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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What was the sentence given to the family deported for the father's mistake of rolling a cigarette using a piece of newspaper and failing to notice a picture of the Great Leader on the other side of the scrap?
(a) The family's home is searched daily for a span of five years.
(b) They are sent to a potato digging work farm.
(c) The adults are executed and the children are sent to the gulag.
(d) The family is sent to a Chinese prison.

2. Attendance at what event is mandatory for children from the time they enter North Korean elementary school?
(a) Public hangings.
(b) A children's party given on the anniversary of Kim Il-sung's birth.
(c) National concerts.
(d) Taekwondo tournaments.

3. What quality of Hyesan does Hyeonseo say leads to its status as a moneymaking town?
(a) Its proximity to Pyongyang.
(b) Its location across the Yalu River from China.
(c) Its military status.
(d) Its merchant class.

4. When Hyeonseo and her family move back to Hyesan, they find that the city has changed in what way?
(a) It is choked with industrial waste.
(b) Business is booming more than ever.
(c) It has become dilapidated.
(d) Half of the population has been relocated.

5. Who are the bowibu?
(a) Secret police in North Korea.
(b) Secret police in North Korea.
(c) Secret police in Laos.
(d) Secret police in South Korea.

Short Answer Questions

1. When Hyeonseo heard the news that some local young women had been caught listening to South Korean pop music, what was their allocated punishment?

2. Even though it meant shopping for food every day, for what reason did Hyeonseo's mother eschew the latest trend of buying a refrigerator from China?

3. How old is Hyeonseo when the family's home catches on fire?

4. Hyeonseo says that after a young woman does what in North Korean society, it can be hard for her to find a marriage match?

5. A bystander tells Hyeonseo's mother that the near-death experience is a good omen, for someone who survives a disaster at such a young age is sure to what?

Short Essay Questions

1. What beliefs about Chinese people does Hyeonseo say are taught to every North Korean child?

2. How are the themes of money and freedom linked within the scene in which Hyeonseo's mother is caught on the street wearing trousers?

3. What reason does the author provide for her claim that her family's new home in Hyesan was perfect for her "mother's illicit enterprises" (57)?

4. What is shown about Hyeonseo's maternal grandmother's character within the description of her reaction to Hyeonseo's mother's divorce and child borne of the marriage?

5. How does Hyeonseo interpret the fortune-teller's announcement that Hyeonseo will have "a future connected with music" and will "eat foreign rice" (43)?

6. What does Hyeonseo mean when she tells the reader, "We were now living in a sensitive area, politically," in relation to the family's home in Hyesan (59)?

7. What major world event does Hyeonseo say she and other North Koreans were completely ignorant of in the 1990s?

8. What does the author claim is ironic about North Korea's beginnings as a communist state?

9. What major rite of passage within North Korea's culture does Hyeonseo undergo when she is 14 years old?

10. What beliefs about American people does Hyeonseo say are taught to every North Korean child?

(see the answer keys)

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