Interviews with Kim Seong Min

I escaped from North Korea in February 1999. I think that the same goes for the other North Korean defectors, that our motivation comes from hatred of the Kim Jong Il [Kim Jong Il was the dictator of North Korea from 1994 until his death in 2011.] regime and a chance to prosper in South Korea. I had two uncles and a grandmother living in South Korea. My grandmother had three sons and one of her sons was my father. My family was the only one who ended up living in North Korea while the rest were living in South Korea. When he passed away on his deathbed, his wish was for me to find our relatives in South Korea.

From there I served 16 years in the North Korean military and it was there, when I became an officer, that I encountered South Korean leaflets and radio broadcasting. That’s when I realized that I can contact South Korea so with the help of ethnic Koreans living in China, I tried to write letters to my uncles in South Korea. The letters ended up in the hands of a journalist of a magazine and we exchanged letters about three times. However, the security police in North Korea found out about this and I heard from a friend who worked with the security police that they were going to arrest me. That´s when I defected from North Korea. If these incidents had not occurred, I would still be in North Korea today.

To describe to you about my family, my father was a famous writer in North Korea. He was a professor at the Kim Jong Il University. My mother was also famous. She was a renowned female journalist in North Korea. I am the only son in my family. I grew up my entire life in Pyongyang and I attended elementary and middle school there. When I turned 17, I enlisted in the North Korea army for ten years as a solider. When my term was almost up, I was recommended by the party seniors and commissioned to a teacher’s college. I was assigned to a 600/20 training camp where I worked at the officer of arts and propaganda.

In North Korea, I was very loyal to Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung. [Kim Il Sung was the founder of North Korea’s communist state and ruled from 1948 until his death in 1994, when he was succeeded by his son, Kim Jong Il.] There was no one event that caused me to join the movement against North Korea. But when I came to South Korea I could understand why the North Korean regime went wrong. I also had a brief brush with the North Korean secret police when I was first arrested in China then extradited back to North Korea. There I was able to see the atrocities that the North Korean regime did in the prisons.

These memories still haunt me in my nightmares. When I arrived in South Korea, I could not do anything so I organized the organizations for defectors. I was head of several of these organizations but now I am the head of the Free North Korea Radio and I take great pride in what I do.

Kim Seong Min was born in 1962. He grew up and received his education in Pyongyang, North Korea. Kim is the son of a poet and was trained as a writer. After serving ten years in the military, he worked in one of the regime’s propaganda offices. Troubled by the society in which he lived, Kim escaped to China in 1997. He eventually arrived in Seoul, South Korea in 1999, and ever since has fought for the liberation and democratization of his homeland.

In 2004, Kim established Free North Korea Radio (FNKR) to broadcast messages about freedom to those being oppressed and exploited by the regime in Pyongyang. These tireless efforts have been recognized by several international awards, including the “Prize for Press Freedom” from Reporters Without Borders and the “Asia Democracy and Human Rights Award” from the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy. Recently, Kim was elected as a Representative of the Coalition to Promote the Democratization of North Korea, an alliance of North Korean defector organizations based in South Korea.

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North Korea (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) is a country of 23 million people in northeast Asia, ruled by Communist dictator Kim Jong-Un. His deceased predecessors—father, Kim Jong-Il, and grandfather, Kim Il-Sung – respectively retain the titles of “Eternal President” and “The Great Leader.”

The Korean War began in 1950, when Kim Il-Sung, backed by the Soviet Union and China, attacked South Korea. The conflict ended in a cease-fire rather than a peace treaty, and the border between the two Koreas remains tense and heavily militarized.

Kim Il-Sung employed harsh tactics to consolidate his power and propagated an extreme personality cult that has been continued by his successors. A blend of communist doctrine, state terror, xenophobia and hyper-nationalism has given North Korea its unique ideology. Despite some recent openings, North Korea remains largely isolated from the rest of the world.

With the end of Soviet communism and withdrawal of economic support, North Korea’s economy collapsed in the 1990s. A massive famine, aggravated by the regime’s indifference, killed as many as 2 million people between 1994 and 1998. While conditions have improved, even today, North Korea faces problems of malnutrition and insufficient access to food.

Tensions between North and South Korea remain high. In 2010, North Korea sank a South Korean naval vessel, killing 46 sailors and attacked a South Korean island, killing four civilians. North Korea has developed and tested nuclear weapons in contravention of several international agreements. The country withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003 in order to test ballistic missiles and eventually a nuclear device. Multilateral negotiations have so far failed to constrain North Korea’s arms buildup and nuclear program.

North Korea is among the world’s most repressive states, engaging in widespread and systematic human rights violations, including extrajudicial executions, torture, forced abortion, arbitrary detention, and denial of the rights of expression, association, assembly, and religion. The government pervasively regulates all aspects of the lives of its citizens, each of whom is categorized as “core,” “wavering,” or “hostile,” according to the history of his or her family’s relationship with the regime. Access to housing, employment, education, and other social and economic goods depend heavily on these security classifications. The government determines where each citizen will live, and travel within the country is strictly limited.

Emigration is prohibited. Refugees who have escaped to China have frequently been forcibly returned to North Korea where they are imprisoned, subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, and sometimes executed. The government operates a network of forced labor camps for an estimated 120,000 political prisoners. While persons convicted of ordinary crimes serve fixed sentences, those convicted of political crimes are confined indefinitely. Punishment is extended to three generations – the offender’s parents, siblings, and children are also incarcerated, as a way to pressure North Koreans to conform. Political offenders are often denied food, clothing, and medical care, and many die in prison.

Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report classifies North Korea as “not free” and as one of nine nations whose lack of political rights and civil liberties are considered the “worst of the worst.”