A police department in South Korea said that before re-defector Kim Geum Hyok left, a warrant was issued for his arrest on a rape accusation.
SEOUL, South Korea — Three years ago, out of work and hungry, Kim Geum Hyok climbed Mount White Horse near his North Korean hometown, Kaesong, brooding on the meaninglessness of life.
This month, after three years of life in the South, Kim went back — swimming across the same river he’d crossed in 2017, South Korean officials said. On Sunday, North Korea said he may have brought the coronavirus into the country for the first time, and it put Kaesong, Kim’s hometown, under lockdown.
Weeks before his departure, Kim, now 24, gave several interviews for Kim Jin-ah’s YouTube channel, Lady From Kaesong, talking about his lives in the two Koreas. He used an alias and wore sunglasses, and in some clips his face had been digitally altered. Much of what he said could not be independently verified.
When he was still a child, Kaesong, a city of 300,000, was chosen as the site of an industrial park run jointly by the two Koreas. It opened in 2004, and Kaesong became a boomtown, awash with cash. Kim’s cousins worked at the park, he said, and he himself sold eggs and vegetables. Story continuesKim settled in Gimpo, a city across the Han River from Kaesong. A doctor corrected the hearing problem that he had lived with since childhood. He gave Kim Jin-ah no details about his condition or the treatment, but he told her that he cried that day.
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