Public executions and religious persecution: An inside look at life inside North Korea

[mountaineer]

Public executions and religious persecution: An inside look at life inside North Korea
By Jonathon Van Maren
Dec. 6, 2018

Growing up, Hyeonseo Lee was sure she lived in the best country in the world. Her family seemed well-to-do, and she was very patriotic—she knew the song “Nothing to Envy” by heart. She remembers vividly the moment she realized that not everything was as it seemed. It was the crippling famines of 1994-1998, when between 240,000 and 3.5 million people died of starvation. It was then that Lee finally realized that North Korea might not be what she had been told it was.

She had witnessed public executions from a very young age, but it was the scenes of suffering and dying in the wake of massive food shortages that seared themselves into her memory. ...

One final question. Moving from North Korea to rest of the world, what was the hardest thing to get used to?

To get used to democracy, freedom, [and] capitalism is really the most difficult thing for all North Korean defectors, because we grew up in a Communist society, which is completely controlled by the regime. We never had any freedom. We never made any decisions for our life–all the time the regime made [decisions] for all North Korean citizens. So we lived like human robots, we just go there, go here. But when North Korean people have freedom like in South Korea, we don’t know where to go because we have never tasted so much freedom. That’s why when we have so much freedom, suddenly we don’t know where to go, because we need somebody’s hand to help to give us a direction because we were never trained to make a decision ourselves. Suddenly we come from communism to capitalism and the economy that is huge. Many people don’t even know how to use a subway, they don’t even know how to take a bus. That’s the real issue for North Korean defectors. So, my answer is we never enjoyed freedom. We need a lot of time to get used to it. That’s why now many North Korean defectors in South Korea are having hard time.  ... More from The Bridgehead

[Frank Cannon]

Gosh. Who knew they were so oppressive? We should do something about them.

[Restored]

Somewhat similar to what slaves encounter, going all the way back to Moses. 
North Korea is similar to what we would have if the liberals get control. If you control the environment and the food, you control the people.

[TomSea]

Great article really,

Wikipedia article on Lee Hyeong-soo

The article reads:

"Upon finding that her family was suffering enormously for her escape, she returned to China to help her family escape North Korea as well, eventually assisting them on a more than 2,000-mile journey though Communist China."





It is interesting in the places where her story mirrors that of the story in "Bones of the Master" by George Crane, where he portrays the sojourn of the Buddhist Monk (Tsung Tai), who travelled all the way from Inner Mongolia (immediately North of China) to Hong Kong (South China) in the 1950s during China's "Great Leap Forward", he also witnessed famine, people eating grass they were so hungry.

Bones of the Master <a/>, one of the best books I have read, the Monk went on to settle in Woodstock, NY.

But having to witness public executions from a young age, I think she says from as young as 7 years old, as the North Korean girl talks about, is certainly, a new one on me and sounds inordinately savage.