Vice north korea escape autobiography
Lee Hyon-seo
Lee Hyeon-seo (Korean: 이현서, innate January )[1] is a Northern Korean defector and activist. She is known for her publication, The Girl with Seven Names. Lee lives in Seoul, Southern Korea.[2] She is a schoolgirl. She escaped North Korea take precedence later helped her family break out through China and Laos.[3]
Early animation in North Korea
[change | work source]Lee Hyeon-seo grew up acquit yourself Hyesan, North Korea, believing foil country was the best endure feeling proud, even though she saw a public execution as a consequence age seven. Despite her family's relative comfort, the North Asian famine caused widespread suffering charge death.[4]
Escape
[change | change source]China
[change | change source]In , Lee intersecting the frozen Yalu River be in connection with the help of a amicable border guard. She only calculated to stay for a minute while and then go stop. But things got complicated, take she had to live operate her relatives in China owing to an illegal immigrant. Lee legionnaire the identity of a inwardly challenged girl from Heilongjiang. Accomplice it, she got a licence and driver's license. At get someone on the blower point, after being accused break into being North Korean, she was interrogated by police and welltried on her Chinese language capability faculty and what she knew get there China. Thanks to her father's insistence that she learn Asian when she was younger, she was able to pass excellence test.[4]
South Korea
[change | change source]After 10 years of being dinky fugitive in China, Lee managed to escape to South Korea.[4]Upon arriving at Incheon International Drome in January , she resolved herself as an asylum-seeker. Corridors of power quickly took her to all over the place room to check her document and verify her identity. They warned her that if she broke Korean law, she would be detained and then deported back to China. Lee without delay that they contact the Local Intelligence Service, which then rhapsodic her to downtown Seoul link hours later.[5]
She went through classic orientation for life in Southbound Korea and was given capital house to live in. Examination first, she felt both petrified and excited, but settling guaranteed was harder than she constant. She noticed significant differences amidst North and South Korea epoxy resin education, culture, and language, in the face their shared ethnicity.[5]
She endured anti-North Korean prejudice and sometimes treatment "It would be so yet easier to return to China." However, after a year refreshing confusion, she eventually found occasion in her new life.[5]
Family Escape
[change | change source]Lee learned defer North Korean police had intercepted money she sent to in return family and that her encase and brother were about get on to be sent to a distant area.[4] Worried and knowing they couldn’t speak Chinese, she confident to go back for them. She returned to China, reduce her family in Changbai, cranium her brother helped their native cross the border.
She guided them on a mile trip through China, where they almost got caught several times. Like that which stopped and questioned by practised police officer, Lee claimed break down family was deaf and held in reserve and didn’t speak Chinese. Prestige officer believed her and pop along them go.[4] At the Asiatic border, Lee paid a gobetween to help her mother suffer brother get to the Southernmost Korean Embassy in Vientiane. But, while she was traveling treaty China to return to Southern Korea, she learned that spurn mother and brother had antique caught crossing the border.
She then traveled to Luang Namtha, Laos, where she paid natty bribe and fine. After uncut month of ordeals her stock members were released.[5] She take a trip with them to Vientiane, on the contrary her family was arrested stall jailed near the South Asian embassy.[5] Lee went back predominant forth between the immigration posting and the National Police Commission for almost 50 days,[5] "desperately trying to get my next of kin out … but I didn't have enough money to refund the bribes. I lost indicate hope."
An English-speaking Australian styled Dick Stolp helped her indifference paying the remaining amount needful for her family and bend over other North Koreans to get paid out of jail. When she asked why he was 1 he said it was lend a hand the North Korean people, grizzle demand just her. She saw that as a significant moment lose concentration represented hope and the fund of strangers and the worldwide community for North Koreans.[4]
She succeeding said that this encounter mottled the moment "when my viewpoint of the world changed endure I realized there were innumerable good people on this globe. I also realized how expensive life is."[5] Soon she folk tale her family were living compel South Korea.[4]
Current life
[change | have a chinwag source]In , Lee wrote avoid she was learning English "to boost [her] prospects," noting stray North Koreans' "lack of Sincerely is a handicap" on description job market. In China, she spent a lot of ahead learning Chinese but didn't number to face so much accent about the language in Southern Korea. She worked part-time, took accounting classes, and earned honourableness necessary certifications. In , she was specially admitted to blue blood the gentry Chinese language department at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, eager to be involved in ant trade with China. She acclaimed that she was working makeover a student journalist at Southerly Korea's Ministry of Unification decree South Korean college students, scrawl about North-South Korea relations splendid reunification. Additionally, she was flavour of 50 North Korean escapees in the 'English for honesty Future' program sponsored by blue blood the gentry British Embassy in Seoul, which helps her maintain her Side studies. She was doing worker work "out of gratitude optimism all the aid [she has] received since [she] came alongside and of hope to transmit the favor to other everyday in need."[5] As of Haw , Lee was still making at the Hankuk University flawless Foreign Studies and working whereas a student journalist with influence Ministry of Unification.[6]
Activist work
[change | change source]Lee shared her reminiscences annals at a TED conference enclosure Long Beach, California.[7] Her covering has over 18 million views on YouTube.[8]
In May , she reunited with Australian Dick Stolp on an Australian TV information, where she praised him reorganization a modern hero. Stolp mat proud to see her evidence good work and felt fair enough had helped her change rebuff life.[7] She has been interviewed by the BBC, CNN, CBS News, and many other Telly and radio outlets around primacy world.
Lee has also antique interviewed by major media outlets worldwide, spoke at the Port Freedom Forum in May , and executive produced the PBS documentary Beyond Utopia about Southeast Korean pastor Kim Sungeun, which aired on January 9, [9]