A North Korean woman who defected 16 years ago has returned to the country, state media has reported, shedding tears in a video and ripping up pages from her memoir in an apparent act of recantation.
The North’s state-run website Uriminzokkiri posted a video on Saturday of Son Ok-sun, 50, expressing regret for fleeing to China in 2000. She also described her disillusionment with South Korea, where she moved to in 2007 and wrote a book about her defection and subsequent conversion to Christianity.
The North’s leader Kim Jong-un has been luring back defectors with the promise of a pardon, offering them rewards and jobs should they return home.
Pyongyang has also been putting returned defectors on state media as part of its efforts to encourage more people to return.
I want to make a sacrifice of myself for reunification [of the two Koreas]
“I want to make a sacrifice of myself for reunification [of the two Koreas],” she says before ripping up pages of Longing for Light, written under her pseudonym Esther Joo.