Translator: Taylor Busacca Reviewer: Riaki Poništ
Imagine waking up one day
and realizing that you were born on a completely different planet,
and everything you learnt was a lie,
and your country's history was so fabricated,
and everyone around you was so brainwashed,
and heroes you worship were actually monstrous villains.
This is like a plot to a science fiction novel,
but it's the insane reality for North Koreans like me.
From the moment I was born,
I was indoctorated to worship our first dictator Kim Il-Sung.
And I always bowed to his pictures which hang in every North Korean's home.
To us, he was Santa Clause and God,
who was delivering presents on holidays and performing numerous miracles.
When he was fighting our enemy,
he made bombs from pine cones
and turned sand into rice
and crossed a river on tree leaves,
and he even crossed the rainbow.
So that's why when I was young,
I used to believe that I could also cross the rainbow.
With only one source of propaganda
and no access to outside information,
I was totally ignorant.
This is a really good thing, to live in North Korea,
because the regime imposes
the deadly mix of ignorance and fears
so even if you wanted to wake up from your Orwellian nightmare,
you intentionally put yourself back to sleep.
If you don't, your entire family,
or sometimes three generations of family,
will be sent to a political prison camp in the middle of the night,
where starvation and torture are standard.
This is what happened to my friend's father,
who simply said to his best friend, "The system is unfair."
That's why my mom told me always, even when I was young, to be careful.
"The birds hear you by day,
and the mice hear you at night," she said.
We found safety in our ignorance,
and we believed everything that the regime told us.
Especially, we believed the outside world was miserable and dangerous.
I respected the dear leader, Kim Il-Sung, for protecting us
from the American imperialists,
who enslave South Koreans in the horrible capitalist hell,
even today.
We also believed
that in the capitalist countries, like South Korea and America,
so many people die outside hospitals because they can't pay.
So we were extremely grateful
to be living in our Communist utopia.
Well, from the famine in the mid-1990s,
I saw something different that doesn't make sense.
People were starving to death, and I thought to myself,
"How can our wonderful Communist system allow this to happen?"
Those began to fill my mind
as beggars and dead bodies filled the street,
and I had goosebumps when I walked home from school,
and I sometimes smelled the decomposing flesh.
But it wasn't until I started watching illegal Chinese TV at night,
in my little secret world under the blanket,
I began to understand the truth about North Korea in the outside world.
I couldn't imagine what I was watching
on Chinese TV,
because I'd never seen the products advertised on TV
and the characters with dyed hair and ripped chins,
and living in a bright and modern new world.
So, I realized North Korea was not a paradise.
My family had really good relationships with the border guys,
so one of them helped me to cross the border into China.
Full of curiosity and attraction about the new world.
I decided to take on another bolder steps to cross the border
to find out the truth.
And it changed my life forever.
After arriving in China,
I never thought I could return to my homelands
due to the rumors of my escape,
so I would constantly change my name,
hunted by the Chinese authorities all the time.
That's why I became the Girl with Seven Names.
The brilliant new world in China
wasn't for North Korean defectors.
It wasn't for me.
So I was hiding in fear and isolation,
but I did my best to learn more about my country,
and I was stunned to find
that all the history was horrible propaganda
and especially South Korea's economy was much ahead of North Korea,
which we were brainwashed to believe
South Korea was a terribly poor country.
And most importantly,
I realized that a life of fear, hunger, and oppression,
is a crime against the North Korean people.
I really wanted to experience the half of the divided Korean Peninsula,
so in the end, I made another big decision again
by taking a flight from China to South Korea.
Even though I was flying South, back to the land of Korean people,
I felt like I was flying farther and farther from my family.
And when I landed,
I thought about the DMZ dividing the Korean Peninsula,
and I was asking myself,
"Am I going to be separated from my family forever?"
At the airport I was so hopeful when I asked for asylum,
but I received a rude introduction to South Korea.
The two officials checked my phoney Chinese passport and Visa,
and they asked me with suspicious eyes,
"These are real.
Are you really a North Korean defector?"
They thought I was Chinese citizen
trying to receive a South Korean citizenship.
So, they told me to go back to China on the next flight,
or else I would receive strict punishment under the law,
and then be deported.
My life flashed before my eyes.
I couldn't believe, even in South Korea,
I was in danger of being deported to China and then back to North Korea,
where I would be tortured
and publicly executed for visiting the South.
I almost had a breakdown.
At the long interrogation,
I had to still convince the South Korean authorities
that I wasn't a North Korean spy or a Chinese citizen.
It's ironic that while I was hiding in China for many years,
I had to convince the Chinese authorities that I wasn't a North Korean defector.
Now I had to do my best to convince the South Korean authorities
that I actually was a North Korean defector.
And then in 2009,
I returned to the border between North Korea and China,
and arranged a route for my my family to escape.
My family all walked across freezing water
under the seven border guarders' protection,
because they were friends,
but we were almost caught in China several times.
Within the first five minutes of departure
a Chinese military soldier got on the bus and started checking IDs.
My family couldn't speak Chinese, so we would be easily exposed.
As the soldier approached,
my brother's face turned so dark, like he was going to die.
So I quickly jumped in the aisle in front of the soldier,
and I started taking pictures of his face to distract him.
He screamed at me, I apologized,
and in the end, he ran off the bus in anger.
Amazingly we survived the 2,000 km across China,
but in the end my family went through hell in Laos,
after being imprisoned twice.
I was so devastated to see my mother's frail body and bony face
when I came to get her out the prison.
After 14 years of long separation,
we could finally be reunited in South Korea in 2010.
But after even we found real freedom,
I realized that we can never be free from the North Korean regime,
because the leadership became increasingly angry,
like defectors like me, we're were sharing our stories with the world,
and then telling the truth about the human rights overseas
which made the United Nations' landmark COI report last year.
So the regime fought back by making a propaganda videos against defectors.
They featured North Korean relatives, back in North Korea,
Revealing the huge rift and mental anguish
for those of us who speak out.
At the same time, the regime also was struggling
to fight two of the biggest threats to its existence:
information flowing in and people flowing out.
The external information,
especially South Korean dramas and movies
that have made South Korea so popular among the North Korean people
and shattered the propaganda about the regime's superiority.
So in response,
the regime enhanced the border's security situation to prevent defections,
and the propagandists brought a surprising solution,
the Defector Press Conference,
which featured North Koreans
who actually first escaped to South Korea
but then returned to North Korea later.
In the Defector Press Conference,
the returning defectors told similar stories about their defection,
like South Korean intelligence agent tricked them into defecting,
so they suffered miserable lives in capitalist societies,
so they dreamed to return to North Korea,
and ultimately the supreme leader, Kim Jung-un, welcomed them back home
despite their betrayal.
But there's evidence that these defectors were actually forced by the regime
to return and give the press conference.
But it's tragic that actually North Korean defectors
are suffering in South Korea
even though we sacrificed everything to reach freedom.
When we finally find it,
we are still suffering with many different reasons
and confronted by the North Korean regime.
We are on the front lines of the battle against the North Korean tyranny,
the regime's tyranny, by the human rights offices,
and we are winning
thanks to many of you who fight by our side.
And to anyone who wants to join in our fight
please share our story widely,
so the whole world will know about the truth
in my country, North Korea.
Thank you.
(Applause)