Defectors ‘still dream about North Korea’, regret fleeing as they die lonely deaths in wealthy South

North Korean defectors experience suicidal impulses at more than double the rate of South Korea’s population – already among the highest in the world

‘I am so lonely,’ said one defector whose son was beaten to death in North Korea when it was discovered she had fled. ‘I want to go back and die’

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Im Su-ryuh, 51, fled North Korea just before the border with China was closed due to the pandemic. She said she often cries because she misses the family she left behind. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 12:02pm, 29 Mar 2023Updated: 12:45pm, 29 Mar 2023

Her badly decomposed body was found in a rundown Seoul flat about a year after she died, discovered only after government housing officials sought to evict her for failing to pay the rent.

The woman, 49, had been well known in the community of North Korean defectors. After fleeing the reclusive nation in the early 2000s, she soon became a success story for South Korea’s resettlement programme – even counselling other defectors on how to transition to life in a modern nation.

So it came as a shock among defectors that it took so long for anyone to find the woman, whose name and cause of death haven’t been publicly released after her body was discovered in October.

“Eventually she was found as a skeleton, which shows the society of North Korean defectors has a serious problem,” said Lee Na-kyung, who left North Korea in 2005 and now runs an association that supports the thousands of other women who fled to South Korea. “She suffered from depression for a long time without letting anyone know.”

Lee Na-kyung (right) and other North Korean defectors walk to the presidential office in Seoul for a meeting with the president’s staff earlier this month. Photo: Bloomberg

What’s even worse: this isn’t the first time something like this had happened.