Hyeonseo Lee

“He’d valued his dignity more than his own life.”

— Hyeonseo Lee

“It’s funny how the final straw is invariably a trivial incident.”

— Hyeonseo Lee

“Ordinary people are made persecutors, denouncers, thieves. They use the fear flowing from the top to win some advantage, or to survive.”

— Hyeonseo Lee

“..."we can do without almost anything – our home, even our country. But we will never do without other people, and we…

— Hyeonseo Lee

“I was already hiding beneath so many lies that I hardly knew who I was any more. I was becoming a non-person.”

— Hyeonseo Lee

“The irony was that the new communist state had created a social hierarchy more elaborate and stratified than anything seen in the…

— Hyeonseo Lee

“History lessons were superficial. The past was not set in stone, and was occasionally rewritten.”

— Hyeonseo Lee

“People in the hostile class, which made up about 40 per cent of the population, learned not to dream.”

— Hyeonseo Lee

“There was just one problem, however, and it was a major one. I wasn’t choosing any of this. It was all happening…

— Hyeonseo Lee

“Sixty thousand yuan – a fortune representing ten years’ wages at the restaurant – and a week’s imprisonment with the threat of…

— Hyeonseo Lee

“In her world, the law was upside down. People had to break the law to live. The prohibition on drug-dealing, a serious…

— Hyeonseo Lee

“The strength of my parents’ feelings for each other, however, was a worry to my grandmother. She warned them that if a…

— Hyeonseo Lee

“My closest friend at this time was my tiny pet dog – it was one of the cute little breeds that people…

— Hyeonseo Lee

“Every so often the authorities registered voters in order to find out who was missing and why. I had turned eighteen and…

— Hyeonseo Lee

“I’ll do whatever it takes. Humans are selfish and care only for themselves and their families. Am I any different?… Not only…

— Hyeonseo Lee

“She’d said nothing about keeping this a secret, but I knew I would never mention it to my mother or my father…

— Hyeonseo Lee

“I wanted to belong, like everyone else around me did, but there was no country I could say was mine. I had…

— Hyeonseo Lee

“She was a manager at Department Store Number One in Pyongyang, which was regularly featured on the television news, showing shelves laden…

— Hyeonseo Lee

“At the end of that first year at secondary school the ceremonies held on the anniversary of the Korean War affected me…

— Hyeonseo Lee

“Not only did I believe that humans were selfish and base, I also knew that plenty of them were actually bad –…

— Hyeonseo Lee

“This was the first time I had ever known that North Korea has gay people. I am embarrassed to admit that I…

— Hyeonseo Lee

“It was the dilemma all three of us had. Every choice we made cut us off permanently from someone we loved.”

— Hyeonseo Lee

“I had to learn Mandarin. And I had the best teacher – necessity. You can study a language for years at school,…

— Hyeonseo Lee

“Afterwards, wedding photographs were taken, as was customary, at the feet of the great bronze statue of Kim Il-sung on Mansu Hill.…

— Hyeonseo Lee

“There are two kinds of prison in the gulag. One is for prisoners sentenced to ‘revolutionary re-education through labour’. If they survive…

— Hyeonseo Lee

“One of the main reasons that distinctions between oppressor and victim are blurred in North Korea is that no one there has…

— Hyeonseo Lee

“These birthdays were national holidays and all children were given treats and candies. From our youngest years we associated the Great Leader…

— Hyeonseo Lee

“After years in the Chinese workforce, I had developed an emotional attachment to money. My earnings were my hard work and long…

— Hyeonseo Lee

“Most of the brokers who help defectors are human traffickers. They help women escape, not men. They’re paid to bring us to…

— Hyeonseo Lee

“I ate noodles every day. After a week, I wanted a change and rang Kim to ask him the English word for…

— Hyeonseo Lee