Jin Seon-rak: A Voice of Freedom for North Korea

Name: Jin Seon-rak

Born: 1964

Position: Director, Free North Korea Radio

Date of Death: 2019

Jin Seon-rak, a native of Yodeok County, South Hamgyong Province, fled to China in the early 2000s during a severe food shortage. He later resettled in South Korea by way of a third country and served for five years as a director at Free North Korea Radio. Run by North Korean defectors, the station broadcasts daily programs on freedom, human rights, and democracy to people inside North Korea.

Jin worked tirelessly, day and night, to bring attention to human rights abuses in North Korea, and he broke exclusive reports on many major events inside the country. He was later hospitalized with kidney stones. Even after having a kidney removed and while undergoing dialysis, he fought his illness by writing The One-Horned Cow (Oeppuri), a novel about life on a North Korean collective farm. The novel was published in July 2019 as his final work. He died that year without seeing the day North Korea is free.