North Korean defector Ji-Hyun disappeared without a trace, only to later reappear pledging allegiance to North Korea...
Her life in South Korea seemed perfect: new friends, a burgeoning career, reality-TV fame. But she was about to become notorious—disappearing without a trace, only to reappear pledging allegiance to North Korea. What happened to Lim Ji-hyun?
Under the cover of nightfall, former North Korean soldier Lim Ji-hyun risked death to escape her homeland, the most isolated and ruthless dictatorship on the planet. Somehow, the then-23-year-old made it to safety in Seoul, the ultramodern capital of South Korea. Perhaps she paid Chinese brokers to sneak her across the Chinese border, as other North Korean defectors have been known to do. However she got there, by April 2014, Lim had begun a seemingly successful new life in her adopted country. With girlish looks and a gift for comic storytelling, she quickly became a rising media star. Petite with wavy brown hair, the defector amassed an online fan club that followed the video diaries she posted, which revealed details about her previous life in the North. On her 26th birthday, in April 2017, she wrote on her blog, “This is possibly the happiest birthday of my life. Thank you to all the fans who love me—you give me the courage to keep speaking out.”
Later that month, Lim vanished. Even before Lim vanished, there were signs that some in North Korea wanted to silence her. In late 2016, North Korean propaganda news websites and social-media channels began linking to grainy photos of a young woman in various sexual poses. Although the body parts were censored, it was clear the woman was naked. The news sites claimed it was Lim and that she was working as a webcam prostitute.
In a staggering twist, in July 2017, three months after she disappeared, the TV star resurfaced in North Korea. In a video uploaded to a propaganda site run by the government, Uriminzokkiri (“Our Nation”), a tearful Lim claimed she had returned home to the North of her own free will. “Every day I spent in the South was like hell. When I was alone in a cold, dark room, I was heartbroken, and I wept every day, missing my fatherland and my parents.”
Denouncing herself as “human trash,” she begged for forgiveness from Kim Jong-un.
Lim has not been seen since. As of press time, South Korean authorities are still trying to get to the bottom of her case. Seoul police spokesman Park Tae-joon says that despite Lim’s denials in the propaganda films, they firmly believe she was coerced into returning. “Our intelligence suggests Ms. Lim was tricked into going on a trip to China so North Korean government agents could kidnap her and take her back across the border,” says Park. “Ms. Lim was told that a large sum of money, around $10,000, that she had tried to send home to her parents through a Chinese middleman had gone missing. She hurried to China to retrieve it, but we think it was a trap.”
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