Hyeonseo Lee

Hyeonseo Lee was born in January of 1980 in Hyesan, North Korea. Her father was a member of the North Korean military, and her mother worked a government job, as many North Korean citizens do. Lee’s family was not poor, and her mother ran a lucrative side business importing illegal foreign goods across the Yalu River from Changbai, China. Lee attended school in Hyesan and learned to play the accordion, a popular instrument in North Korea since the Cold War. In her early teens, Lee’s father quit the military and took a civilian job, which mandated he travel to China frequently. He was detained on a return trip to North Korea and sent to a prison camp, where he remained until he was finally released weeks later. Lee’s father suffered from depression and was hospitalized, where he later committed suicide by an overdose of Valium. Despite the widespread famine that struck North Korea during the 1990s, Lee’s family managed to still thrive; however, Lee watched her country slowly starve around her. In 1997, just months before she turned 18, Lee escaped across the Yalu River into China and met up with her father’s cousin, who defected during the Korean War. Lee spent over 10 years living under different aliases in China, until she finally sought political asylum in South Korea. Soon after, Lee arranged for her mother and brother to join her in South Korea, although it took them nearly a year to make the journey after being imprisoned in Phonthong Prison in Vientiane, Laos. Lee later became an activist, advocating for the human rights of those still stuck in North Korea, and to date she has given several speeches, including a TED talk in 2013 and a speech on the floor of the United Nations in New York City the same year. She is a graduate of Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, South Korea, and wrote her book, The Girl with Seven Names: Escape from North Korea, in 2015. Lee married Brian Gleason, an American from Wisconsin, whom she met through PSCORE (People for Successful Corean Reunification) in South Korea, and is currently working on her second book about North Korean women living in South Korea.