The Incident in Which a Seoul National University Ph.D. Defected to North Korea with His Family

1. Overview

In 1985, Dr. Oh Gil-nam entered North Korea from Germany with his family. The following year, he escaped alone. His wife, Shin Suk-ja, and their two daughters, Oh Hye-won and Oh Gyu-won, were reportedly taken to the special control zone of Yodok concentration camp and detained there. Because Shin Suk-ja was from Tongyeong, South Gyeongsang Province, the case is also known as the “Daughter of Tongyeong” case.

The family’s fate and whereabouts have never been directly confirmed. In 2012, North Korea responded through the United Nations that Shin Suk-ja had died of hepatitis and that her daughters refused to meet their father. Dr. Oh and North Korean human rights organizations rejected this account. As a result, reports about the three women remain conflicting, with testimony from North Korean defectors and circumstantial evidence at odds with North Korea’s official response.

2. Circumstances Leading to Their Entry into North Korea

Oh Gil-nam was born in 1942. After graduating from Seoul National University, he went to Germany in 1970 to study, and received a PhD in economics from the University of Bremen in 1985. Shin Suk-ja is said to have worked as a nurse in Germany, where she met Oh in 1976 while he was studying. They married and had two daughters. Taken together, testimony at a lecture reported by Seoul Shinmun and a broadcast report by Newsen indicate that Shin’s hepatitis had worsened and she had also been in a traffic accident, forcing her to take leave from work and leaving the family in financial difficulty. By the time he received his PhD, Oh was already in his early forties, making it difficult for him to secure a professorship.

North Korean agents exploited this situation. One offered Oh a job in North Korea and promised that his wife would receive free treatment at Pyongyang’s best hospital. Seoul Shinmun summarized the offer as a guarantee of “a professorship for Dr. Oh and medical treatment for his wife.” According to a broadcast, Shin initially objected, saying, “You go alone, and if you think it’s really all right, bring us later.” When Oh would not change his mind, she reportedly warned him that this decision would bring great misfortune before agreeing to go with him. In a later Yonhap News interview, Oh recalled, “I don’t know what kind of illusion I was under then; I had deceived myself.”

3. Life in North Korea and Oh Gil-nam’s Escape

Contrary to their expectations, life in North Korea was far from what had been promised. After entering North Korea in December 1985, the Oh family underwent three months of ideological training at a guesthouse. They were then assigned an apartment in Pyongyang, but suffered from power shortages. Oh was not given the promised professorship. Instead, he was assigned to work for “Voice of National Salvation,” an anti-South Korean broadcast operation at the Chilbosan liaison office. Yonhap News reported that he was placed at an agent training center and used for black propaganda against South Korea. During this period, Oh reportedly regretted his decision, saying, “Deciding to go north was a foolish and stupid act that no one could understand.”

The opportunity to escape came with a new assignment from North Korea: he was ordered to lure two South Korean students studying in West Germany to Denmark. When Oh told his wife about it, Shin reportedly urged him to escape alone and somehow get the family out. At the passport control area of Copenhagen Airport, he secretly handed an airport employee a copy of his PhD certificate and a note asking for help, escaping North Korea one year after entering it. A timeline posted on theqoo gives the date as November 13, 1986.

His escape, however, did not lead to a reunion with his family. Oh naively thought that North Korea would release them as long as he kept his activities there secret and did not go to South Korea; Newsen reported that this was a mistaken belief. After Oh sent apologies and petitions for five years, North Korea delivered letters from his wife in 1987 and 1988 urging him to “come back.” In 1991, it sent photographs of his emaciated wife and daughters, along with a cassette tape recording their voices. Seoul Shinmun reported that North Korea also held his family hostage to pressure him to return. Oh eventually entered South Korea in 1992.

4. Disclosure That They Had Been Detained at Yodok Concentration Camp

The story became widely known in 2011. According to Yonhap News, the catalyst was an exhibition held that year in Tongyeong by an organization campaigning for the release of people detained in North Korean political prison camps. The exhibition was titled “But the Daughter of Tongyeong Is There.” On July 26 of the same year, at a lecture on understanding North Korean human rights in Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province, defectors Kang Cheol-hwan and An Hyuk testified that Shin Suk-ja, then 69, and her two daughters were imprisoned at Yodok concentration camp. Newsen later reported that it had also emerged that the background in the 1991 photographs was Yodok concentration camp.

On Channel A’s Now on My Way to Meet You, defectors who had experienced life at Yodok concentration camp testified that the three women were called “the South Korean woman” and “the German woman,” and seemed like people who avoided contact with others. They also recounted that someone found and rescued them just as they were trying to set fire to a pile of chaff in their home and take their own lives. However, these were accounts reported on a broadcast and have not been confirmed through other channels.

5. North Korea’s Official Response and Oh Gil-nam’s Rebuttal

As public interest grew nationwide, campaigns for the family’s repatriation were launched in South Korea and abroad. North Korea issued an official response in 2012. On May 8, 2012, the International Coalition to Stop Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea (ICNK) and Oh held a press conference at the Korea Press Center. At the event, they released a response sent by the North Korean authorities on April 27 at the request of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. The response, issued under the name of Deputy Ambassador Ri Jang-gon, stated the following:

• Shin Suk-ja had died of hepatitis, which she had suffered from since the 1980s.
• Because Oh had abandoned his family and driven his mother to her death, his two daughters—Hye-won, then 36, and Gyu-won, then 34—did not regard him as their father and strongly refused contact with him.
• The case had nothing to do with arbitrary detention.

