The meaning of suffering after North Korea

Kim Su-jin, left, speaks to a group of international travelers visiting South Korea, April 15. Courtesy of Freedom Speakers International

After I escaped from North Korea in 2003 and arrived in South Korea in 2007, many people expected that my arrival would be filled with joy and freedom. Since I began giving speeches in English last year as a keynote speaker with Freedom Speakers International, people have often asked me, “What amazed you the most after you first arrived in South Korea?”

It’s a thoughtful question, but one I’ve always found difficult to answer. Honestly, I didn’t feel amazed. I felt fear.

After years of surviving under a repressive system, followed by an oppressive time in China and traveling through third countries, I reached South Korea exhausted — physically, emotionally and mentally. Everything was unfamiliar. The language, the pace of life, even the gestures of kindness felt overwhelming. I had dreamed of freedom, but when it finally came, I didn’t know how to receive it.

I once compared the emotional state of newly arrived North Korean defectors to that of long-term prisoners being released back into society. You may be free, but you’re not ready. You hesitate to speak, to trust, to act. You feel like a stranger in your own body.

Viktor Frankl’s book, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” helped me understand this stage of my life. After enduring hardship in North Korea and the years that followed, I realized I had lost the ability to feel happiness. I often felt like I didn’t truly belong in this world. Instead of joy, I was filled with tension — the constant pressure to adapt to a new culture, to succeed in a society I didn’t understand and to prove I was worthy of my new life.

Even now, trauma visits me unexpectedly. I still wake up from nightmares about my time in North Korea and China. There have been moments when I’ve been riding a bus and suddenly feel an urge to get off — not because of anything happening around me, but because a painful memory has surfaced out of nowhere. Almost every North Korean defector I know still suffers from nightmares and emotional flashbacks. The pain doesn’t disappear just because we crossed a border.

At the same time, we try our best to move forward. We study, work, raise children and do everything we can to integrate into South Korean society. We stumble, but we continue. We try to live the lives we once only imagined from afar.

That’s why I believe we must give meaning to our suffering.

Dostoevsky once wrote, “The only thing I dread is that I may not be worthy of my sufferings.” That quote has stayed with me. It reminds me that while we cannot choose our pain, we can choose how we respond to it. Here in South Korea, when we begin to confront the psychological scars left by the North Korean system — not only correcting the distorted history we were taught, but also rebuilding the broken image we were given of ourselves — we begin the long process of reclaiming our identity.

There’s another saying I’ve come to believe: “Pain ceases to be pain the moment it is clearly and precisely expressed.” That’s why I speak. Through English speeches, testimonies and writing, I try to express the pain I once had to hide. I speak not to gain sympathy, but to make sense of what I’ve lived through. I speak to transform pain into clarity — and, hopefully, into purpose.

For me, healing is not about forgetting. It’s about understanding the nature of the suffering I have carried — and continue to carry. I hope that the experiences of North Korean defectors will not remain hidden or isolated. I hope our voices can become part of a shared human story, one that reminds the world not just of what we’ve survived, but of who we are becoming.

Looking back, I understand why people expected me to feel joy when I arrived in South Korea. Freedom is a beautiful thing, but it doesn’t erase fear overnight. At first, I didn’t feel amazement. I felt lost. But now, through speaking, healing and rediscovering my identity, I’ve found something deeper than amazement. I’ve found meaning — and that, too, is a kind of freedom.

Kim Su-jin escaped from North Korea in 2003 and arrived in South Korea in 2007. She is now a keynote speaker with Freedom Speakers International (FSI). This article was translated from Korean to English by FSI co-founder Lee Eun-koo and edited by FSI co-founder Casey Lartigue Jr.