The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story

In 1992, Lee begins secondary school, which involves marching to school every morning while singing patriotic songs. In secondary school, Lee has “classes in Korean, maths, music, art, and ‘communist ethics’–a curious blend of North Korean nationalism and Confucian traditions that I don’t think had much to do with communism as it is understood in the West” (49).

Lee’s father makes her learn Chinese calligraphy. The most important school lessons concerned the lives and thoughts of the North Korean leaders. Lee recalls that “[h]istory lessons were superficial. The past was not set in stone, and was occasionally rewritten” (49). Students have no views of their own and do not think critically about anything. Schoolwork is mostly memorization and “[p]ropaganda seeped into every subject” (50). Much of Lee’s schooling consists of fearmongering towards Americans and other cultures portrayed as “snarling jackals” and envious of North Koreans.

Lee begins training and drilling for North Korea’s mass games. North Korea treats its mass games seriously, and they instill organization and discipline that make the students “good communists” by subordinating their will to the collective and suppressing individual thought (51). Training for the mass games takes on such a priority that little time remains for proper education.