Jin Gyeong-suk
| Jin Gyeong-suk | |
|---|---|
| Native name | 진경숙 |
| Born | June 24, 1980 |
| Died | January 2005 (aged 24) Chongjin, North Korea |
| Nationality | North Korean |
| Other names | Jin Kyung-sook |
| Citizenship | South Korean |
Jin Gyeong-suk (June 24, 1980 – 2005), also known as Jin Kyung-sook, was a North Korean woman who, after successfully defecting to South Korea in 2002, was abducted in China two years later and forcefully deported back to North Korea, where she was tortured and murdered.
In August 2004, Jin, who had acquired South Korean citizenship after her arrival there two years earlier, and her husband, Mun Jeong-hun, traveled on their honeymoon to the Jilin Province in northern China. Commissioned by a Japanese film production company, the couple had planned to make a video about the involvement of the North Korean regime in the drug trade. In this context, they met a supposed middle-man on the Chinese side of the Tumen River, which forms a border between China and North Korea. This middle-man was supposed to smuggle a video camera into North Korea, to facilitate gathering of evidence on film of the drug production taking place there. The meeting with the middle-man turned out to be a trap. Jin and her husband were abducted by four men disguised as road construction workers, but who, it is believed, were agents of the North Korean secret service. While her husband managed to escape, Jin Gyeong-suk was forced into a sack and transported across the Tumen River into North Korea. Later investigations showed that she was deported to the Chongjin concentration camp in the northern Hamgyong Province, where she was interrogated, tortured, and ultimately murdered.
The case proved to be politically highly charged, and indeed for two reasons:
Jin's abduction to North Korea garnered a flurry of media attention. Various human rights organizations intervened, expending considerable energy and resources to seek Jin’s release; they attempted as well to determine whether Jin was still alive. The family petitioned to then South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun and pushed for her return to South Korea, without, however, receiving a response from the president.
Jin died around early January 2005, at the Chongjin concentration camp. The cause of death was determined to be the result of the residual effects of torture to which she had been subjected to.
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