With her flower-print dress and black hair dyed a fashionable light brown, Kim Ha-na does not seem like a former child beggar who risked her life three times trying to escape from North Korea before finally fleeing at the age of 15.
Kim, 25, settled in South Korea in 2005, and has recently gained TV fame with a run in the competitive cooking show Masterchef Korea.
She hopes her spell in the spotlight will help her find her father, who she last saw as they tried to flee across the North Korean border into China, with North Korean guards in hot pursuit.
Accounts of her grim childhood melted the hearts of South Korean viewers, while her fusion of the cuisine of the two Koreas won over the notoriously finicky cooking-show judges.
She made it to the last six of 6,500 people who applied for Masterchef before being knocked out.
As a child, Kim’s parents defected from North Korea, leaving her effectively on her own. She had to drop out of school and struggled to survive.
For three years she lived as a kotjebi, a North Korean term for child beggar, sleeping on the street, scavenging for food and picking pockets. At times, she had to eat whatever she could find, including dragonflies, frogs and even mice.
However, Kim’s parents kept slipping back over the border into North Korea to try to rescue her and take her out.
“One time, I had been starving for five days and ran into my dad by chance and literally gobbled down food. The next day, we had to run as fast as we could to flee across the border, but I just couldn’t because I had too much to eat the night before,” Kim says.
She ended up being caught by guards and dragged back to the North. She has not seen her father since then, but later succeeded in getting out of North Korea.
The hope of finding her father helped her pluck up the courage to apply for Masterchef Korea.
“Rumors say he already died, but I’m still holding onto hope of hearing from, or about, my dad when my story is aired on TV and spreads to North Korea,” she said.
She also wants to banish prejudice in South Korea against North Korean defectors, saying they need fair treatment, not sympathy.
“I want to prove that defectors too can compete on an equal playing field and fare well,” Kim said.
Kim says she dreams of her hometown of Orang in North Hamgyong Province and would love to help people there.
“Back then as a kotjebi, I couldn’t afford to have any dream at all, let alone of becoming a chef. Cooking was just a means not to starve, not something I could have fun with,” she said. “I long for the day I can make ‘healing food’ for those little child beggars, like I was.”
BACKLASH: The National Party quit its decades-long partnership with the Liberal Party after their election loss to center-left Labor, which won a historic third term Australia’s National Party has split from its conservative coalition partner of more than 60 years, the Liberal Party, citing policy differences over renewable energy and after a resounding loss at a national election this month. “Its time to have a break,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told reporters yesterday. The split shows the pressure on Australia’s conservative parties after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor party won a historic second term in the May 3 election, powered by a voter backlash against US President Donald Trump’s policies. Under the long-standing partnership in state and federal politics, the Liberal and National coalition had shared power
FRAUD ALLEGED: The leader of an opposition alliance made allegations of electoral irregularities and called for a protest in Tirana as European leaders are to meet Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama’s Socialist Party scored a large victory in parliamentary elections, securing him his fourth term, official results showed late on Tuesday. The Socialist Party won 52.1 percent of the vote on Sunday compared with 34.2 percent for an alliance of opposition parties led by his main rival Sali Berisha, according to results released by the Albanian Central Election Commission. Diaspora votes have yet to be counted, but according to initial results, Rama was also leading there. According to projections, the Socialist Party could have more lawmakers than in 2021 elections. At the time, it won 74 seats in the
A Croatian town has come up with a novel solution to solve the issue of working parents when there are no public childcare spaces available: pay grandparents to do it. Samobor, near the capital, Zagreb, has become the first in the country to run a “Grandmother-Grandfather Service,” which pays 360 euros (US$400) a month per child. The scheme allows grandparents to top up their pension, but the authorities also hope it will boost family ties and tackle social isolation as the population ages. “The benefits are multiple,” Samobor Mayor Petra Skrobot told reporters. “Pensions are rather low and for parents it is sometimes
CONTROVERSY: During the performance of Israel’s entrant Yuval Raphael’s song ‘New Day Will Rise,’ loud whistles were heard and two people tried to get on stage Austria’s JJ yesterday won the Eurovision Song Contest, with his operatic song Wasted Love triumphing at the world’s biggest live music television event. After votes from national juries around Europe and viewers from across the continent and beyond, JJ gave Austria its first victory since bearded drag performer Conchita Wurst’s 2014 triumph. After the nail-biting drama as the votes were revealed running into yesterday morning, Austria finished with 436 points, ahead of Israel — whose participation drew protests — on 357 and Estonia on 356. “Thank you to you, Europe, for making my dreams come true,” 24-year-old countertenor JJ, whose
RSS