A defector from North Korea has shared some of the horrifying sights she observed while living in the reclusive country.
Hee Yeon Lim, 26, told The Mirror that her father was a senior government officer under Kim Jong-un, and shared some of the unimaginable details of what reportedly goes on inside of the country: executions, sex slavery and plenty of other atrocities.
Lim, whose name was changed for her protection, said that she knew from an early age never to question Kim Jong-un’s father, Kim Jong II. She lived a privileged life in North Korea due to her dad’s position, but told The Mirror that she still witnessed horrors.
“Despite our privilege we were scared. I saw terrible things in Pyongyang,” she said, noting that 11 musicians were killed in front of her after being accused of making a porn video. “We were ordered to leave our classes by security men and made to travel to the Military Academy in Pyongyang. There is a sports ground there, a kind of stadium.”
It was there that she said the musicians were tied up, hooded and brought out before 10,000 people who had been assembled to watch. Then, the individuals were abused and killed right in front of her.
“What I saw that day made me sick in my stomach. They were lashed to the end of anti-aircraft guns,” she said. “A gun was fired, the noise was deafening, absolutely terrifying and the guns were fired one after the other. The musicians just disappeared each time the guns were fired into them. Their bodies were blown to bits, totally destroyed, blood and bits flying everywhere.”
Lim continued, “And then after that military tanks moved in and they ran over the bits on the ground where the remains lay.”
She said that the scene left her “desperately ill” and that she “could not eat for three days” afterward.
Lim fled to South Korea with her mother and brother in 2015, telling The Mirror that she also witnessed classmates being taken into sex slavery. Read the rest of her story here.