Human rights are about 'having a dream,' North Korean defectors say at UN panel discussion in Seoul
Published: 15 Dec. 2025, 19:24
Updated: 16 Dec. 2025, 09:56
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- SEO JI-EUN
- [email protected]
![Defectors speak during a panel discussion on essentials and rights in North Korea at an event marking International Human Rights Day in Seoul on Monday afternoon. [SEO JI-EUN]](https://koreaseafood.online/data/photo/2025/12/16/664aef31-1bab-4d43-b3a4-417776e3a40c.jpg)
Defectors speak during a panel discussion on essentials and rights in North Korea at an event marking International Human Rights Day in Seoul on Monday afternoon. [SEO JI-EUN]
North Korean defectors underscored that human rights weren’t an abstract ideal but the ability to speak, make choices and imagine a future in everyday life during a panel in Seoul on Monday to mark International Human Rights Day.
Kang Seong-mi, a defector who is currently program manager at the Seoul-based International Democracy Hub, reflected on growing up in a society where the very concept of having a dream was absent.
“When I was a child living in North Korea, no adult ever asked me, ‘What is your dream?’ or ‘What kind of adult do you want to become?’” she said while speaking in a session titled "Our essentials, our rights: Voices on the DPRK" in the event, which was hosted by the EU Delegation to South Korea, with the support of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Seoul. DPRK is short for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Kang said she was only able to begin imagining her own future after arriving in South Korea, where such questions are commonplace.
“These kinds of questions made me reflect on my own life, and based on that, I finally became someone who could dream,” she said. “I believe hope is not just an emotion, but something essential — both for oneself and for human beings.”
Another panelist, Kim Jeong-hyun, a former North Korean broadcaster and a member of the North Korean Imprisonment Victims’ Family Association, identified freedom of expression and press freedom as the most urgent human rights issues in North Korea, drawing on her own experience receiving broadcast training in the North.
Kim cited a wildfire in South Hamgyong Province in 1998 as an example, of which the coverage centered not on damage or casualties but on ideological symbolism tied to the Kim family.
“They said there was a tree on the mountain where [North Korea's founder] Kim Il Sung had written slogans during the anti-Japanese armed struggle, and they glorified the story of young people who hugged that tree and burned to death trying to protect it,” Kim said. “That was broadcast nationwide as the top news story.”
She said the episode illustrated the true nature of North Korean media.
“Individual lives or facts do not matter,” she said. “Only stories that glorify the system and the leader are broadcast.”
Jeon Joo-ok, CEO and webtoon creator at UNI-studio, said that family life itself was the most basic “everyday essential” denied to many North Koreans. Jeon, who produces comics based on her experiences, described what happened to her family after she and her brother defected.
“Children who had been raised dearly in one household suddenly disappeared,” she said. “Of course, surveillance by North Korea's Ministry of State Security followed. My father was taken away for questioning many times, and each time he returned, he was visibly emaciated.”
![North Korean leader Kim Jong-un waves to construction workers during a groundbreaking ceremony for a 10,000-unit housing project in Pyongyang on March 23, 2021, as reported by Korean Central Television the following day. [SCREEN CAPTURE]](https://koreaseafood.online/data/photo/2025/12/16/f27183e8-4b4c-4aad-a3f9-47164f498c7b.jpg)
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un waves to construction workers during a groundbreaking ceremony for a 10,000-unit housing project in Pyongyang on March 23, 2021, as reported by Korean Central Television the following day. [SCREEN CAPTURE]
“There was 24-hour surveillance on our home. From the moment they woke up to the moment they went to sleep, the pressure never stopped,” she said. “I believe that suffocating daily life ultimately took my father’s life.”
Jeon said she longed not for something extraordinary but ordinary family moments.
“How wonderful it would have been if we could have been guaranteed the simple routine of celebrating birthdays together,” she said. “For us, all of that was a lost paradise. Now it has become something I must protect at all costs — the most essential part of my life.”
The panelists agreed that North Korean human rights should be treated as a universal human issue rather than a political talking point.
Park Dae-hyeon, CEO of online North Korean defector community Woorion, said North Koreans should be seen first and foremost as human beings.
“Personally, I really hope this does not become overly politicized,” Park said. “I believe that turning the human rights of North Korean people into a political agenda is something we should avoid.
“Whether someone is North Korean, Japanese, Filipino or African, the rights a person has from the moment they are born should never be controlled by any single government or political power," he added.
The event marked International Human Rights Day, commemorating the UN's adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Paris in 1948.
BY SEO JI-EUN [[email protected]]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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