Seohyun Lee’s Story

We have recently welcomed a new face to our roster! Seohyun Lee hails from North Korea and brings with her a story that exemplifies the Dissident Project’s mission.

Seohyun Lee

Seohyun’s Story

Growing up in North Korea, insulated from the rest of civilization, Seohyun said she always assumed that she lived in the greatest country in the world. Unlike most North Korean ex-patriots, Seohyun led a fairly privileged life. Her father was a high ranking official of the regime, so she attended the best schools, never went hungry, and lived with her family in comfort. What she now realizes is that this apparent security came with constant indoctrination by the authoritarian regime. This brainwashing allowed her to grow up ignorant of the injustice and suffering that went on in her country that would later compel her to leave North Korea for good. 

It was while studying abroad that Seohyun gained a new perspective about her country. She compared the experience to the science fiction movie, The Matrix, where the main character wakes up to realize that his entire reality was a fiction constructed to contain him as a slave in a machine. Similarly, Seohyun said that stepping out of her native country made her recognize that the bubble she had been living in was not real. 

“I was surprised,” she said, “that people in China or South Korea would look with pity on me for being from North Korea, as if something was wrong with it.” The people Seohyun met in China had a completely different perspective on North Korea—one that contradicted all of the ideas she had been fed throughout her childhood. She related an experience she had with a Chinese taxi driver who asked her why the government in North Korea did not do more to relieve their citizen’s poverty and distress. When she could give no answer, she started to ask questions of her own, now less certain that the reality reflected within her bubble was as real or wholesome as she had once believed.

Seohyun’s shock at the idea that her country might not be the envy of the world was punctuated by the traumatic arrest of her college roomate, whose whole family was carted off to a prison camp after her father was deemed an enemy of the state and executed. Stricken with grief and fear, Seohyun described feeling anger and indignation at her country for the first time in her life. With her eyes wide open, going back to her old life and beliefs was no longer an option. Although she could not change her upbringing, she was determined to share her revelation with the world in the hopes that her testimony would promote freedom and equality on a global scale. Through our project, we hope to amplify her voice and impact.

Seohyun’s testimony depicts a dramatic shift in thinking, but her apparently dystopian origins ought to resonate with our own “bubble experience.” One of the biggest challenges facing the next generation of Americans is how they will form their own opinion of the country that they will inherit. Like Seohyun, many Americans will spend most or all of their lives within the United States. Although we can be grateful that our country is safe and insulated from the outside world, it is dangerous to simply forget what the alternative to freedom would be. Without a fresh perspective, it can be difficult to form our own opinions about the country we enjoy. With no frame of reference or understanding about what makes America different from North Korea, how can we hope to prevent America from slipping into a similar kind of authoritarianism? 

Seohyun’s story proclaims the importance of confronting reality rather than accepting comfortable narratives. In her case, this meant facing the truth that her country was not free and did not protect those who would be free. Luckily, that is not the case in America. But every day we fail to educate our children about the sacrifices that were made to ensure freedom and liberty in this country, we will risk forgetting how threatening some ideologies can be. 

At the Dissident Project, we hope to expose high schoolers to a reality that goes beyond the politicized opinions of the general media. By bringing experienced speakers to their schools, we hope to broaden their perspective in a constructive way. We believe that witnessing American liberty through the eyes of a non-native will encourage students to preserve and protect the statutes that make this country what it is.