Kim Seong Min was a North Korean defector, activist, poet and broadcaster. He died on September 12th 2025, aged 63.
Kim served as a captain in North Korea's army. He wanted to be a poet, like his father. He was assigned to the arts and propaganda unit in Camp 620, where he spent most of his time writing rather than soldiering.
Kim first attempted to escape from Pyongyang to China by wading across the Yalu river, a well-tried route. He was picked up by the Chinese police, handed to North Korean agents and put on a train back to North Korea. During the journey he was shackled to a North Korean officer. On the third day he managed to enter the train lavatory alone, swung on a ceiling beam, kicked out the wood-frame window and jumped from the train at around 50 miles an hour, landing in a sesame field. He made his way back to China undetected, worked in a coal-briquette factory, obtained counterfeit papers and three years later, in 1999, flew to South Korea.
Kim grew up completely loyal to the Supreme Leaders, Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. What began to shift his views were leaflets dropped from South Korean planes, which described how much food and how many cars there were in the South. He also had an illegally modified radio that could pick up South Korean signals, from which he learned that Kim Jong Il had been born not under a rainbow on the slopes of Mount Paektu, as the regime claimed, but in a military camp in Russia's far east.
In 2004, after five years in South Korea, Kim founded Free North Korea Radio (FNKR). The South Korean government had stopped broadcasting messages of freedom northwards under its short-lived "Sunshine" policy of conciliation. FNKR used short-wave radio to reach North Koreans, broadcasting one hour twice a day, 365 days a year. His small staff, almost all exiles, used pseudonyms. A network of stringers north of the demilitarised zone interviewed ordinary North Koreans using small digital recorders, phones with prepaid Chinese SIM cards and Chinese memory sticks, which were transferred hand-to-hand back to Seoul. The station received American funding but Kim was keen not to be seen as an American puppet. He and his team were subjected to threats and sent untraceable packages containing dolls stuck with knives and dead mice.
Kim's poems reflected the tension of exile. He mourned the white forsythia at the foot of Moran Hill, the path at the edge of his village and four sisters he had left behind. One scathing poem described a man sacrificing his sister's chastity for a handful of rice.
Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can.