Shin Suk-ja
| Shin Suk-ja | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1942 (age 74–75) Tongyeong, Gyeongsangnam-do, Korea (now South Korea) |
| Known for | Prisoner of conscience in North Korea |
| Spouse(s) | Oh Kil-nam |
| Children | Oh Hae-won (1976) Oh Kyu-won (1978) |
| Korean name | |
| Hangul | 신숙자 |
| Hanja | |
| Revised Romanization | Shin Suk-ja |
| McCune–Reischauer | Shin Sukja |
Shin Suk-ja (also spelled Shin Sook-ja; born 1942) is a South Korean prisoner of North Korea, imprisoned with her daughters in Yodok concentration camp after her husband Oh Kil-nam defected from North Korea to Denmark. The case received international attention, including Amnesty International's naming her a prisoner of conscience and campaigning heavily for her release.
Shin was born in Tongyeong, Gyeongsangnam-do, Korea in an area now part of South Korea. She attended elementary and middle school there. From 1958 she studied nursery at Masan Nursing School. In 1970 she left South Korea for Germany, where she worked as a nurse in Tübingen. There she met Oh Kil-nam, a South Korean economics student, marrying him in 1972. Later they moved near Kiel (Germany), where she gave birth to her daughters Oh Hae-won (on September 17, 1976) and Oh Kyu-won (on June 21, 1978). The family lived in Kronshagen near Kiel until 1985.
Oh became involved in political activism against the South Korean government in the early 1980s. He was influenced in this by a number of famous South Korean leftists in Germany, including Song Du-yul and Yun Isang; they later suggested that he could help his motherland by working as an economist in North Korea. His activism also attracted the attention of North Korean government representatives, who further attempted to entice him to defect, claiming that his wife could receive free treatment for her hepatitis in Pyongyang. Over Shin's objections, the family moved to North Korea, arriving on 8 December 1985. Instead of receiving the promised medical treatment, he and his wife were reportedly held at a military camp and forced to study the Juche ideology of Kim Il-sung. They were then employed making propaganda broadcasts to South Korea. While there, Oh claims to have met South Korean abductees who were also employed making propaganda broadcasts, including two of the flight attendants from the Korean Air Lines YS-11 hijacking.
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