes
After a couple of years, Mother takes Hyeonseo to a fortune-teller in the village of Daeoh-cheon. North Korea is an atheist state (citizens are only allowed to worship the Great Leader and the Dear Leader), and anyone caught with a bible is sent to prison for life. Fortune-tellers are considered much like religion, even though Kim Jong-il himself is known to frequent them. Mother asks the fortune-teller the best ways to retrieve her goods without getting caught, and then she introduces Hyeonseo. The fortune-teller says Hyeonseo has a future in music and will “eat foreign rice.”
Again, the information revealed here highlights the oppression of the North Korean people and the self-importance of the Kim regime. Citizens aren’t allowed to practice organized religion because Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung won’t allow the North Korean people to worship any image that isn’t them. The fact that Kim Jong-il prohibits fortune-tellers but visits one himself also reflects the hypocrisy of the regime.
Themes
Mother is disappointed as they leave. She believes eating “foreign rice” means Hyeonseo will live abroad, and she doubts the fortune-teller’s skills since North Koreans aren’t permitted to live abroad. Hyeonseo is intrigued. She has recently taken up the accordion, a popular instrument in North Korea, and she wonders if the fortune-teller’s words mean she will become a professional accordionist and marry someone from another province. Maybe Hyeonseo will live in Pyongyang when she grows up, which would be an absolute dream come true.
The mention of eating “foreign rice” hints at Hyeonseo’s later defection to China, and then to South Korea; however, this also further underscores the repression of the people and the power of the regime. North Korea is a closed state, meaning anyone leaving or entering the country is strictly controlled by the government. Only those of the absolute highest songbun are permitted to leave the country, and even then, legal emigration is rare.
Themes
