North Korean defector joins opposition party

Ji Seong-ho, right, a North Korean defector-turned-human rights activist, is welcomed by Liberty Korea Party Chairman Hwang Kyo-ahn at the National Assembly, Wednesday, after joining the party. Korea Times photo by Oh Dae-geun

By Kim Rahn

A former North Korean defector has become a new recruit of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP) ahead of the April 15 general election.

The LKP said, Wednesday, that Ji Seong-ho, 38, a defector who was acknowledged in U.S. President Donald Trump's State of the Union address in early 2018, has joined the party. He may run for a constituency seat or a proportional representative slot in the upcoming election.

The party said they invited Ji to the party as he is expected to not only work for the improvement of human rights in North Korea but also to promote South Korea as a country advocating human rights to the world.

“Since I defected from the North, I promised that I would live for people from my hometown, as if I had been dispatched from a company there,” Ji said at the welcoming ceremony at the National Assembly.

“South Korean people are born with a gift called 'freedom.' I accepted the LKP's invitation to help protect precious things,” he said. “On the issue of human rights, there is no tomorrow. Only today matters.”

Ji said he has visited the White House, the Congress and the Department State of the U.S.; the United Nations; and many European nations, to urge them to help save the 25 million people in North Korea.

The North Korean native was involved in a serious accident while collecting coal from trains in 1996. He lost consciousness from extreme hunger and was run over by a train resulting in the loss of his left hand and foot. On crutches, the amputee escaped from the North in 2006 through China and Southeast Asia finally arriving in South Korea.

Here in the South, he runs Now Action & Unity for Human Rights (NAUH), a group calling for human rights in the North.

Ji made headlines in January 2018 when Trump introduced him during his address saying that Ji was the witness of the “ominous nature” of the North Korean regime. Ji then raised his crutches over his head, gaining a standing ovation from the participants.

At the ceremony, LKP Chairman Hwang Kyo-ahn gave Ji a red heart-shaped cushion bearing the word “freedom.”