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Outlook: Why my parents sent my brothers to live in North Korea

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The Arch of Reunification in Pyongyang, North Korea

30/11/2021 GMT

Why my parents sent my brothers to live in North Korea

BBC World Service - Outlook, Why my parents sent my brothers to live in North Korea

When Yonghi Yang was six, her parents made a choice the family have lived with ever since

When filmmaker Yonghi Yang was six, her parents decided to send her three brothers to live in North Korea. The family have lived with the consequences ever since.

Filmmaker Yonghi Yang grew up in Japan in the 1960s, as part of Osaka's large ethnic Korean community. Facing anti-Korean prejudice in Japan, and inspired by the North Korean regime’s promise of a socialist paradise, her parents made the momentous decision to send their three teenage sons to live in the North Korean capital Pyongyang in the early 1970s, as a sort of "birthday gift" to North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung. Yonghi remained behind with her parents and has spent a lifetime trying to make sense of their decision and its consequences. Yonghi has made films about her experience, the latest is called Soup and Ideology. 

Park Myongho is a North Korean ex-military man who defected to the South, at huge risk, with his family. He now works as a compressor diver making a dangerous living by catching octopuses under the sea where North meets South. This interview was first broadcast in January 2019. 

Get in touch: outlook@bbc.com

Presenter: Jo Fidgen

(Photo: The Arch of Reunification in Pyongyang, North Korea. Credit: Pablo Bonfiglio via Getty Images)

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