Seong Hye-rang (born 1935) is a

North Korean defector Since the division of Korea after the end of World War II, North Koreans have fled from the country in spite of legal punishment for political, ideological, religious, economic, moral, personal, or nutritional reasons. Such North Koreans are re ...

and author.

Early life

Her father was a wealthy

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korean Peninsula and sharing a land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed by the Yellow Sea, while its eas ...

n landowner who moved to the North for political reasons, while her mother was an editor of the official North Korean newspaper '' Rodong Shinmun''. Seong's younger sister Song Hye-rim, a popular actress, secretly began an affair with Kim Jong-il against his father

Kim Il-sung Kim Il-sung (; , ; born Kim Song-ju, ; 15 April 1912 – 8 July 1994) was a North Korean politician and the founder of North Korea, which he ruled from the country's establishment in 1948 until his death in 1994. He held the posts of ...

's wishes in the late 1960s or early 1970s, which culminated in Hye-rim's forced divorce from her husband; Hye-rang first learned of the situation on 10 May 1971, when Kim came to her residence in the middle of the night and informed her that he had impregnated her younger sister. Five years later, Hye-rang would become responsible for raising

Kim Jong-nam Kim Jong-nam (, ; 10 May 1971 – 13 February 2017) was the eldest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. From roughly 1994 to 2001, he was considered the heir apparent to his father. He was thought to have fallen out of favour after em ...

, the son resulting from that pregnancy; his father was unwilling to let him attend school for fear that the secret of his parentage would be revealed. Hye-rim moved into the household; she also brought her own son Lee Han-yeong and daughter Lee Nam-ok to live with them, so that Jong-nam would not be lonely. Their lives were carefully managed by Kim Jong-il to ensure that his father would not find out about his continuing affair; they spent most of their time at residences in east

Pyongyang Pyongyang (, , ) is the capital and largest city of North Korea, where it is known as the "Capital of the Revolution". Pyongyang is located on the Taedong River about upstream from its mouth on the Yellow Sea. According to the 2008 populat ...

or Chungsangdong, occasionally travelling overseas to

Geneva , neighboring_municipalities= Carouge, Chêne-Bougeries, Cologny, Lancy, Grand-Saconnex, Pregny-Chambésy, Vernier, Veyrier , website = https://www.geneve.ch/ Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevr ...

and

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...

Defection

On September 28, 1982, Seong Hye-rang's son defected to South Korea; her daughter followed ten years later. Seong herself defected in

in February 1996, carrying nothing but her medicines, her diary, and a book of short stories by Anton Chekhov. Following her defection, she went into hiding in the European countryside in fear of her life, travelling with an unidentified Japanese woman; her son was shot dead near his home in Gyeonggi-do,

by unknown assailants the following year. She now lives in an undisclosed location in Europe.

Publications

* *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Seong, Hye-rang 1935 births Living people North Korean defectors North Korean writers 20th-century North Korean writers Korean women writers 20th-century women writers