Photos by @junmichaelpark @seoulphotographer | In January, I photographed Kim Ryon-hui for @spiegelmagazin. Ms. Kim is a North Korean who has been living in Seoul since 2011 despite her wish to return to Pyongyang. Ms. Kim claims that, while receiving medical treatment in China, she was tricked into coming to South Korea by a broker.

Ever since Ms. Kim arrived in the South, she has asked to be repatriated, a request that has been denied repeatedly. Until 2018, the South Korean government refused to issue her a passport that would her allow to leave and placed a departure ban on her when it did issue one eventually. Desperate, Ms. Kim has made many attempts to be reunited with her family – her parents, husband and now grown-up daughter. She has considered becoming a stowaway to smuggle herself out of South Korea, previously tried to forge a passport, falsely turned herself in claiming to be a North Korean spy in the hope of getting deported and sought asylum at the Vietnamese embassy. She also attempted to take her own life twice.

I think South Korea won the ideological war with the North long time ago, but technically the two countries remain at war. Our borders are closed off, along with our ways of thinking. No communication is allowed between the two Koreas. There is much fear and hatred on both sides, rooted in 70 years of division.

My grandparents came to the South during the Korean War and passed away without ever again seeing the family members they had left behind. I hope Ms. Kim can go home and reunite with her family sooner rather than later.

(Text editing by M.)

p.s. Coincidentally this portrait was selected in Der Spiegel’s 2022 Year in Pictures.