Special to WorldTribune, October 22, 2026 Real World News
Geostrategy-Direct, October 20, 2026
As with many North Korean defectors, especially the women, the story told my Choi Min-Kyeong is believable simply because it would be in other circumstances so unbelievable.
But unlike other former North Koreans Choi stands out for what she has accomplished since leaving her homeland more than what she endured before.
In July 2025, Choi became the first North Korean defector to file a lawsuit against Kim Jong-Un, seeking damages for the torture and sexual violence she suffered in North Korea.
“People around me said filing the lawsuit made no sense,” Choi, 55, president of the Imprisonment Victims’ Family Association, told the Korea Times. “At first, a police officer who took my complaint thought it was ridiculous and dismissed it.”
Then just over a year later in August 2026, the Seoul Central District Court sided with Choi in her damages suit against Kim, awarding the full 50 million won ($37,210) she had sought.
Another first.
“I risked my life filing this lawsuit because I couldn’t get my eldest daughter out. The 50 million won is just symbolic, calculated from court fees and legal costs, since even 500 billion won wouldn’t satisfy my anger,” Choi said, claiming that the ruling served as a legal basis to arrest Kim should he ever enters South Korea.
Choi came from a family of good standing in North Korea’s Marxist class system.
What privileges she enjoyed changed in the 1990s during a famine that killed somewhere between 600,000 to 3 million people.
“For the first year or two after food rations stopped, we survived on stored food and belongings we sold off. By the third year, people were starving to death across North Korea, and disease was spreading,” Choi said.
“Seeing bodies along the side of the road became part of daily life.”
After Choi’s father became sick and died in 1997, Choi and her mother crossed the Tuman River to flee North Korea.
As the numbers of defectors swelled, China increased forced repatriations, bartering humans for abundant North Korean natural resources at lower prices, according to Choi.
As the world’s focus settled on the 2008 Beijing Olympics, China issued a nationwide repatriation order for defectors, and Choi was among those caught by police and returned to North Korea.
She said she was held at a prison facility in North Hamgyong Province, where she was tortured and sexually humiliated.
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