SEOUL: Born into an elite North Korean family from the ruling family, Oh Hye-sun grew up believing she was “special” — but then she tasted freedom abroad and Decided to be defective.
Most of the tens of thousands of North Koreans who have escaped oppression and poverty at home make the difficult, high-risk journey across the country’s land border with China, where they face arrest and possible deportation. Is.
Oh’s family defection was less dangerous but just as terrifying: she convinced her husband, Tha Yong-ho, then deputy ambassador at the North Korean embassy in London, to give up his privileges in the Pyongyang government for the sake of their children. Leave the location.
“I never wanted to go back to North Korea and question why North Koreans had to live such a hard life,” she told AFP in an interview in Seoul.
Years of postings in Denmark, Sweden and the UK exposed the family to a different life, she said, adding that when she first arrived in London she thought: “If there’s heaven, this must be it”.
Oh, who recently published a Korean-language memoir, was once part of Pyongyang’s elite — the descendant of a famous North Korean general who sided with leader Kim Il Sung against the Japanese in the 1930s. He fought.
But despite that impeccable pedigree, she still “lived in awe of power”, she said.
She added, “No one except the Kim family had privileges, and when my children learned about freedom and democracy while abroad, I realized they had no future in North Korea. “
NHS Love
Oh’s eldest son, Tae Joohyuk, had chronic health problems, including nephrotic syndrome, a condition that can lead to life-threatening kidney problems if left untreated.
In Pyongyang’s crumbling health system – one of the worst in the world – doctors had to be bribed to get anything done and vital medicines were in short supply.
Oh said it was eye-opening when the family first arrived in London in 2004 and qualified for the National Health Service.
Her son was soon able to get free treatment at one of the city’s best medical facilities, she said, adding that her children also attended British schools, where they settled in well.
“The children grew up very bright in England, in a society that respected them,” he said.
It was a stark contrast to life in Pyongyang, to which she returned in 2008 after her husband’s first London posting ended.
Juhyuk attended Pyongyang Medical University, but instead of studying, he was put to work at a construction site transporting cement.
North Korea suffers from labor shortages in economic sectors and it is common for students, even school children, to be ordered to do manual labor as a show of loyalty to the government.
If someone fails to comply, the government allegedly withholds food rations or imposes taxes, according to the 2022 Trafficking in Persons Report, published by the U.S. State Department.
When her overseas-raised children began to question the corruption and injustice in North Korea, Oh realized that it would be impossible for them to fully integrate into Pyongyang society.
He said that their values were completely different.
“It was then that I began to think that if I had the chance to go abroad again, I would not come back.”
Escape
Oh’s chance came when her husband was reassigned to London as deputy ambassador, and she convinced him to defect because she didn’t want to “upset her children in the future”.
He hoped that the North Korean government would fall after the death of current leader Kim Jong-un’s father and predecessor, Kim Jong-il, and crushed it when his son Kim Jong-un emerged to rule as the third generation. went.
“In North Korea, your existence — from morning to night — is for the sake of the Kim family,” Oh said.
Thai became the first defector to be elected to South Korea’s parliament, where he is now a top lawmaker for the conservative People’s Power Party.
Oh likes her new life in Seoul, but worries about the views of her mother and siblings in North Korea, which is known for punishing family members of defectors.
She can’t contact them: civilian contact between the two Koreas is banned, although some defectors have used intermediaries to smuggle Chinese mobile phones across the border.
Oh has not been able to contact her family, but she did see her brother-in-law once when he was part of an official North Korean delegation that visited Seoul in 2018 for a rare diplomacy event.
This gave him hope that his relatives had not been purged by the Kim regime as a result of his family’s escape.
“Will they be angry with me? Will they be jealous of me? Or will they be quietly happy for me?” He said wiping away tears.