What Loyalty Cost Us: Even My Husband’s Body Wasn’t Spared

Lee Sung-hee,

North Korean Defector

I was born in Wonsan, a peaceful seaside city in Gangwon Province, famous as Kim Jong-un’s birthplace. Though the ocean stretched blue before us, what truly filled my childhood memories were red slogans and ideological chants.

I didn’t just show loyalty—I lived it.

With a father who fought in the Korean War and a mother in the Socialist Women’s Union, devotion to the state was second nature. On holidays, I laid flowers beneath the portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, polishing their frames with care. I was always “a daughter of the Party.”

After graduating, I followed the Party’s order to “go where it’s hardest” and volunteered in the countryside. There, I met my husband—a former military officer, loyal to his core.

We were admired as the perfect Party couple, often showcased as an ideal family. But the loyalty we gave so fully would come back to punish us in the worst possible way.

In the mid-1990s, the crisis we faced was far worse than what “Arduous March” suggests. The smelter where my husband worked shut down, and people collapsed from hunger.

Officials smuggled zinc ingots to China for flour, and my husband was ordered to oversee it.

That flour fed the starving workers.

While others suffered in silence, my husband gave people food. Many called him hero.

But that hero was suddenly branded a traitor.

After a tip-off, the Ministry of State Security raided us. The other officials denied involvement and blamed everything on my husband.

He was taken away alone—and never came back.

When I heard he had died in prison from illness, I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

Worse still, I was told his body had been dumped in a field.

I rushed to the Ministry and shouted,

“How could you kill someone so loyal and toss his body like garbage? Are you even human?”

I screamed, sobbed, shook with rage. All I got were fists, kicks, and insults.

From that day, everything I believed in collapsed.

The regime I trusted—the ideology I was raised to honor—cast me out.

My husband died for loyalty, and I was left with crushing guilt for not saving him.

I couldn’t stay there any longer. I risked my life and crossed the border.

Now I live in South Korea.

The pain from the beatings still lingers, but I’m grateful just to receive medical care. For the first time, I’m living with dignity.

If I’d stayed in North Korea, I would’ve disappeared namelessly like my husband.

Now, whenever I walk these streets, I whisper to myself:

“North Koreans deserve freedom and prosperity too.”

That’s why I survived. That’s the truth I must share.

I was once loyal.

But that loyalty couldn’t even protect my husband’s remains.

That tragedy made me who I am today.