101 pages • 3 hours read
Sungju Lee, Susan Elizabeth McClellandEvery Falling Star: The True Story of How I Survived and Escaped North Korea
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | YA | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 16-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary
The newly formed gang operates out of Young-bum’s house, with half of the boys stealing food from the markets while the other half perform at the train station for won. This new system sustains them all for several months. The boys also begin to drink sool more. Sungju enjoys the newfound freedom of not having an adult around to tell them what to do, but this freedom also means that they often get drunk and rarely shower.
Eventually, Young-bum suspects Chulho of stealing from the group, and Sungju secretly follows Chulho to see if this is true. While trailing him, Sungju catches Chulho visiting what appears to be a brothel. Sungju suspects something is amiss but isn’t sure what. After a few days, Sungju’s rage overtakes him, and he confronts Chulho about stealing food from the market without sharing with the gang. The boys agree that they cannot fight one another and that their unity must remain paramount. Chulho finally admits that he’d been approached by the woman who runs the brothel because she wants the gang to help her “sell” her “nightflowers” to customers. The boys reminisce about the dreams they’d once had for their futures, which have now been dashed.
Chapter 17 Summary
As more and more kotjebi from across North Korea begin to make their way to Gyeong-seong, the gang must decide if it is in their best interest to move elsewhere. The city’s limited resources and increase in kotjebi make it harder for the performers in the gang to make money, and put the gang’s pickpockets in danger when desperate new gangs become willing to start fights for food and won.
The gang stow away on a coal train and travel to the city of Cheongjin. When they arrive, they stake out one of the city’s markets, but a local kotjebi gangs starts a fight with them. These gangs are far stronger in a fight, beating up Sungju and injuring him. They present the brotherhood from Gyeong-seong with a deal: leave the city or join their gang.
Chapter 18 Summary
The brotherhood retreats to the train station in Cheongjim, embarrassed and defeated as they tend to Sungju’s wounds. After getting some rest, the boys tell Sungju they see him as their leader and that they trust him. They stow away on another coal train out of town, barely making it aboard in their injured state.
They repeat this experience in the cities of Songpyeong and Sunam. Other kotjebi gangs beat them up and threaten them: leave town or work for them. But when they arrive in Pohwang, Sungju defeats the local kotjebi gang leader named Hyekchul, who admits defeat and says he and his gang will work beneath Sungju and his brothers.
In Pohwang the newly expanded gang steal by knocking items off of merchant carts. Sungju finds a home for them all in an abandoned shed outside town. The brotherhood also begin to use harder drugs: Sungju smokes opium while Chulho uses ice (also known as methamphetamine) to combat their hunger and desperation.
After the shangmoo catch on to Min-gook and Sungju one day, Sungju adapts the rocks he used in military games with his parents as a child to devise a system with which the gang can signal when the shangmoo are nearby. The original brotherhood consider taking on new names in case they are caught by police, and Sungju decides on the alias “Chang.”
Chapter 19 Summary
Sungju and his original brotherhood decide that, after the shangmoo discover their hiding spot in the shed, it is time to say goodbye. Hyekchul and his gang are adamant about staying in Pohwang, and he and Sungju have a tearful farewell.
The original brotherhood then make their way to Rajin-Seonbong, known for hosting merchants with Japanese, Chinese, Russian, and Joseon goods that are otherwise be impossible to find. Myeongchul and Chulho bicker after the former shares his daydreams and Chulho tells him they are useless. Exhausted and demoralized, the group tries not to fight and instead resolves to be on the offensive against any kotjebi gangs they meet in Rajin-Seonbong.
When they reach the markets there, they run into a meth-addled boy who does not appear to be part of a gang. Sungju introduces himself as Chang, a gang leader, and the boy informs him that the kotjebi here have no leader, but that today will be his funeral.
Moving into an alleyway, Sungju and his gang are confronted by a number of other kotjebi meth junkies wielding weapons and fighting together. They beat up the brotherhood badly, and Myeongchul is severely wounded. His brothers find a way to transport him out of town, and they try to nurse him back to health. Sungju wonders if it would be worth staying in this city a while longer, since the merchants clearly didn’t like the addict kotjebi currently in the markets.
The brotherhood goes to sleep, and Sungju fights nightmares of Myeongchul’s voice disappearing into the dark. In the morning he finds that Myeongchul died sometime in the night.
Chapter 20 Summary
The boys huddle around Myeongchul’s body for a long time before a farm worker discovers them and shows the brothers a spot near the mountains where they can bury him. Each boy says a few words before the burial. The farm worker takes pity on the brothers and shares radishes and rice with them before they sneak onto a train leaving town, with no destination in mind. Sungju says they cannot stay because there are too many yu-reong (ghosts) in Rajin-Seonbong already.
Chapters 16-20 Analysis
This portion of the book follows Sungju, Young-bum, Chulho, Min-gook, Sangchul, and Myeonchul as they try to establish themselves as a kotjebi gang and brotherhood. But this proves much more difficult than they had anticipated because in every city they stop in, they find gangs not dissimilar from themselves also fighting for survival as a group. Sungju and McClelland describe these other kotjebi as being similar to Sungju and his brothers to show the reader that Sungju’s story is not particularly unique in North Korea. Many young boys whose parents died or never returned home roam the cities in search of food and won, and they have limited resources, which means that the groups must often turn to drugs, intimidation, and violence to survive. Once again, we see the importance of the collective group mentality in protecting Sungju and giving his life purpose and meaning after losing his immediate family.
We also see the boys partake in sool, opium, and meth to soothe their hunger, desperation, and pain. This gives the reader a glimpse of the trauma these boys have suffered and their inability to face it while they try to survive on the streets. The emotional turmoil, for Sungju in particular, will continue as the book progresses, but it becomes clear in this section that he has begun to lean on drugs for comfort and a temporary dreamlike state of being. Sungju often describes his dreams throughout the narrative, but his dreams grow sadder, bleaker, and more nightmarish. Drugs provide him an escape, though as evidenced by the fight in Rajin-Seonbong, becoming an addict while living on the streets as a kotjebi may open up a new set of issues for him and his brotherhood.
At first, Sungju and his brothers’ fight for survival could be seen as an adventure story, albeit a dark one, as the young men travel the country to find their place and battle for their own territory. But any notion of adventure is ruptured when Myeonchul dies after a street fight. This serves as a breaking point for Sungju and as a moment of reckoning. While he has already witnessed death, this is the first death of a close friend that Sungju witnesses, and, given his position as a leader, it is the first death that he feels directly responsible for. Myeonchul’s innocence and naïveté, demonstrated by his love of daydreaming, are now gone, symbolizing the death of a brother as well as the death of any remaining vestige of Sungju’s childhood innocence.
