Kim Ryon-hui is being illegally detained in South Korea against her will, and is being actively separated from her family and home in Pyongyang. Sign this petition to urge the South Korean government to provide Mrs. Kim with a means to return to North Korea. Help her return home!

 

 

Mrs. Kim pictured holding an image of her taken back home in North Korea. 

 

Kim Ryon-hui travelled from Pyongyang to China in 2011 to seek medical treatment for a specific ailment, she was shocked to discover that the treatment would cost so much, as back in North Korea healthcare was free.

She began to work in a restaurant in order to pay her medical bills. It was here that she met a broker who had deceived her into thinking she could make more money in the South and be able return after a few months. 

On the way to South Korea she learned that she had been deceived, and strongly demanded her repatriation to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. But the smuggler had confiscated her passport and she was forced to follow the group to South Korea. 

 

 

Immediately upon entering South Korea she was detained and placed in a NIS solitary confinement cell. She repeatedly told NIS agents that she did not belong here, and had been tricked by a broker however they would not listen. Mrs. Kim went on a hunger strike for an entire month while still begging them to let her go home, the agents still refused. After approximately three months in captivity she was told to sign a South Korean citizenship agreement, the agents made threats towards her such as “If you don’t sign this, you’re never getting out of here alive” and “Even if you die here, there won’t be a single person on earth who will know.”

This threatening and blackmailing in combination with her belief that upon signing she would eventually get to see her husband and daughter again, she signed whatever the NIS agents wanted her to. She was forced to renounce her North Korean citizenship and became a South Korean citizen.

While signing the agreements, she was told that defectors are given a South Korean passport after six months upon release, and upon receiving the passport they could travel wherever they want. She had planned on getting this passport, going to China and then returning back home. She applied for the passport after the six months had passed, it was rejected, she waited for another year and applied for a second time, it was rejected again. She was told by the NIS that since she had expressed desire to return to North Korea, she would never receive a passport. 

 

 

Mrs. Kim pictured displaying a screensaver of her daughter back home.

 

Not only has the South Korean government refused to repatriate Kim Ryon-hui , it filed an indictment against her on December 26, 2020, accusing her of violations of the National Security Law (NSL) for her efforts to return to North Korea.

The south Korean authorities had kept her from going back to her motherland, the hometown where she was born and grew up, and the bossom of her dear family, and took her to a prison under the charge of the “National Security Law”. After her release from prison she was under constant surveillance by the police, they would suddenly search her house, imposing untold sufferings on her. Life became so unbearable that she tried to kill herself. She thankfully survived two suicide attempts. Now she is once again in danger of arrest on the charges of encouragement and praise of North Korea on her Facebook page. 

 

 

Despite her tremendous efforts to return, her family remain distraught and fearful that they will never reunite.

 

 

Mrs. Kim pictured with her husband back home.

 

During an emotional interview, Mrs. Kim stated  “I’ll ask them to send me back even in my dead body after I burn myself to death at the border, it would be my only wish if I can be allowed to return and be buried next to my parents in my own country.”

 

 

This entire situation is both cruel and inhumane, this is a despicable act on behalf of the South Korean authorities and government. No mother should ever be separated from her daughter. Regardless of your political beliefs, if you believe in justice and what’s right, I urge you to support Mrs. Kim in her battle to return home.