Lee Soon-ok
Lee Soon- ok (* 1947 in Chongjin, North Korea ) is a Korean human rights activist. A wider public is known for her book Let me be your voice!, In which she describes her life in a North Korean prison camp. She fled to South Korea in 1996.
Life
Lee Soon- ok was born in 1947 in the North Korean city of Chongjin. During the Korean War, her family moved to Onsong in the extreme northeastern tip of North Korea (Province Hamgyŏng - pukto ). There she attended the Polytechnic Ra Hueng High School. From 1963 she studied at a business school. After graduation, she became a member of the Communist Party of Labour of Korea and worked as an auditor in the economics department of the district administration of Onsong. In 1978 she became head of the pension office for the state-owned enterprises in the district Onsong.
In this capacity, Lee Soon- ok was asked by the security chief of the district to divert him material held by the state-owned tailor shops for personal use. When Lee refused, she was arrested on October 26, 1986 at her workplace. It was then, after a short trial for alleged misappropriation of state property and acceptance of bribe to 13 years imprisonment in the penal labor camps (or re-education camp, Korean Kyohwaso ) sentenced Ranked # 1 in Kaech'ŏn ( province P'yŏngan - namdo ).
Lee Soon- ok lived there for six years and experienced slave labor, torture, executions, starvation and disease. Despite their somewhat privileged position as an accountant in the camp and it was always brutally tortured and had died by its own account almost for torture and disease.
In January 1992, she was released after becoming aware of the illegality of their detention for good behavior. In 1994, she fled with her son to China and hid there. Through the help of foreign embassy official she came to Hong Kong and from there to South Korea in 1996.
Lee's son Choi Dong- chul was from 1985 to 1986 as part of his army service in the security service of the detention camp for political prisoners # 11 in Kyungsung ( province Hamgyŏng - pukto ) used.
Work
Lee Soon- ok's book Let me be your voice! is one of the few testimonies of prisoners North Korean prison camp (another example is the newspaper journalist Kang Chol -hwan ). Lee describes in her book, the methods of torture, under which the inmates have to suffer. She stressed here is that Christians would particularly badly treated. After fleeing to South Korea Lee takes to the Christian faith and reported publicly about her life in the North Korean camp to remember the suffering of their fellow prisoners.
Writings
- Yi Sun -ok 이순옥: Kkori - ŏpnŭn chimsŭn - dŭrŭi nunbit 꼬리 없는 짐승 들의 눈빛. Ch'ŏnji - midiŏ 천지 미디어 1996, ISBN 8986144042; Reprint: Kkŭrisŭch'an - chŏnŏl ch'ulp'anbu 크리스찬 저널 출판부 2003, ISBN 8995137835th
- Soon Ok Lee: Let me be your voice! Six years in North Korea labor camps. Well, casting 2005, ISBN 3-7655-3848-5.