My favourite Korean food is delicious black five-layered pork belly, cooked over a charcoal grill. And Jeju chocolate, in citrus fruits and green tea flavour, which is famous throughout Korea.
Lee Hyeon-seo
My favourite place in South Korea is Jeju Island: it's a tropical paradise with sandy beaches, turquoise waters, and the magnificent Geomunoreum lava tube system of underground caves.
Breathing in South Korea, even though the life here is not easy, makes me so happy. I feel that sitting in a coffee shop, having a cup of tea, and looking out of the window at the blue sky - this is happiness. Truly happiness.
North Korea is not the dictator's country; it's 25 million citizens' country, and they are suffering under the dictator. North Koreans are really nice, kind, pure people. I hate the dictator and the regime, but I love my home country.
In communism, we never had any freedom - of movement, of speech, of press. We didn't even make own decisions for our lives, our future. We were human robots.
North Korean defectors can usually tell when other defectors are lying about their past.
I defected to South Korea in search of freedom of speech and movement. I had longed to put my feet on this soil, even in my dreams.
Leaving North Korea is not like leaving any other country. It is more like leaving another universe.
Many people - when they think about North Korea and the dictatorship, or the military or nuclear weapons, nuclear missiles, those things - tend to forget ordinary citizens are living there.
We considered the Dear Leader our god. That's huge. He's more than our parents. I thought all of the world respected Kim Il Sung. That's why we were bowing to their pictures.
When I was growing up, my mum was doing illegal smuggling with China. Sometimes she would see a fortune teller for advice. One time I went with her: 'In your future, you'll be living in foreign country and eating the foreign country rice,' she said.
It was very shocking for me to read newspapers that openly criticised the government in South Korea. That is impossible in North Korea and almost impossible in China. I was really impressed, and I became addicted to reading the news and watching the media so I could learn about the world. North Koreans would be stunned if they experienced this.
There are people who are destined to embrace endless pain and suffering, and there are people who desire to dream. Everybody dreams, of course. But does anybody desperately want to dream more than the people of North Korea?
On a bus ride through China, my family and I had talked for hours before a police officer boarded to conduct an inspection. My mother and brother couldn't speak Chinese, so they pretended to be deaf and mute, and none of the Chinese passengers said anything, sparing us.
I don't think the North Korean leadership is interested in a genuine deal to end their WMD programs or their stranglehold on the North Korean people.
Hyeon means sunshine. Seo means good fortune. I chose it so that I would live my life in light and warmth and not return to the shadow.
Because North Korea was so totally cut off, we didn't hear anything of the outside world. We had only one TV channel, which showed only propaganda, and we believed everything.
When I explain to people what was the situation in North Korea, they think, how can such a country exist? They know North Korea is bad in some vague way, not clearly. But when we explain it, they then wonder how can a whole country be modern-day slaves?
Freedom means everything to me. It is the most essential right that every person deserves. Most people take it for granted, but not North Koreans.
We were taught North Korea is a heaven. They told us how people in western countries die in hospital or have no money to study in school.
I did my best to hide by changing my name many times. But I was captured by the Chinese police. But because my Chinese was so good, they thought I was Chinese and released me. That was a miracle.
Due to hate, fear, and oppression, the North Koreans cannot help themselves.
Even after arriving in South Korea, it's dangerous. As a North Korean defector, I need to be careful from the spies to protect my relatives inside North Korea.
Certainly in North Korea, man is always superior to woman. Even the government treats women horribly. What is the slogan? Woman is a flower.
North Korean defectors who speak out against the regime always feel nervous. We never know what the North Korean government is planning. It's really difficult for us to show our faces and speak out, but we feel obligated to do something to inform people about the ongoing tragedy inside North Korea.
People who live in North Korea, they die for food, but living in the free world, the cat even eats expensive sushi.
Among the difficulties I encountered, economic problems were the worst. I found that financial hardships could limit one's ability to realize one's dream, no matter how desperate and earnest you are.
