Smart people tend to make more logical, more directly-related parallels and connections between the news and the pop culture they consume. So, my niche has to be providing the wilder and more bizarre ones instead.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes. Image sources: University of Minnesota Retirees Association and Amblin.
Last week, our Busan Book Club covered The Girl with Seven Names by Hyeonseo Lee (2014—The StoryGraph, LibraryThing, GoodReads). A tale of her escape from North to South Korea via a decade spent in China, and later her returning to the border to help her mother and brother also escape, generally we found it very informative and moving. But, we were also struck by her incredible naivety, and sheer luck. In particular, without her family’s high status within North Korea, and without being able to rely on wealthy connections and generous benefactors at the last moments, there would have been no story to tell at all.
The smart takeaway is how, by coincidence, those last two points dovetailed with one about North Korean representation made a few days later by my Donsgeo University colleague, B. R. Myers, as part of a presentation he gave at Seoul City Hall at the Seoul Forum on North Korean Human Rights 2024. From his blog, Sthele Press:
“….This brings me to the escapee issue. These days talk of the grim punishment awaiting repatriated escapees is often contradicted in the same breath by reference to how so-and-so just saved up enough money for a second escape. The sum needed just before the pandemic—if my sources are correct—was over $5000, and let’s face it, that’s more than the average American has in the bank, so I worry that if we continue to present these people as representative, we’ll be creating confusion about what living standards in North Korea are really like. I’m not downplaying the ordeals that they all go through, especially the women who are trafficked across the river, but it’s time, I believe, that we concentrated on the great mass of people inside North Korea.”
“That goes also for the issue of North Korean workers in China and Russia. If you spread the blame between three regimes, Kim gets off lightly. Just how bad are conditions at home, that people compete to get treated like slaves in foreign countries? I think that’s what we should focus on.”
Read the rest of Myers’s presentation there. While my own thoughts may seem flippant by comparison, especially given the gravity of those conditions in North Korea, that is absolutely not my intention. Rather, I feel they only help underline his point about representation all the more.
Specifically, reflecting on Lee’s incredible run of good luck while I was reading her book, I couldn’t help but constantly be immediately reminded of a free-talking activity I’ve been using for the last 20+ years with my ESL students, about what supplies to prioritize in the event of a plane crash in the Pacific Ocean. (I call it Cast Away after the 2000 movie, but these days most students have never heard of it.). Which I grant does indeed sound bizarre, but the connection is there:
You see, most students, and me too if I didn’t already know better, rank obvious things like the fishing line and hooks very highly. Only, as I think it was the US Coast Guard that explained things in the version I originally got this from, in fact both those and 12 other things on this list are completely useless.
The reason being, quite unlike in movies like Cast Away, where the main character quickly paddles to a deserted island to survive on, in most oceans 99 per cent of plane crash survivors simply wouldn’t. So, unless they were found within 2-3 days, they’d die of thirst and sun exposure.
Which generally doesn’t make for riveting viewing.
That means we only get movies about the 1 per cent that do make it to land instead. Leading my students to prioritize hooks, matches, and so on. Whereas really, the only genuinely useful things are the flare gun to help rescuers find you, and the bottles of water to give them an extra day or so to do so while you’re still capable of firing it:
(Let me know if you’d like a copy of my PPT, and the rationale behind the specific ranking).
Wisely, I spared the other book club members this huge segue in our meeting in the coffee shop. But, now that I’ve put pen to paper here, I am indeed intrigued at how this—unfortunately named—’survivorship bias‘ potentially colors narratives about North Korean and its escapees.
And also intrigued whether Lee is asked about her incredible luck in this 1.5 hour interview. I’ll let you know!
Related Posts:
- Single Korean Women are Being Scammed into Paying More to Feel Safe in Their Homes. You Don’t Have to be a ‘Feminist’ to Acknowledge That.
- Performing in “Public” Spaces in Korea and Japan—Can Anyone Do it? Or Mostly Just Men?
- “Japan is Famously—or Notoriously—Known for its People Not Being Able to Say No.”
- In Just Two Minutes, My Eyes Were Opened to Why Resolving the Comfort Women Issue is so Necessary for Japan’s #MeToo
- Manufacturing Consent?: Socializing Migrant Brides to Korea into Becoming Docile, Obedient ‘Baby-Making Machines’
- The Hidden Roots of Korea’s Gender Wars
If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)
The Grand Narrative 
