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.
"For the first four years of my life, I grew up among a large extended family of uncles and aunts in Ryanggang province. Despite the nomadic life that was to come after my parents married, moving with my father's career to various cities and military bases around the country, these early years formed the deep emotional attachment to Hyesan that has remained with me all my life."
Hyeon-seo Lee, The Girl With Seven Names, Part 1, Ch.2, 2015
"Ryanggang province is the highest part of Korea. The mountains in summer are spectacular. Winters are snowy and extremely cold. During the Colonial Period (1910-1945), the Japanese brought the railroads and the lumber mills. On some days, the air everywhere smelled of fresh-cut pine.
The province is home both the sacred Revolutionary site surrounding Mount Paektu, North Korea's highest peak, and, conversely, to the hard-scrabbled penal region of Paegam county, where families that had run foul of the Regime are sent into eternal exile."
Hyeon-seo Lee, The Girl With Seven Names, Part 1, Ch.2, 2015
"When I was growing up, Hyesan was an exciting place to be. [...] The city's appeal lay in its proximity to the narrow Yalu River, Korea's ancient border with China. In a closed country like North Korea, Hyesan seemed like a city at the edge of the world. To the citizens who lived there it was a portal through which all manner of marvelous foreign-made goods, legal, illegal, and highly illegal, entered the country. This made it a thriving hub of trade and smuggling, which brought many benefits and advantages to the locals, not least of which were opportunities to form lucrative partnerships with Chinese merchants on the other side of the river and make hard currency.
At times, it could seem like a semi-lawless place where the government's iron rule was not so strong. This was because almost everyone, from the municipal party chief to the lowliest border guard, wanted a share of the riches. Occasionally, however, there were crack-downs ordered by Pyongyang [the Capitol], and they could be brutal. People from Hyesan were therefore more business-minded and better off than people elsewhere in North Korea. The grown-ups would tell me that we were fortunate to live there. It was the best place in the whole country after Pyongyang, they said."
Hyeon-seo Lee, The Girl With Seven Names, Part 1, Ch.2, 2015
"She [the author's Aunt Pretty] was tough too, and once underwent an appendectomy by candlelight when the hospital had neither power nor enough anesthetic.
'I could hear them cutting me,' she said.
I was horrified. 'Didn't it hurt?'
'Well yes, but what can you do?'"
Hyeon-seo Lee, The Girl With Seven Names, Part 1, Ch.2, 2015
"My mother was a born entrepreneur. This aspect of her was unusual in a woman of high songbon. Many such women in the 1980s and early 1990s would have regarded making money from trade as immoral and beneath their dignity. But my mother was from Hyesan, and had a nose for a deal. Over the years ahead she would run many small profitable ventures that would keep the family through the worse imaginable times. Trade and market were still dirty words when I was growing up. But within a few years attitudes would change radically when it became a matter of survival."
Hyeon-seo Lee, The Girl With Seven Names, Part 1, Ch.2, 2015
At times, it could seem like a semi-lawless place where the government's iron rule was not so strong. This was because almost everyone, from the municipal party chief to the lowliest border guard, wanted a share of the riches. Occasionally, however, there were crack-downs ordered by Pyongyang [the Capitol], and they could be brutal. People from Hyesan were therefore more business-minded and better off than people elsewhere in North Korea. The grown-ups would tell me that we were fortunate to live there. It was the best place in the whole country after Pyongyang, they said."
Hyeon-seo Lee, The Girl With Seven Names, Part 1, Ch.2, 2015
"She [the author's Aunt Pretty] was tough too, and once underwent an appendectomy by candlelight when the hospital had neither power nor enough anesthetic.
'I could hear them cutting me,' she said.
I was horrified. 'Didn't it hurt?'
'Well yes, but what can you do?'"
Hyeon-seo Lee, The Girl With Seven Names, Part 1, Ch.2, 2015
"My mother was a born entrepreneur. This aspect of her was unusual in a woman of high songbon. Many such women in the 1980s and early 1990s would have regarded making money from trade as immoral and beneath their dignity. But my mother was from Hyesan, and had a nose for a deal. Over the years ahead she would run many small profitable ventures that would keep the family through the worse imaginable times. Trade and market were still dirty words when I was growing up. But within a few years attitudes would change radically when it became a matter of survival."
Hyeon-seo Lee, The Girl With Seven Names, Part 1, Ch.2, 2015
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