时间：2024-09-21 21:48:01 来源：玉林新闻

Lee Seo-hyun / Courtesy of Lee Seo-hyun

By Jung Min-ho

Born into a privileged family in Pyongyang, Lee Seo-hyun was no ordinary North Korean. Her father was a senior government official decorated as a "Hero of Labor," the high-level honor also given to Kim Kyong-hui, the only daughter of North Korea's late founding leader, Kim Il-sung, and Kye Sun-hui, an Olympic judo champion.

Her father was close to many powerful people and was deeply loyal to the regime. In what she believed was a "paradise on Earth," her family was and would always be safe, she assumed.

Her belief was shattered when her best friend was dragged away from their dorm room at a Chinese college because of her father's association with Jang Song-thaek, who was executed in 2013 by his nephew and North Korea's current leader, Kim Jong-un. It is still unclear what ultimately happened to the family. That day, Lee said, she accepted what she had long denied: No matter who you are or what you have, no one is truly safe in North Korea.

"In retrospect, I had always been in fear, which I did not know back then," Lee, 31, told The Korea Times. "When I was attending Kim Il-sung University, one of my classmates was called away during a class and was never heard from again … In another case, a family, living in the same apartment building as my family, was one day all sent to political prison camps for some reason."

It could happen to anyone, any day, especially to the North Korean elite. There is no secret. Everything said at home can be heard by intelligence agents and could result in the end of one's career or even life.

"I felt a sense of responsibility that what I say or do could instantly change the fate of my family," Lee said. "I feel smothered just thinking about it."

In less authoritarian China, she learned about the harsh reality of her home country, which is in reality no "paradise."

"Before I went to China in 2010, I assumed that it was less developed than North Korea. So I was shocked to see the airport crowded with travelers, the roads packed with cars and the lights illuminating the streets," she said. "I was confused about the truth I thought I knew."

In reality, her country had many deep problems. However, perhaps because of her fear, she refused to ask herself about them.

One day in a Chinese taxi heading toward her school, the driver asked her why North Korean leaders do little to reform their country to save their citizens from hunger in the ways former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping did for his people. It was a legitimate question the leaders should answer ― a question all ordinary North Koreans want and deserve an answer to, but are afraid to ask.

After living in China for nearly five years, Lee decided to stop pretending that she was unaware of the undeniable truth ― about the world and North Korea ― and escaped from the North with her family. After staying in South Korea for a while, they eventually settled down in the U.S. for security reasons.

Thanks to the Bush Foundation and the family of Otto Warmbier, a U.S. college student who died in 2017 soon after being released by North Korea, Lee received scholarships to attend graduate school at the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs this year.

Today her dream is to reform North Korea, but not in the ways Deng did.

"I want to be part of the effort to help North Koreans who, just like people in other parts of the world, deserve their inherent, universal human rights," Lee said. "When the driver told me about China's reforms, I thought it would be great for North Korea to do the same ― but only the economic reforms … Now I believe there should also be reforms in its political system so that continued one-man rule cannot be possible."

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