North Korean defector siblings Seohyun Lee and Hyun Seung Lee spoke virtually to students on Saturday evening at the Illini Union. Liberty in North Korea, an international non-profit specializing in helping North Korean refugees resettle, organized the event.
Sarah Kim, growth manager of LiNK, and Zander Bush, senior in LAS and president of LiNK UIUC, opened the event with a brief presentation of their work.
LiNK has rescued over 1,300 North Korean refugees in the last 13 years, reunited over 500 families and has been quoted in more than 1,000 media citations.
Seohyun and Hyun Seung moved to the United States through the North Korean Human Rights Act. The act, signed in 2004 by former President George W. Bush, allowed North Korean refugees to settle in the U.S.
According to LiNK’s presentation, the rate of refugees who escaped to South Korea dropped by 78% in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. There are over 34,000 North Korean defectors — people who choose to leave their country in search of freedom, new opportunities and safety — worldwide. Only 300 — less than 1% — of these defectors live in the U.S. Seohyun and Hyun Seung are among this group, having left North Korea out of fear of execution.
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Seohyun started the presentation by sharing part of her story.
“We all have different experiences based on the places where you were born or where you grew up,” Seohyun said. “The way the human being manages their life is somewhat similar, just not experiences.”
Seohyun mentioned that she “never experienced hunger during the great famine,” referring to the period of mass starvation in North Korea in the mid-’90s.
The Lee family was a part of the elite — wealthy families who had access to travel abroad and possessed certain freedoms that North Korean citizens didn’t have.
Their father, Ri Jong Ho, was committed to the regime as a senior economic official, allowing them to grow up in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea.
Seohyun also spoke about the human rights violations North Koreans face, such as political prison camps, a lack of freedom of expression, intense government surveillance and forced labor.
According to With The North Korean People, North Koreans’ realities include “no freedom of movement, enforced poverty, extreme surveillance, public executions, isolation from the outside world, denied access to the internet, collective punishment for dissent and chronic food shortages.”
Hyun Seung spoke following his sister, sharing his experiences from the three years and three months he spent serving in North Korea’s military and his insights into the country’s current status under Kim Jong Un’s rule.
The Lee family could travel abroad due to their elite status and were stationed in Dalian, China. The Lee siblings attended Dongbei University while their father led a trading corporation.
Opening up about their experiences in Dalian, the Lee siblings shared how North Korea’s influence still followed them.
Seohyun lost a roommate and witnessed her being taken from their dorm room by North Korean officers, while Hyun Seung lost a college friend and business partner due to elite purges. Their friends were sent back to North Korean prison camps, and the Lee siblings haven’t heard from them since.
“By keeping the fear in Kim Jong Un, he has successfully kept his reign,” Hyun Seung said. “North Korean people have gradually raised their awareness that the regime is lying to their citizens.”
After witnessing their friends and colleagues being executed under Kim’s regime, the Lee family decided to leave China. They defected on Oct. 5, 2014, and took a route to South Korea with help from the South Korean government. This past October marked the 10th anniversary of the Lee siblings and their family leaving North Korea.
Seohyun and Hyun Seung concluded their presentation with a brief Q&A, one of the questions asking how freedom felt after leaving North Korea and China.
“You now take the train of your life; everything in North Korea has been authored by the government,” Seohyun said. “It’s a completely different reality. You are basically a slave to the regime, so you have no choices.”
LiNK closed the event by encouraging attendees to get involved and advocate for the people of North Korea, emphasizing that the goal of their organization is to “amplify North Korean voices.”
