(The Daily Signal)
Observers first see Ilhyeok Kim’s joyful, room-lighting smile before they notice he is relatively short—because he is North Korean defector short.
“For me, freedom means that when I want to do something, I’ll do it, and if I don’t want to do something, I don’t have to do it,” Kim told The Daily Signal last month at an event in Washington hosted by the group Liberty in North Korea.
“Now I know what freedom is,” he added.
When he escaped communist North Korea at 17 years old and made his way to South Korea, Kim weighed less than 88 pounds and stood 4-foot-11. The average 17-year-old male in South Korea weighs 138 pounds and stands 5-foot-8. Read more