QUOTES: The Girl With Seven Names, Hyeon-seo Lee, 2015, Part 1, Ch.1

Audiobook via the Hoopla app.

NOTE: The following quotes are transcriptions by the author of this blog from the above noted audiobook. Any mistakes [especially in the spellings of Korean names] in transcription are due to the blogger's error.

"One morning is the late summer of 1977, a young woman [the author's mother] said goodbye to her sisters on the platform of Hyesan station and boarded the train for Pyongyang [the capital of North Korea]. She had received official permission to visit her brother there. She was so excited she slept little the night before. The capital of the Revolution was for her mind a mythical and futuristic place. A trip there was a rare treat."

Hyeon-seo Lee, The Girl With Seven Names, Part 1, Ch.1, 2015

"[...]My father made a trip to Hyesan to ask my mother to marry him. She accepted with tears. her happiness was complete. And to cap it all, both his family and hers had good songbun, which made their position in society secure.

  Songbun is a caste system that operates in North Korea. A family is classified as Loyal, Wavering, or Hostile, depending on what the father's family was doing at the time just before, during, and after the founding of the State in 1948. If your grandfather was descended from workers and peasants, and had fought the right side of the Korean War, your family would be classified as Loyal. If however your ancestors included landlords or officials who worked for the Japanese during the Colonial Occupation, or anyone who had fled to South Korea during the Korean War, your family would be characterized as Hostile. Within the three broad categories, there are 51 gradations of status, ranging from the ruling Kim family at the top, to political prisoners with no hope of release at the bottom. The irony was that the new Communist State had created a social hierarchy more elaborate and stratified than anything seen at the time of the feudal emperors.

  People in the Hostile class, which made up about 40% of the population, learned not to dream. They got assigned to farms and mines and manual labor. People in the Wavering class might minor officials, teachers, or hold military ranks removed of the centers of power. Only the Loyal class got to live in Pyongyang, had the opportunity to join the Worker's Party, and had freedom to choose a career. No one was ever told their precise ranking in the songbun system, and yet I think most people knew by intuition, in the same way that in a flock of 51 sheep, every individual will know which sheep ranks above it and below it in the pecking order. 

  The insidious beauty of it was that it was very easy to sink, but almost impossible to rise, in this system, even through marriage, except by some special indulgence of the Leader himself. The Elite, about 10 or 15 percent of the population, had to be careful never to make mistakes."

Hyeon-seo Lee, The Girl With Seven Names, Part 1, Ch.1, 2015

"It was a traditional wedding. She [author's mother] wore an elaborately embroidered red silk chima jeogori, the national Korean dress, a long skirt wrapped high on the body, and a short jacket over it. Her groom wore a formal Western-style suit. Afterwards, wedding photographs were taken, as was customary, at the feet of the great bronze statute of Kim Il-Sung on Mansu Hill. This was to demonstrate that, however much a couple may love each other, their loving for the Fatherly Leader was greater. No one smiled."
Hyeon-seo Lee, The Girl With Seven Names, Part 1, Ch.1, 2015