The Girl with Seven Names: Chapter 37 Summary & Analysis

Inside the airport, Hyeonseo makes her way to the immigration counter and stands in the line for foreigners. When she finally gets to the counter, Hyeonseo tells the man behind the counter that she is North Korean and is looking for asylum. A woman appears and asks if she is telling the truth, suspecting that Hyeonseo is Chinese and looking to gain South Korean citizenship. Hyeonseo tells the woman that she is in fact North Korean, and the woman leads her to an interrogation room. Hyeonseo smiles at the irony. Not so long ago, she convinced an interrogator that she wasn’t North Korean, and now here she is, trying to convince another interrogator of the exact opposite. 

After a couple of hours, the woman leads Hyeonseo out of the airport to a waiting car. She is told that hundreds of North Koreans are showing up each week from Mongolia and Thailand, and she watches as Seoul passes in the window. The wealth of the buildings and people shock her. South Korea is not at all the country she had been told about as a child. Soon, the car arrives at the National Intelligence Service processing center. Her investigation will begin here.