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Episode details

World Service,30 Nov 2021,40 mins

Why my parents sent my brothers to live in North Korea

Outlook

Available for over a year

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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