Oh said, “I cannot accept as fact an official North Korean document containing baseless claims,” adding, “I do not believe that my wife has died.” ICNK called for North Korea to disclose the date and place of death, provide a death certificate, and return her remains. It also demanded objective proof that the daughters were not detained and did not want to meet their father. Yonhap News, meanwhile, summarized the response as saying that “Shin Suk-ja died of liver disease at Yodok concentration camp, while her daughters are alive but refuse to meet their father.” The response reproduced by No Cut News did not specify a place, so accounts differ between media outlets. No significant progress was made afterward.

6. Later Reports

In November 2016, Oh, whose health had seriously deteriorated, visited Imjingak and sent a message to his two daughters in the North. According to Yonhap News, he pleaded for help arranging a humanitarian meeting with them before he died, saying, “My eldest daughter is already forty.” At the event, Choi Seong-yong, chairman of the Association of Families of North Korean Abductees, said that the daughters had been released from the camp and were living in Pyongyang after getting married. He also said he had heard that, after their mother died, they had tried to send Oh a letter but were discovered by the North Korean authorities.

In 2023, on episode 594 of Channel A’s Now on My Way to Meet You, Choi reported what he had learned through inquiries. Shin Suk-ja had died of cirrhosis of the liver, and the daughters were believed to have been forced to marry people connected to the North Korean authorities so that the government could monitor them for the rest of their lives. According to the broadcast, Oh was staying at a convalescent hospital and believed that his daughters had gone to Berlin to hold a violin recital. A timeline posted on theqoo gives an estimated date of Shin’s death as around 2008, while listing May 8, 2012, as the date her death was “confirmed.”

7. Authenticity Debate

The central issue is whether Shin Suk-ja and her daughters were detained by the North Korean authorities, including at Yodok concentration camp, or whether, as North Korea claims, Shin died of illness without being detained and the daughters independently rejected their father. The date and place of Shin’s death and the daughters’ current circumstances have never been independently confirmed.

7.1. The Case for Detention

The main evidence cited by this side is the photographs and tape sent directly by North Korea in 1991. It later emerged that the background in the photographs was Yodok concentration camp, a political prison camp. The argument is that there would have been no reason for people unrelated to the detention to have their photographs taken there. Testimony from defectors who lived at Yodok, as well as Kang Cheol-hwan and An Hyuk, that the three women were at the camp also points in the same direction.

North Korea’s response has also fueled suspicion. In 1987 and 1988, it sent letters in the wife’s name urging Oh to “come back.” This is viewed as circumstantial evidence that his family was being held in North Korea like hostages. If there had been no arbitrary detention, there would be no reason for North Korea to withhold the date and place of death, a death certificate, or her remains. ICNK publicly demanded these, but no significant progress followed. Choi Seong-yong said that despite the South Korean side having a list of families of abductees, North Korea “continues to feign ignorance.” Nor is it known whether the statement that the daughters “refuse to meet their father” was made freely or by people under surveillance. Reports that they married in Pyongyang, or speculation that they were forced to marry, have likewise been interpreted as evidence that they are effectively under a surveillance system.

7.2. The Case Against Detention, and the View That It Cannot Be Confirmed

North Korea officially denied that the women had been detained, saying that Shin died of hepatitis she had suffered from since the 1980s and that her daughters did not regard Oh as their father of their own accord. This response was sent at the request of the UN Working Group. It is reported as fact that Oh left his family in the North and escaped alone, and even defected diplomat Ko Yeong-hwan admitted that “for the first year or two, they didn’t treat him like a human being,” making this a point on which Oh could be criticized.

The conflicting accounts themselves are also grounds for caution. Yonhap News reported that Oh lived with his family in Germany after escaping, and that the family was taken to North Korea later. Other reports say his wife and daughters remained in North Korea from the time they entered the country, contradicting that account. Shin’s death is variously dated to around 2008 or described as having been confirmed in 2012, while the cause is given as hepatitis, liver cirrhosis, cirrhosis of the liver, or liver disease. There was also a dispute with Yun Isang’s bereaved family over the truth when Oh testified that Yun had urged and threatened him to defect to North Korea. Ultimately, the term “special control zone” appears only in a post on theqoo, and the specific detention facility, zone, and period have not been confirmed.

Since neither side has produced direct, confirmed evidence, the question of whether Shin Suk-ja died and what happened to her daughters remains unresolved.

8. Trivia

• Shin Suk-ja was from Tongyeong, South Gyeongsang Province, and graduated from Tongyeong Girls’ Middle School as part of its ninth graduating class.
• Newsen described life in the Pyongyang apartment as “a level that had not moved beyond the 1930s.” A caption in a broadcast screenshot posted on theqoo read, “They haven’t moved even one step beyond the 1930s.”
• Ko Yeong-hwan worked with Oh at the Institute for National Security Strategy for ten years. He said on a broadcast that he changed his mind after seeing Oh break down in tears at a drinking gathering, saying, “I’d have no regrets if I could just see the children’s faces before I die.”