SEOUL— Hyeonseo Lee didn’t escape from North Korea because she was starving, in prison or physically abused like many other defectors. Her family was relatively wealthy and favorably positioned in “songbun”—North Korea’s caste system that ranks citizens by how loyal their forebears were to the regime.
But like other North Koreans, Ms. Lee says she knew she faced a life of limited opportunity and constant surveillance. As a child she was instructed to revere the leadership and resent the U.S. for the hardship she was told it had imposed on her country.
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