![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() "Things like freedom of expression and being honest about your feelings hit home for me."Ī former star of North Korea's synchronised swimming team, Hee-Jin had been selected to work at a restaurant in Europe, a privilege reserved for the regime's most loyal supporters.īy day, she waited tables under the watchful eye of a government minder, dutifully sending the majority of her pay packet back home to North Korea.īut by night, with access to the internet for the first time, she fed her growing misgivings about her homeland and its dictatorial ruler. The shows made her "yearn for South Korea," she said. It seemed completely at odds with what she had been taught at home in Pyongyang, where South Koreans were portrayed as "poor and miserable", even enslaved by the US and Japan. In 2015, watching South Korean shows secretly in her apartment at night, she became entranced by the free and extravagant lives led by the characters on her screen. "In North Korea, you could only say that you love Chairman Kim Jong Un and his father." ![]() "In Korean dramas, you can see people saying 'I love you' so freely," she said. For Hee-Jin Ryu, there was something about the way people professed their love for each other on South Korean television that first kindled her doubts about North Korea. ![]()
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