Tag: Hyeonseo Lee

6 Degrees of Separation

Six Degrees of Separation: From ‘How To Do Nothing’ to ‘The Vienna Woods Killer: A Writer’s Double Life’

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Six degrees of separation logo for memeA pinch and a punch for the first of the month!

Yes, it’s August 1, which means if you are a horse, it’s time to celebrate your birthday! And if you are a book blogger, it’s time to participate in Six Degrees of Separation, a book meme that runs the first Saturday of every month that is hosted by Kate from booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

Here’s my contribution. For a bit of a change, I’ve decided to focus on narrative non-fiction titles only. As ever, click the pink hyperlinks to read my review of that book in full.

The starting point is:

‘How To Do Nothing’ by Jenny Odell (2020)

I’ve not heard of this non-fiction book before, but it sounds interesting. As much as I like to be productive, I have long argued that it’s important to do absolutely nothing as well… it helps recharge the batteries. But given I haven’t read the book, it’s a bit difficult to know what to link it to next, so I’ve simply gone by the title. Another non-fiction book with “nothing” in the title is…

‘Nothing to Envy’ by Barbara Demick (2010)

This is an award-winning non-fiction book about life in North Korea. Demick, an American journalist, tells the stories of six individual people living in Chongjin, the nation’s third-largest city, and does so in a totally compelling and gripping way. I’ve read many books about life in the world’s most secretive state but this is by far the best because it presents such a marvellous and eye-opening overview, not just of the people, but of its history and oppressive political system.

Another book about North Korea, written by a rare defector, is…

‘The Girl with Seven Names: Escape from North Korea’ by Hyeonseo Lee (with David John) (2016)

This is an inspiring and harrowing true-life story about escaping North Korea’s brutal regime. Hyeonseo Lee came from a relatively comfortable family, but when her father died, she made a fateful — and terribly naive — decision: to cross the border and visit relatives in China for a few days, thinking she could return without any consequences. She was just 17. Sadly, she was never able to go back.

This is a gripping story about resilience and reinventing yourself. Another book about someone who had to do that to survive is…

Walking Free by Dr Munjed Al Muderis

‘Walking Free’ by Dr Munjed Al Muderis (with Patrick Weaver) (2014)

Dr Munjed Al Muderis is an orthopaedic surgeon based in Australia. He has pioneered techniques for treating soldiers who have lost limbs. But he was once a refugee. This book recounts his perilous journey from Sadaam Hussain’s Iraq, which he fled to escape certain death, to Christmas Island, an Australian territory south of Indonesia, where he claimed asylum. He was later detained at the Curtin Immigration Detention Centre in the remote Kimberly region of Western Australia for processing, but instead he was given a number and treated like a criminal, effectively kept behind bars for 10 months…

It’s a damning portrait of Australia’s immigration detention system. Another book that is a damning portrait is…

‘No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison’ by Behrouz Boochani (2018)

Winner of Australia’s richest literary prize, this is a true-life account of what it is like to be caught up in Australia’s shameful offshore immigration detention system. It was written by Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish-Iranian writer, journalist, poet, scholar and filmmaker, who was detained on Manus Island for more than four years. His account is a valuable insight into what happens to men, cut off from family and vital support networks, when they are subjected to inhumane treatment.

Another book about refugees, but in this case from the perspective of trying to help them, is…

The Optician of Lampedusa by Emma Jane Kirby

‘The Optician of Lampedusa’ by Emma Jane Kirby (2016)

This tells the true story of an optician, his wife and six of their friends who rescued 47 migrants off the coast of Sicily late in the summer of 2013. The migrants had been fleeing Africa and were on a seriously overcrowded boat that capsized off the coast of Lampedusa, the largest island of the Italian Pelagie Islands in the Mediterranean Sea. At least 300 people drowned.

While the book sometimes labours under its own weight, it does put a very human face on those caught up in rescue efforts and shows the psychological impacts on them. It’s a story that shows two sides of the one coin: the worst of humanity, and the best of it, too.

Another non-fiction book that shows the best and worst of humanity is…

‘The Vienna Woods Killer: A Writer’s Double Life’ by John Leake (2007)

This book recounts the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction story of Jack Unterweger, a convicted murderer, who was hailed as Austria’s greatest example of criminal rehabilitation. While serving a life sentence for the brutal murder of a teenage girl, Jack developed a flair for writing poetry, fiction and non-fiction. His work was so well received he became the darling of the literary elite who campaigned, successfully, for his early release in 1990. But Jack hoodwinked everyone into thinking he had put his criminal past behind him while living a secret life as a serial killer…

So that’s this month’s #6Degrees: from a book about doing nothing, to a story about a writer who did something terrible, linked via life in North Korea, the story of a defector, escape from Iraq, detainment on Manus Island, and saving refugees in Italy.

