North Korean refugees use YouTube to seek fame and fortune with their stories of escape, survival and life in a capitalist land
- The flourishing subgenre of YouTube channels featuring North Korean refugees ranges from tales of fleeing an authoritarian regime to comparing make-up styles
- Seok Hyeon-ju spent two-and-a-half years in a Pyongyang prison when she was 17 for crossing the border into China, but today has 9,000 YouTube subscribers
Her hair pulled back in a careless ponytail and a GoPro camera trailing her every step, Seok Hyeon-ju wanders with a kitchen knife across an empty cornfield strewn with fallen stalks.
She is on the hunt for naengi, a spring green known as shepherd’s purse that grows in the toughest soil, which years ago she foraged as a starving child in the mountains of North Korea. She picks some and then lets out a delighted squeal when she spots a shrivelled ear of corn left over from last year’s harvest.
She turns towards the camera – and some 9,000 of her YouTube subscribers – and says such a discovery would have been unbelievably lucky when she lived through a devastating famine before making her way south to a new life.
“We were so, so hungry when we were young,” the 33-year-old says, popping a hard kernel into her mouth, before pronouncing: “Not delicious.”
Videos made by Seok, who calls herself “Bukhan Aeminai”, North Korean slang for girl, form part of a flourishing subgenre of YouTube channels featuring North Korean refugees talking about their ordeals. They tell of how they fled the authoritarian government. They compare North and South Korean make-up styles, recount what it was like to adjust in a capitalist country or – something that would have been unthinkable back home – criticise the North Korean government.