Kim Jong Un’s officials plucked teenage girls from North Korean schools to serve as the leader’s sex slaves, indulged in a gluttonous lifestyle while his people starved and ordered public executions that turned into horrific shows of violence, a North Korean defector revealed.
Hee Yeon, who fled Pyongyang in 2015 and now lives in Seoul, told The Mirror about the years she spent living in constant fear of Kim Jong Un since the ruthless dictator took control of North Korea in 2011.
“Despite our privilege we were scared. I saw terrible things in Pyongyang,” Hee Yeon said.
In what heinous example, she recalled standing in a crowd of 10,000 people assembled to watch the execution of 11 musicians who allegedly made a pornographic video. Security guards ordered the viewers to leave their classes and stand in a stadium around the men, who were tied up and gagged.
“What I saw that day made me sick in my stomach. They were lashed to the end of anti-aircraft guns,” she said. “A gun was fired, the noise was deafening, absolutely terrifying. And the guns were fired one after the other.”
She added: “The musicians just disappeared each time the guns were fired into them. Their bodies were blown to bits, totally destroyed, blood and bits flying everywhere…and then, after that, military tanks moved in and they ran over the bits on the ground where the remains lay.”
Hee Yeon remembered seeing the remains “smashed…into the ground until there was nothing left.” She said the gruesome scene haunted her and took away her appetite for three days.
A report, released by The Transnational Justice Working Group in Seoul in July, also stated the regime’s firing squad carried out public executions in school yards, bridges and sports stadiums.
But that was just the tip of the insanity Hee Yeon said she witnessed. She said no one was immune to the young leader’s vicious whims, and anyone could be executed if they were suspected of disloyalty.
“I was brought up [and] told he was like a god – that he was as a young boy an expert sailor, marksman before the age of seven, god-like,” she said. “Then I met him at big events, I found him terrifying, really scary, nothing god-like about him.”
Several previous reports also painted Kim as a hot-tempered man. He reportedly executed his uncle, Jang Song Thaek, when he “flew into a rage” after finding out about an alleged coup plot that was planned with China. Nam Sung Wook, a security expert, recalled the leader “exploded with foul language” when his former girlfriend suggested he stop smoking.
Hee Yeon also said “the prettiest” schoolgirls were taken away to work in one of Kim’s “hundreds of homes around Pyongyang.”
“They learn to serve him food like caviar and extremely rare delicacies. They are also taught how to massage him and they become sex slaves,” she said. “Yes, they have to sleep with him and they cannot make a mistake or object because they could very easily simply disappear.”
And as the rest of North Korea suffered from poverty and food shortages, Kim was reportedly indulging in $2,700 “bird’s nest soup,” caviar and other imported dishes.
“One of my friends went to work at one of his hundreds of homes in Pyongyang and she told me this was what he liked,” Hee Yeon told The Mirror.
Kim came into power when his father died from a heart attack in December 2011. He has been credited with propelling the regime’s missile and nuclear program, appointing rocket scientists to identify flaws in the program that hadn’t been noticed before. Little is known about his secretive family, but he is married to Ri Sol-ju and reportedly has three children, according to South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency.
Kim vowed to complete his nuclear program despite recent U.N. sanctions against North Korea and President Trump’s threats to destroy the dictatorship. Trump addressed the U.N. assembly on Tuesday and mocked Kim as “rocket man,” saying the dictator was “on a suicide mission for himself and his regime.”
North Korea has threatened to strike the U.S. territory of Guam with missiles and conducted its 15th missile test of the year last week. It carried out its sixth nuclear test in early September. But amid the bombastic threats, Hee Yeon said the leader’s actions reflect his fear the regime will eventually be toppled.
“Kim Jong-Un threatens war because he feels cornered and has no escape,” she said.