Have you read any of these books? Care to share your own #6Degrees?

20 books of summer, 20 books of summer (2018), Author, Book review, China, Hyeonseo Lee, memoir, Non-fiction, North Korea, Publisher, Setting, William Collins

‘The Girl with Seven Names: Escape from North Korea’ by Hyeonseo Lee (with David John)

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Non-fiction – Kindle edition; William Collins; 320 pages; 2016.

Leaving North Korea is not like leaving any other country. It is more like leaving another universe. I will never truly be free of its gravity, no matter how far I journey.

The Girl with Seven Names: Escape from North Korea by Hyeonseo Lee is an inspiring and harrowing true life story about escaping a brutal regime and then having the courage to get your family out too.

Hyeonseo Lee was born in North Korea. She came from a relatively comfortable family. Her father was in the military and her mother smuggled goods from across the Chinese border and made a living selling them, so there was always food on the table — even during the Great Famine, where one million North Koreans died of starvation — and new clothes to wear.

But not long after Hyeonseo’s father died, she made a fateful — and terribly naive — decision: to cross the border and visit relatives in China for a few days, thinking she could return without any consequences. She was just 17. Sadly, she was never able to go back.

A perilous search for freedom

The book charts Hyeonseo’s journey to freedom. It follows her life as an illegal immigrant in China, where she spent 10 years working low-level jobs, until she was able to get herself to South Korea, where she claimed asylum.

But throughout this time, always looking over her shoulder, changing her name (yes, seven times), learning Mandarin to fit in, buying a fake ID and keeping one step ahead of the authorities, she was constantly aware that she had left her mother and younger brother behind, whom she missed terribly. She vowed to get her mother out (her brother was engaged to be married, so it was more complicated to help him), but through a bizarre set of circumstances managed to smuggle both of them out.

Their perilous 2,000 mile journey from North Korea to Vietnam, where they planned to claim asylum in the South Korean embassy, was supposed to take around a week: it took more than six months and involved all kinds of dangers, including immersion in the shady world of people smugglers, brokers and corrupt officials.

It didn’t help that Vietnam had supposedly turned hostile to helping North Koreans and a last-minute diversion to Laos put the whole escape plan at risk. There was the ever-present threat of deportation back to North Korea, where imprisonment or public execution awaited.

A fabulous adventure story

The Girl with Seven Names is a truly gripping read. It has the air of a fabulous adventure story; sometimes it’s hard to believe it’s true because so many horrendous things happen along the way. But Hyeonseo’s unwavering faith in herself, in helping her mother and of forging a new life in a new culture is inspiring.

And while her story highlights the worst of humanity — the repressive and truly cruel nature of the North Korean state, the immorality of the people smugglers and the gangs determined to make a buck out of other people’s misery — it also presents a refreshing look at the kindness of others, for it is only through the random act of one man — a Westerner in Laos — that Hyeonseo was able to get her family to South Korea because he gave her the money she needed exactly when she needed it.

My most basic assumptions about human nature were being overturned. In North Korea I’d learned from my mother that to trust anyone outside the family was risky and dangerous. In China I’d lived by cunning since I was a teenager, lying to hide the truth of my identity in order to survive. On the only occasion I’d trusted people I’d got into a world of trouble with the Shenyang police. Not only did I believe that humans were selfish and base, I also knew that plenty of them were actually bad – content to destroy lives for their own gain. I’d seen Korean-Chinese expose North Korean escapees to the police in return for money. I’d known people who’d been trafficked by other humans as if they were livestock. That world was familiar to me. All my life, random acts of kindness had been so rare that they’d stick in my memory, and I’d think: how strange. What Dick had done changed my life. He showed me that there was another world where strangers helped strangers for no other reason than that it is good to do so, and where callousness was unusual, not the norm. Dick had treated me as if I were his family, or an old friend. Even now, I do not fully grasp his motivation. But from the day I met him the world was a less cynical place. I started feeling warmth for other people. This seemed so natural, and yet I’d never felt it before.

Hyesonseo now campaigns for North Korean human rights and refugee issues. You can see a TED talk she gave in 2013 about her story:

If you liked this, you might also like:

Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick:  an award-winning book, probably the best about what it is like to live in North Korea, that tells the individual stories of six people living in Chongjin, the nation’s third largest city.

This is my 10th book for #20booksofsummer. I bought it last year after reading this piece by Hyeonseo Lee on the Five Books website.