In 2015, a young woman named Hee Yeon Lim defected from North Korea with her family. She is now speaking about Kim Jong Un’s regime and some of the horrible things she witnessed, including savage public executions and underage prostitution.
Hee Yeon’s father, Col. Wui Yeon Lim, was a high-ranking member of the military with close ties to the regime. After he died, his family escaped from North Korea and relocated to South Korea. Hee Yeon, 26, is still haunted by her life in Pyongyang and what happened to her and those around her in her native land.
“Despite our privilege, we were scared. I saw terrible things in Pyongyang” Hee Yeon revealed.
She told the Mirror that when she was younger, officials would go to her school and select teenage girls to work at one of the dictator’s hundreds of homes. They had to be very attractive, and one of their jobs was to feed Kim caviar.
“They are also taught how to massage him, and they become sex slaves,” she said. “Yes, they have to sleep with him and they cannot make a mistake or object because they could very easily simply disappear.”
One time, Hee Yeon was forced out of her classroom with other students to watch an execution among 10,000 other people. Eleven musicians were slaughtered for allegedly making a pornographic video. In a large stadium, the men were hooded, gagged, and tied to anti-aircraft guns.
She explained: “The musicians just disappeared each time the guns were fired into them. Their bodies were blown to bits, totally destroyed, blood and bits flying everywhere…and then, after that, military tanks moved in and they ran over the bits on the ground where the remains lay.”
Following the incident, Hee Yeon was unable to eat for three days. People lived in fear that they would be the next target if they stepped out of line.
She added, “I was brought up [and] told he was like a god – that he was as a young boy an expert sailor, marksman before the age of seven, god-like. Then I met him at big events, I found him terrifying, really scary, nothing god-like about him.”
Traumatized by everything the regime represented, Hee Yeon and her family decided to escape. They paid smugglers to take them to China, and from there they went to Laos and ultimately South Korea. She now lives in Seoul.
During his first address to the United Nations this week, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to “totally destroy North Korea.” He said, “If the righteous many do not confront the wicked few, then evil will triumph.”
Trump then added, “The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.”
