Hyeonseo’s story begins in Hyesan, North Korea, in 1977, when Mother boards a train to visit her brother in Pyongyang. On the train, she meets the man who will become Hyeonseo’s father, and they quickly fall in love. Unfortunately, Grandmother refuses to let Mother marry him. Father’s songbun isn’t as good as Mother’s, and Grandmother fears a drop in status. She arranges for Mother to marry a man from Pyongyang, and Hyeonseo is born Kim Ji-hae in 1980. Shortly after Hyeonseo’s birth, Mother leaves the man from Pyongyang and divorces him. She goes to visit Father on the military base in Pyongyang, and he immediately proposes marriage and accepts Hyeonseo as his own. Against Grandmother’s better judgement, she allows Mother to marry him, and Hyeonseo’s name is changed to Park Min-young. Father’s parents, however, never really accept Hyeonseo as their granddaughter.
Over the years, Hyeonseo and her family move to Hyesan and Mother gives birth to Min-ho, Hyeonseo’s brother. Growing up, Hyeonseo is taught that North Korea is the greatest country in the world, and she believes it. Mother’s high songbun means that they have a good life, and between Father’s job with the military and Mother’s side gig trading illicit goods sent over the Yalu River from China, they even enjoy luxuries like meat and a television. There is only one state-run television station, but Hyeonseo grows up believing the rest of the world lives in much the same way. When Hyeonseo is seven years old, she witnesses her first public execution, but she has no reason to believe such things aren’t normal. North Korea is a closed state, and any information from the outside world is strictly prohibited. In the early 1990s, Mother takes Hyeonseo to a fortune-teller in the village of Daeoh-cheon, who tells Hyeonseo she will one day “eat foreign rice.” Hyeonseo assumes the woman means she will marry and move to Pyongyang, as North Koreans are not permitted to emigrate.
One day, Grandmother tells Hyeonseo out of the blue that Father is not her biological father. She tells Hyeonseo about the man from Pyongyang, and while Hyeonseo is upset and confused, she never tells her family that she knows the truth about her parentage. Hyeonseo begins to drift away from her father, until she nearly stops talking to him altogether, and she feels herself distancing from Min-ho, too. Family and songbun are everything in North Korea, and Hyeonseo doesn’t know who she is anymore. Father quits his job with the military and takes a job that requires travel back and forth to China. His business trips become longer and more frequent, and he is detained one day while crossing the Friendship Bridge back into North Korea from China. He is held for weeks before finally being released, and when he is, he is emaciated and beaten. Father begins to suffer from depression and is even hospitalized, where he commits suicide with an overdose of Valium. Hyeonseo is heartbroken, realizing too late that he was her true father and deserved her respect and love.
During the mid-1990s, North Korea suffers widespread famine, and millions of people die of starvation. Hyeonseo and her family are never without food, but Hyeonseo begins to think for the first time that North Korea isn’t the greatest country in the world. From her home in Hyesan, Hyeonseo can see across the Yalu River to Changbai, China, and she begins to contemplate crossing. To do so is highly illegal, Hyeonseo knows, but she is curious and badly wants to see how the rest of the world lives. In December of 1997, just months before her 18th birthday, Hyeonseo crosses the river into Changbai and makes her way to Shenyang to meet her father’s family, who defected during the Korean War.
Hyeonseo arrives at the home of Uncle Jung-gil and Aunt Sang-hee, who welcome her warmly. They invite her to stay, and Uncle Jung-gil wastes no time telling Hyeonseo certain truths, like the fact Kim Jung-il isn’t even a communist, and that the Korean War was really started by North Korea, who invaded South Korea unprovoked. Hyeonseo thinks he is crazy, but she pretends to be interested anyway. She stays in Shenyang for several weeks, well past her 18th birthday, and just as she is preparing to return home, Mother calls. The Bowibu knows Hyeonseo has escaped to China, and she can never come back—if she does, Hyeonseo will be arrested as a defector and punished, perhaps even executed. Hyeonseo stays in Shenyang, and Aunt Sang-hee soon introduces her to Guen-soo, the son of Aunt Sang-hee’s close friend Mrs. Jang. Hyeonseo and Guen-soo begin dating, and even though she isn’t attracted to him, Hyeonseo agrees to marry him. Mrs. Jang obtains a new ID card for Hyeonseo (as a North Korean, Hyeonseo is an illegal immigrant), which identifies Hyeonseo as a Chinese-Korean woman named Jang Soon-hyang. The wedding plans begin to pick up, and Hyeonseo feels trapped. It isn’t her choice to marry Guen-soo, and she isn’t in love with him, so she runs away.
