Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Three North Korean teens fleeing North Korea find one another over the Chinese border and end up cowering together in a cave, hiding from the police who would send them back. The three couldn’t be more different. Yongju is the treasured son of the #11 official in North Korea’s government, but the country’s Dear Leader has murdered his father in a drunken rage, forcing his family to flee Pyongyang. Jangmi, daughter of a destitute northern family, has survived for years smuggling goods across the border. She is pregnant by a married man who rejects her. And Danny is a devout evangelical Korean-American Christian who is gay. Facing humiliation at his private school when a friend outed him, he has fled to China to reunite with his missionary mother. In Krys Lee’s novel about North Korean refugees, How I Became a North Korean, she tells their stories in alternating chapters.
A perilous journey to the South
Lee’s novel is set sometime late in the twentieth century or early in the twenty-first during the rule of Kim Jong Il, who died in 2011. But the reality portrayed here continues under Kim’s son, Kim Jong Un. For anyone with the audacity to cross the Yalu River into China, danger lies everywhere on both sides of the border. North Korean guards are numerous and diligent, and the punishment for attempting to escape is a term in one of the country’s notoriously harsh prison camps. And across the border, Chinese police, equally vigilant, grab any refugees and immediately repatriate them to North Korea. They’re aided by the Chinese residents of northern China, who almost uniformly detest North Koreans. The experiences of the three teens in Lee’s novel may seem harsh, but it only reflects the reality.
How I Became a North Korean by Krys Lee (2016) 256 pages ★★★★☆
The sometimes problematic role of Christian missionaries
How I Became a North Korean also brings to light the work of Christian missionaries in northern China. (According to official Chinese data, there are forty-four million Christians in the country. But many insist there are a great many more.) Some there maintain an underground railroad of sorts, ferrying North Korean refugees across the vast territory of China to Thailand far to the south and then on to South Korea. Yongju and Jangmi have fled in hopes of going there, and eventually Danny decides to do so as well. But along the way they end up in the care of a South Korean missionary who proves to be a poor Christian, forcing them to remain locked up until they convert to his brand of religion. Presumably, the man is atypical. But Lee’s story implies that such fanaticism is typical enough to justify it as a major element in the plot.
How I Became a North Korean is an important story, skillfully told.
About the author
Krys Lee is a Korean-American author based in South Korea who has won awards for her short stories. She is an associate professor of creative writing and literature at Yonsei University, a private Christian university in Seoul. Lee received her BA in English Literature from UCLA, her MA in English Literature from the University of York, and her MFA in creative writing from Warren Wilson College, a private liberal arts college in North Carolina. How I Became a North Korean is her second novel.
For related reading
You’ll find this novel at 10 good books about North Korea. And, since much of the action in this book takes place in China, you might also want to see 30 insightful books about China.
You’ll also find this book in good company at Top 10 great popular novels.
And you can always find my most popular reviews, and the most recent ones, on the Home Page.