Many Chinese criticize me not only on Baidu but on Facebook. Some say, do you think Chinese authorities were stupid enough not to realize you were a North Korean defector? If they read my book, they'd understand. I did my best to escape. I think it's all a miracle. It's not because Chinese policemen were stupid enough to believe my fake story.
We refugees, we become always a punchbag. A political punchbag between China and South Korea and North Korea.
Some people criticize North Koreans and ask, 'Are they stupid? How can they believe those ridiculous things?' But I say, It doesn't matter if you're smart: if you were born in North Korea, you would be exactly like us. We don't know what freedom is. We have never enjoyed it.
When I was little, I thought my country was the best on the planet. And I grew up singing a song called 'Nothing To Envy.' And I was very proud. In school, we spent a lot of time studying the history of Kim Il-Sung, but we never learned much about the outside world, except that America, South Korea, Japan are the enemies.
My mom told me many times how I need to be careful living inside the regime. We didn't say 'the regime.' We didn't even say 'North Korea.'
China is a heaven compared to North Korea.
I can't be sure of exactly when and how North Korea will change. But I do believe it will happen, hopefully in my mother's lifetime.
My family lived under communism their entire lives. When they arrived in South Korea, they didn't even know how to use the bank system and ATM or the subway, nothing.
The TED talk I gave, that gave me another character I didn't know about. I'm not saying the mind of a hero, but a kind of responsibility. Every word I'm speaking, it's not from myself. I'm speaking for and representing the people of communist North Korea.
The border crossing is the most dangerous moment for anyone attempting to escape. But my brother and mother had been waved off by every armed border guard along that stretch of the river.
I lived near the border with China, and one night, I simply left home and walked across the iced-over river that separated the two countries. I was fortunate that my family had close relationships with some of the border guards, so I was able to cross without incident.
I was growing up in Hyesan, right by the closest North Korea-China border. China was just across the river: you could see across. So I was curious. On the river, on both sides, you have houses, then mountains. I wanted to know what was on the other side of the Chinese mountains.
I just wanted to see China with my own eyes. I wanted to see whether North Korea was the best country in the world or China was the best. I grew up believing that China was much worse than North Kore, because that's what the regime told us.
North Koreans are tragically oppressed. Despite the risks to my personal safety, I feel a strong obligation to tell the world about the Orwellian nightmare that North Koreans face.
The moment I escaped to China, I didn't have any money; I only had one address in my hand of some long-distance Chinese relatives. I didn't know China was that big. I thought I can find their home very easily, and I would come back one week later. But then I found out the address was a 10-hour drive away.
We were all blocked from western media, outside information. We were captured in a virtual prison cell. People would disappear in the middle of the night - not every day, but sometimes. We hear about it, and we never knew what happened inside the prison camps. I learned about them after I escaped.
In North Korea, we learnt all Americans are the enemy; they are not human.
Staying in China provided me with the opportunity to adjust to life outside of North Korea and to gain a sense of perspective, most importantly, by learning that so much of what I had been taught about my country was a lie.
Like every country, North Korea has some very smart people. They could be contributing a lot more to science and other areas, but North Koreans are forced to spend so much time memorising the fake history of our dictators and other propaganda, so are at a huge disadvantage.
Here in South Korea, I'm continuing to learn English in order to boost my prospects. When North Korean defectors try to get a job to stabilize their lives, their lack of English is a handicap. It was the same story while I was living in China. It took an enormous amount of time and enthusiasm to learn Chinese.
A huge famine hit North Korea in the mid-1990s. Ultimately, more than a million North Koreans died during the famine, and many only survived by eating grass, bugs, and tree bark.
Even though some heartless North Korean, Korean-Chinese, and Chinese citizens have exploited vulnerable defectors for money, I witnessed many acts of kindness by the Chinese.
When I was 14, during Kim Il-sung's funeral, I wondered, 'How could a god die?'
