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High-level defection: why N. Korean diplomatic family chose freedom
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In this photo taken on February 14, 2023, North Korean defector Oh Hye Son, who recently published a Korean-language memoir on how she and her husband Thae Yong Ho, then deputy ambassador at North Korea's London embassy, defected in 2016, speaks with AFP during an interview in Seoul. (AFP/Yelim Lee)
B
orn into an elite North Korean family with ties to the ruling dynasty, Oh Hye Son grew up believing she was "special" -- but then she tasted freedom overseas and decided to defect.
Most of the tens of thousands of North Koreans who have escaped repression and poverty at home make an arduous, high-risk journey across the country's land border with China, where they face arrest and possible deportation.
Oh's family's defection was less dangerous but equally as wrenching: she convinced her husband Thae Yong Ho, then deputy ambassador at North Korea's London embassy, to give up their privileged place in the Pyongyang regime for the sake of their children.
"I wanted to never return to North Korea and questioned why North Koreans had to live such a hard life," she told AFP in an interview in Seoul, where she now lives.
Years of postings across Europe -- in Denmark, Sweden, and Britain -- exposed the family to a different life, she said, adding that when she first arrived in London she thought: "If there is paradise, this must be it".
Oh, who recently published a Korean-language memoir, was once part of Pyongyang aristocracy -- a descendent of a famed North Korean general who fought alongside leader Kim Il Sung against the Japanese in the 1930s.
But despite this impeccable pedigree, she still "lived in fear of power", she said.
