I was a North Korean Overseas Worker

I was born in October 1968. My father was a laborer at a construction company, and my mother was a housewife. I have two older brothers. The place where I was born is Soryong 1-dong, Taedonggang-guyok, Pyongyang, North Korea. I graduated high school in 1984, and after graduation, I worked in Social Safety Agency in Pyongyang and in Foreign Construction Complex for 12 years.

When Kim Il Sung died in July 1994, food ration in Pyongyang stopped from May 1995. So many people tried to eat more or earn more money by going out abroad as an overseas worker. Every state-run store closed at that time, but only a foreign currency store actively ran.

In early September 1996 in Pyongyang, I was selected to be an overseas worker. After being selected, I was trained by the Workers’Party, which is the sole governing party of North Korea. The North Korean authorities taught me how to propagate Kim Jong Il and the North Korean system in other countries. For example, I was brainwashed and taught to say "we, North Korean people, sincerely respect our Supreme Leader Kim Jong Il and satisfy the world-best socialist system" when dispatch to other countries.

After the training from the Workers’ Party, I was trained by the National Security Agency of North Korea. They showed me a fake movie and data, which described miserable lives of North Korean defectors who went to Seoul by being deceived by the South Korean agents. The fake movie also described North Korean defectors’ failed lives in South Korea.

Basically, the contents of the two trainings taught me and other North Korean overseas workers to work hard in other countries by having pride of our Supreme Leader Kim Jong Il and having honor of our socialist country. The trainings also taught us not to think or even imagine about life in South Korea or other foreign countries.

Three days before I depart from North Korea, the State External Economic Affairs Commission of North Korea told me, "In the history of foreign construction by North Korea which started from the mid-1970s, the salary in Kuwait ($120) is a lot compared to Libya ($100) and Russia ($80). So do not ever think about having part-time jobs. Just work hard."

- IL LIM