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Lee Hyeon-seo

Lee Hyeon-seo
Escape from North Korea.jpg
Hyeonseo Lee in 2013
Born January 1980 (1980-01) (age 37)
Hyesan, North Korea
Nationality North Korean
Citizenship South Korea
Alma mater Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
Occupation Activist
Known for North Korean defector

Hyeonseo Lee (Korean: 이현서, born January 1980), best known for her book, The Girl with Seven Names, is a North Korean defector and activist who lives in South Korea, where she is a student. She escaped from North Korea and later guided her family to freedom from the country through China and Laos.

Lee grew up in Hyesan, North Korea. "When I was young, I thought my country was the best on the planet," Lee explained in her TED talk in February 2013. "I grew up singing a song called ‘Nothing to Envy’. I felt very proud. I thought my life in North Korea was normal, even though when I was seven years old, I saw my first public execution." Her family was not poor, but after the North Korean famine struck in the 1990s, she witnessed much suffering and death.

She later recalled a letter her mother received from the sister of a colleague, stating "When you read this, all five family members will not exist in this world, because we haven't eaten for the past two weeks… We are lying on the floor together, and our bodies are so weak we are ready to die." Not long afterwards, Lee "saw another shocking sight outside a train station – a woman was lying on the ground apparently dead, with a starving child in her arms staring at her face." Lee later said, "Nobody helped them, because they were so focused on taking care of themselves and their families."

In 1997, Lee crossed the frozen Yalu River alone in cahoots with a friendly border guard to fulfill a dream she had before going off to college, only planning to stay a short while before returning. However, due to complications with the North Korean security police, she had to live with relatives in China as an illegal immigrant. At one point, after being accused of being North Korean, she was interrogated by police and tested on her Chinese and her knowledge of China. She passed the test.

After 10 years of hiding her identity and living in fear in China, Lee managed to escape to South Korea. Arriving at Incheon International Airport in January 2008, she entered the immigration office and declared her identity as a North Korean asylum-seeker. She "was quickly ushered into another room," where officials inspected her papers, asked her if she was actually Chinese, and "informed me that I would be incarcerated for an unspecified period of time and then deported back to China if I was in violation of Korean law. Moreover, if the Chinese government learned that I was not actually a Chinese citizen, I would be jailed, heavily fined and then deported again: back to North Korea."


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