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North Korea
AsiaEast Asia

Meet North Korean defector Jihyun Park, who’s now seeking election to local council in UK

  • ‘The UK people welcomed me to this land and I finally found my freedom. I want to pay back,’ she says
  • The 52-year-old is standing for Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative party in council elections coming up in May

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North Korean-born Jihyun Park, who fled to the UK 13 years ago. Photo: AFP
Agence France-Presse
Jihyun Park shares the civic concerns of any other would-be town councillor in Britain, from local education to potholes in the roads. But she is unique in one regard: no other candidate has fled North Korea.
Park is believed to be the first defector from the oppressive state to have run for office in any country, other than South Korea, after fleeing human trafficking in China and the brutal privations of a North Korean prison camp.

Thirteen years after finding refuge in Britain, the 52-year-old is standing for Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative party in council elections coming up in May, pledging to speak for other “voiceless people”.

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“The UK people welcomed me to this land and I finally found my freedom. I want to pay back,” she said in an interview.

Park first tried to flee the world’s most reclusive state in 1998, when it was in the grip of famine. She and her younger brother trekked to China, where they got separated, and she was sold into a sham “marriage” with an alcoholic gambler.

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After six years in China and having borne a son, Park was arrested by Chinese police and sent back alone to North Korea, where she was thrown into a detention camp for political criminals and forced to do back-breaking manual labour.

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