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The Yomiuri Shimbun North Korean defector Kang Gyuri speaks during an interview with The Yomiuri Shimbun in Tokyo on Wednesday.
By Junichi Toyoura / Yomiuri Shimbun Senior Writer
17:13 JST, November 28, 2024
Kang Gyuri knew watching South Korean TV dramas could be harshly punished, but the programs sustained her amid the oppressive government control of daily life in North Korea until she fled the country in 2023.
In an interview with The Yomiuri Shimbun in Tokyo on Wednesday, 24-year-old Kang (not her real name) revealed details of her defection to South Korea. Her escape was motivated in part by frustration at the authorities’ hardline crackdown on South Korean culture. Kang also explained that many young North Koreans do not feel any loyalty toward Kim and are turning their backs on his regime.
Now living in Seoul, Kang was in Tokyo on Tuesday and Wednesday to attend a screening and lecture meeting on a movie about the human rights situation in North Korea.
Kang was born in Pyongyang and had a comfortable life in the capital, where only senior ruling party officials and other privileged elites live. She was a talented table tennis player at a physical education university in Pyongyang.
After the authorities halted ration distributions, residents turned to local markets called “jangmadang” to acquire daily necessities. “This was a society where money fixed everything,” Kang said. “If you give bribes to a professor at a university, you’ll get good grades.”
In 2022, Kang prevailed upon her mother to buy a wooden boat. She became the vessel’s owner and started a business catching shellfish in South Hamgyong Province.
Kang had been fond of South Korean dramas since she was 14. She reeled off a list of shows including “Winter Sonata,” “The Heirs” and “Itaewon Class.” She watched her favorite, “What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim?” up until the night before she defected from North Korea.
Kang had become fed up with the authorities’ strict enforcement of the rules. “I would get stopped by the police whenever I was walking on the street. They’d always check if I’d been using South Korean-style words in text messages on my mobile phone,” Kang explained.
Young people who were caught watching South Korean dramas have even been subjected to show trial. However, Kang was undeterred from watching these programs.
“These dramas helped me get through grueling day-to-day life. I couldn’t stop watching them, even if that meant I might die,” Kang said.
Other people of Kang’s age dream of finding their own happiness. “We don’t feel a shred of loyalty to Kim Jong Un, who would execute people just for watching South Korean dramas. My generation doesn’t blindly follow the authorities. That makes us different, and I think it’s the beginning of a change in North Korean society,” Kang said.
Kang said she had frequently looked for opportunities to make her way to South Korea. In October 2023, Kang, her parents and a colleague from her business boarded a wooden boat with an engine and set out from a port in South Hamgyong Province. “I felt happy more than scared,” Kang recalled.
Their vessel was chased by a patrol boat before it reached the Northern Limit Line, the maritime boundary between the two Koreas, but they managed to get away thanks to the high waves and cover of darkness.
About forty-four hours after leaving port, Kang’s boat arrived off the city of Sokcho on South Korea’s east coast. As they approached, a South Korean fisherman called out from his boat, “Have you fled from North Korea?” Hearing that they had, the fisherman warmly said, “You’ve done well to get here.” Kang was moved by the kindness of South Korean people she met directly for the first time.
As day broke, lights began switching on in apartments in the city. “It felt like I’d dropped from a world of total darkness into a world full of light,” Kang said. “Everything was so bright.”
Kang believes more people would leave North Korea if they knew what awaited them in the southern half of the Korean Peninsula. “There isn’t a single person in North Korea who doesn’t know that South Korea is an advanced nation,” Kang said. “However, they don’t know that South Koreans consider us to share the same ethnicity and are trying to help us. They don’t know they’ll be given citizenship if they go to South Korea. That’s a problem.”
