How to get disappeared in North Korea: complain about life, insult the money, miss your parents
- North Korean defectors have shared their personal stories of how the dictatorial regime suppresses free speech for a Seoul museum’s inaugural exhibit
- From saying you have a ‘tough life’ while drinking with friends to joking about the money, the list of banned speech is as endless as it is arbitrary
Soon after the friends left, she heard the wail of a siren and saw police entering the building where the man was living. The following day, she found out that the entire family including his children – around the same age as her – had disappeared.
“Everything, not only them but also all their belongings, vanished into thin air,” she said.
Kim is one of several North Korean escapees who shared their personal stories of how the dictatorial regime suppresses free speech in video messages displayed at the North Korean Human Rights Museum, which opened in central Seoul last month.
The inaugural exhibition, “The Echo Never Stops”, highlights how the regime in Pyongyang uses prohibited language to shape the way people speak and think.
Witnesses say the regime also uses language suppression as a means of dividing people so that they trust no one but their “supreme leaders”.