In Xita, a neighborhood in Shenyang with a large Korean population, Hyeonseo finds a job as a waitress and slowly begins to settle in, disguising her true identity as a North Korean. In 2001, Hyeonseo is picked up by the police and interrogated as a suspected North Korean. She is given written and spoken tests of the Chinese language and manages to pass. The police let her go with an apology, but Hyeonseo knows that China can never be safe, and she begins to consider going to South Korea—if she can find a way to get there. Four years later, Hyeonseo hires a broker to find Min-ho and Mother back in North Korea, and she even manages to meet Min-ho briefly in Changbai, but the broker extorts all her money, leaving her with nothing. She even has to ask Uncle Jung-gil for a loan to make up the difference. She decides to go to Shanghai and leave Shenyang. It is January 2002, and Hyeonseo is 22 years old.
In Shanghai, Hyeonseo decides to change her name again, this time to Chae In-hee. To get a decent job and stop waitressing, Hyeonseo knows she will need an official ID, and she finally finds a woman in Harbin—a city over 1,000 miles away—to help her. The woman sells Hyeonseo the ID card belonging to an actual Chinese-Korean woman with a mental illness, whose parents sold the ID for extra money. Her new name is Park Sun-ja. Hyeonseo finds a good job as an interpreter at a cosmetics company and even meets another North Korean defector named Ok-hee. Hyeonseo settles into life in Shanghai and soon falls in love with Kim, a businessman from South Korea. Kim doesn’t initially know Hyeonseo’s true identity as a North Korean, but she tells him after she decides to appeal to the South Korean government for political asylum. Hyeonseo is Korean, and she wants to return to her country, even if she must live in South Korea. After a direct flight to South Korea, Hyeonseo arrives in Seoul and identifies herself as a North Korean seeking asylum. It is January 2008.
Hyeonseo is interrogated and vetted by the South Korean National Intelligence Service and found to be a North Korean. After several months, she is finally given citizenship and an apartment in Seoul and begins her new life. During this time, she gives herself the name Hyeonseo Lee. Hyeon is Korean for sunshine, and Seo means good fortune, and Hyeonseo picks the name so she will live her life in “light and warmth.” In 2009, Mother finally agrees to leave North Korea, but Min-ho refuses. Hyeonseo decides to go back to Changbai herself and guide her mother the 2,000 miles across China into Vietnam, where a broker will help them get back into South Korea. Min-ho brings Mother across the Yalu River into Changbai, but he is spotted and accused of human trafficking. Now, Min-ho can never return to North Korea, so all three of them make their way across China. When they reach the border, the broker informs them that Vietnam isn’t safe, and they are forced to exit through Laos instead. Laos is a complete nightmare, and both Mother and Min-ho are arrested by local police as illegal immigrants. Hyeonseo spends all her money and energy trying to get them out of police custody, and just when she believes it is hopeless, a kind Australian man named Dick Stolp pays for their release and Hyeonseo’s plane ticket back to South Korea. Hyeonseo has been accused of being a broker by the Laotian government and must leave the country or face arrest.
Back in Seoul, Hyeonseo learns that Mother and Min-ho were never released to the South Korean embassy and are being held at Phonthong Prison in Vientiane, Laos. They are released months later to the South Korean embassy and arrive in Seoul in August 2010, nearly one year after their journey began in Changbai. Mother and Min-ho try to adjust to life in South Korea, but they both fight the urge to return to Hyesan and their old lives in North Korea. Hyeonseo convinces them both to stay, and they slowly adjust. Mother even agrees to accompany Hyeonseo to Chicago in the United States after Hyeonseo meets and falls in love with Brian, a man from the midwest of America. Hyeonseo begins to advocate for the human rights of those left in North Korea, and she is even selected for a TED talk and gives a speech on the floor of the United Nations in New York City. She doesn’t know how long the Kim regime will keep the people of North Korea suffering in the darkness, but she knows that dictatorships aren’t as strong as they pretend to be. She also knows that politics and one’s country aren’t what really matter in life. What is important, Hyeonseo says, is family and togetherness, and as long as she has her family, she has everything.
