Interviews with Kim Seong Min

North Korea is a place where freedom cannot be found. North Korea is a place where a single leader requires the entire population to give him unconditional loyalty and obedience. It is a place where this person makes every decision.

It is a strange country where people laugh and cry, because of the decisions made by a single leader. Now that I have lived in South Korea for some time, I feel that freedom is about being able to eat, sleep, wear clothing, start a family, and raise children just as any human being can do. When I look back at the life that I had in North Korea, it was inhumane. I was living under oppression and was forced to show loyalty towards the North Korean regime.

Here in South Korea, when I see children running around in my neighborhood, I am reminded of my own childhood and the freedoms I did not have back then. Also, when I look at young South Koreans, I look back at my adolescence. I had to spend a decade in the North Korean military.

I did not have freedom in that environment. So, when I crossed the Tumen river, I crossed the Chinese border and spent three years there. I was then repatriated to North Korea. But I still risked a lot by coming to South Korea in search of freedom. [The Tumen River is a natural border between North Korea and China.]

Actually my concept of freedom was quite vague back then. I think the reason that North Korean defectors in South Korea and people like me are working towards the cause of freedom is because we want to help North Koreans discover and find this concept of freedom for themselves.

Kim Seong Min was born in 1962. He grew up and received his education in Pyongyang, North Korea. Kim is the son of a poet and was trained as a writer. After serving ten years in the military, he worked in one of the regime’s propaganda offices. Troubled by the society in which he lived, Kim escaped to China in 1997. He eventually arrived in Seoul, South Korea in 1999, and ever since has fought for the liberation and democratization of his homeland.

In 2004, Kim established Free North Korea Radio (FNKR) to broadcast messages about freedom to those being oppressed and exploited by the regime in Pyongyang. These tireless efforts have been recognized by several international awards, including the “Prize for Press Freedom” from Reporters Without Borders and the “Asia Democracy and Human Rights Award” from the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy. Recently, Kim was elected as a Representative of the Coalition to Promote the Democratization of North Korea, an alliance of North Korean defector organizations based in South Korea.

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