Her life in South Korea seemed perfect: new friends, a burgeoning career, reality-TV fame. But she was about to become notorious—disappearing without a trace, only to reappear pledging allegiance to North Korea. What happened to Lim Ji-hyun?
| | The Mystery of the Missing North Korean Social Media Star |
Under the cover of nightfall, former North Korean soldier Lim Ji-hyun risked death to escape her homeland, the most isolated and ruthless dictatorship on the planet. Somehow, the then-23-year-old made it to safety in Seoul, the ultramodern capital of South Korea. Perhaps she paid Chinese brokers to sneak her across the Chinese border, as other North Korean defectors have been known to do. However she got there, by April 2014, Lim had begun a seemingly successful new life in her adopted country. With girlish looks and a gift for comic storytelling, she quickly became a rising media star. Petite with wavy brown hair, the defector amassed an online fan club that followed the video diaries she posted, which revealed details about her previous life in the North. On her 26th birthday, in April 2017, she wrote on her blog, "This is possibly the happiest birthday of my life. Thank you to all the fans who love me—you give me the courage to keep speaking out."
Later that month, Lim vanished.
Her social-media channels, usually updated frequently, went silent. In her pink studio apartment in the trendy district of Gangnam, her clothes, beloved stuffed-animal collection (frequently a cute backdrop in her vlogs), and other belongings remained untouched. Police investigating the case revealed she had also left the equivalent of almost $20,000 in her South Korean bank account. "She didn't tell anyone she was leaving, not even close friends like me," says Seoul-based fellow defector Sun-hi, 29, who doesn't want her full name published in order to protect her identity. "We assumed she had gone away on a shopping trip, but we knew something was badly wrong when she didn't return," Sun-hi says, speaking through an interpreter. |
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