South Korean TV show featuring North Korean defectors becomes regime's worst nightmare

Hee-Jin Ryu was a synchronised swimmer, one of North Korea's elite, selected for a posting at a restaurant in Europe—a privilege reserved for the regime's most loyal. By day she waited tables under the eye of a government minder, sending most of her wages home to Pyongyang. By night, with internet access for the first time, she watched South Korean television dramas on her apartment screen. What struck her most was how freely people said "I love you" to each other. In North Korea, she had been taught that such words belonged only to Kim Jong Un and his father.

One show in particular caught her attention: Now On My Way To Meet You, a talk show on South Korean cable network Channel A that featured stories of North Koreans who had escaped and built new lives in the South. The program discussed North Korea's leadership—a forbidden topic at home. Curious, she searched YouTube for information about Kim Jong Un and his father. The algorithm led her back to the show. "That was when I learned for the first time that there were people who hated North Korea and risked their lives to escape," she said. "It really shocked me." When her minder grew suspicious and reported her, she fled to the nearest South Korean embassy and sought asylum. A year later, she was living in Seoul, now 33 and a regular panellist on the very show that had changed her life.

Hee-Jin is one of a growing number of North Koreans drawn southward by what they see on television. A 2019 survey of 400 North Korean defectors living in South Korea found that 60 percent had access to international media before their escape. Of those, 30 percent said watching South Korean television programs made them compare their lives to what they saw on screen, while 37 percent said the shows increased their desire to leave. The programs arrive on USB sticks smuggled across the Chinese border, passed hand to hand in a country where internet access is severely restricted. The trend has provoked a harsh response from the regime: reports of forced labour and executions for those caught in possession of the shows.

Now On My Way's lead producer, Goon Lae Kim, is explicit about his intentions. "We're producing this show for people in North Korea who haven't yet fled to give them the courage to come over," he said. "In a way, you could say we're trying to send them a message that North Korea as a country is a fabricated place and they must escape from there as soon as possible. They are living in a giant Truman Show." The show, which first aired in 2011, has evolved from a reunion program into an entertainment-style variety hour featuring a rotating cast of defector guests who share their stories and sometimes perform. Some have become celebrities in South Korea and internationally, like Yeonmi Park, who became a best-selling author. But the show has also faced criticism for sensationalising defector accounts and, in earlier years, treating guests as objects in a casting show rather than as people with serious stories to tell.

Kim has retooled the format since taking over three years ago, moving away from the cartoonish set toward a replica of Panmunjom, the meeting place for leaders at the Demilitarised Zone. Topics are now chosen deliberately to unsettle the North Korean regime. On the day a journalist visited, the panel was discussing the country's millennials and Gen Z—the generations Kim Jong Un fears most. "The millennial and Gen Z generations are what Kim Jong Un fears the most," Kim said. "He feels threatened by them. That is why we're focusing on the reasons they continue to defect from North Korea." The regime is watching closely. In 2017, a celebrity defector guest on a similar program was believed to have been abducted by North Korea after appearing regularly on South Korean television. She later re-emerged in a propaganda video denouncing her appearances and praising the regime.

Yet the show's reach into the North appears to be working. Dr. Alex Taek-Gwang Lee, a South Korean cultural critic, called it "the most dangerous program to the North Korean government." The regime relies on nationalist ideology to sustain itself, he explained. "If they don't have the support of the younger generation, how can they survive?" Since the late 1990s, when famine killed millions and triggered the first major wave of defections, around 34,000 North Koreans have made it to South Korea. But the reality of life in the South often differs sharply from what television promised. Sun Ju, whose name was changed to protect her identity, fled in 2019 after watching Korean dramas on USB sticks shared at school. She was struck by how freely people travelled overseas, how they could leave whenever they wished. After her son was born, she decided to risk everything and escape with her family. In Seoul, a city of almost 26 million, she found herself struggling to be accepted. When she applied for a part-time job, a recruiter asked, "What's with your speech?" Defectors face discrimination over their accents and language. "We're of the same race but cultural differences play a big part," she said. "We can't help being filled with sorrow. We feel so lonely."

Hee-Jin, despite her fears about the safety of her parents still in North Korea, decided to appear on Now On My Way. "It's been seven years since I defected and I always thought that I made the right decision to leave," she said. "Of course, it's not without difficulty here but I can make all my decisions myself unlike in North Korea where I couldn't do anything myself." She wanted to show others that escape was possible, that life on the other side, while not matching the television fantasy, offered something North Korea never could: the freedom to choose. Producer Goon Lae Kim continues to calibrate each episode as a message aimed at those still trapped behind the border. "This show is a message for them," he said. "A message telling them to escape from there now."