South probes defector who went home
TV star claims her fantasy turned to ‘hell’
SEOUL: South Korea is investigating the case of a North Korean defector who became a celebrity refugee in Seoul, but recently appeared on Pyongyang television to claim she had returned home from the “hell” of the capitalist South.
Lim Ji-hyun, a female defector in her 20s, arrived in Seoul in 2014 and soon became a public figure after starring in several South Korean TV shows featuring escapees from the North.
But on Sunday she abruptly appeared in a video on the North’s propaganda network, describing how her “fantasy” about the wealthy South had been shattered.
In the video, posted on the North’s Uriminzokkiri website, Ms Lim says she had “returned home” last month and was now living with her family in the western city of Anju.
It is unclear whether Ms Lim returned voluntarily, with South Korean media speculating that she might have been kidnapped at the Chinese border with the North while trying to reunite with her family.
Police sources who probed Ms Lim’s home and financial accounts in Seoul told the South’s JoongAng Ilbo newspaper there was little sign of her trying to wrap up her life in the country and move elsewhere.
“Relevant authorities are investigating the North Korean defector Lim Ji-hyun,” said Lee Yoo-jin, deputy spokeswoman of Seoul’s unification ministry handling North Korea affairs.
In the video, Ms Lim identified herself as Chon Hae-song, which she said was her real name. She tearfully detailed her “miserable” life in the capitalist neighbour where “money is all that matters”.
“I went to South Korea harbouring this fantasy that I would able to eat and live well and make a lot of money there, but the South was not the place I imagined,” she said, adding she had wanted to become an actress in Seoul.
“Every single day in the South was like hell. Every night ... I cried thinking about my motherland and my parents in the North,” she told her interviewers.
Ms Lim also accused a South Korean TV station of pushing her to lie about her life in the North to make it sound more miserable than it actually was.
“Everything I said on TV was scripted ... to make North Koreans look barbaric, ignorant and stupid,” she said, describing herself as “human trash” for defaming her motherland.
Many defectors who reach the South hire brokers to take their remaining family out of the North through the border with China, and some even visit the Chinese border areas themselves — a dangerous move in a region monitored by North Korean agents.
More than 30,000 North Koreans have fled poverty and repression in the isolated homeland and settled in the South. But many complain of lack of opportunities, discrimination and difficulty adjusting.
A recent survey showed more than 60% of defectors consider themselves “low-class citizens”, with the suicide rate among them at 15% — nearly three times the South’s national average, which is already the world’s highest.
Lee So-yool, another North Korean defector and TV celebrity in Seoul, however said Ms Lim would have been broadcast criticising the South regardless of whether she had returned to the North voluntarily or forcibly.
“She has to do it. She has no choice in order to survive,” Mr Lee said.