Lee's mother divorces her biological father and remarries, causing Lee's name to be changed to reflect her new family.

Lee's father risks his life during a house fire to rescue the portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.

Lee witnesses her first public execution at age seven while running errands for her mother.

The Great Famine worsens and Lee sees children and adults openly starving to death in the streets.

Lee convinces a sympathetic border guard to allow her to cross the frozen Yalu River into China.

Lee's mother calls from North Korea and warns Lee not to return because the family is under suspicion.

Lee flees Shenyang on the eve of her arranged wedding to Geun-soo, escaping with almost nothing.

A Chinese gang takes Lee hostage in Changbai, demanding $8,500 and threatening to return her to North Korea.

Lee moves to Shanghai and secures a legitimate job at a South Korean technology company.

Lee and Ok-hee decide to seek asylum in South Korea after watching North Korean defectors storm a Beijing embassy on television.

Lee claims asylum from South Korean navy officers at Incheon Airport after flying out of China.

Lee returns to China and escorts her mother and Min-ho through eight provinces and numerous police checkpoints.

Lee's mother and Min-ho are arrested at the Laotian border after their broker abandons them and flees.

Australian stranger Dick Stolp pays the full ransom to release Lee's family and other North Korean detainees from a Laotian prison.

Lee's mother and Min-ho finally arrive in Seoul as South Korean citizens after months of detention.

Hyeonseo Lee grows up in North Korea under strict propaganda and a rigid caste system, shaped by secrets her family kept hidden and tragedies that left permanent scars. A curious teenager, Lee crosses the frozen Yalu River into China intending to stay only days, but her prolonged absence triggers government suspicion and her mother warns her never to return. Lee survives years as an illegal immigrant in China — fleeing an arranged marriage, escaping a gang that held her hostage, and slowly building a stable life under false identities in Shenyang and Shanghai. She eventually finds a way to claim asylum in South Korea by flying through Seoul's Incheon Airport, where she begins rebuilding her life with legal status for the first time. Determined to reunite her family, she returns to China and escorts her mother and brother across eight Chinese provinces, only for them to be arrested at the Laotian border. After a harrowing ordeal involving a stranger's unexpected generosity and months of detention, Lee's mother and brother finally arrive safely in Seoul.

The headline story of Hyeonseo Lee's escape, survival, and family reunion.

Lee's family receives mandatory portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, subject to monthly official inspection, when they move to Anju.

Lee is accepted into the Young Pioneer Corps at age nine and her mother buys her a pair of special foreign-made red shoes.

Lee's father is arrested at the border by the Military Security Command and held for investigation.

Lee's father dies in a hospital and his death certificate is secretly falsified to conceal that he died by suicide.

Kim Il-sung dies and North Koreans who fail to grieve with sufficient conviction are arrested and publicly executed.

Lee nearly becomes trapped at a fake hair salon in Shenyang that is actually a front for a sex-trafficking operation.

Lee finds work as a waitress at a Shenyang restaurant using a false Korean-Chinese name and identity.

Two men claiming to be South Korean filmmakers visit Lee's restaurant and offer to help North Korean defectors reach South Korea safely.

Lee's friend Soo-jin is arrested by Chinese police, deported to North Korea, imprisoned, and later escapes back to China.

Lee is attacked with a bottle in a stairwell near her apartment and wakes up in a hospital with ten stitches.

Lee acquires a genuine Chinese ID in Shanghai under a new identity, her sixth name: Park Sun-ja.

Min-ho is beaten by army officers who seize a package of goods Lee sent across the border, though he hides the cash.

Lee meets Kim, a wealthy South Korean real estate heir visiting Shanghai on business, and they begin a romantic relationship.

Lee confesses to Kim that she is North Korean and he encourages her to seek asylum in South Korea.

Kim Jong-il dies and Lee's mother, now living in South Korea, openly celebrates his death for the first time.

From childhood, Lee's life in North Korea is shaped by the regime's intrusive control — including the mandatory portraits of the Kim leaders that govern every household and the communist youth movements that fill children's time with loyalty rituals. Her family survives the Great Famine through black-market hustle, but personal tragedy strikes when Lee's father is arrested, beaten, and dies under suspicious circumstances, his death certificate falsified to protect the family. After crossing into China, Lee faces a gauntlet of dangers: narrowly escaping a sex-trafficking operation disguised as a hair salon, being violently assaulted, and watching a close friend get deported to North Korea and imprisoned. She quietly builds a new life in Shenyang and Shanghai, acquiring false identities and slowly climbing the economic ladder from waitress to corporate employee. Her romantic relationship with Kim, a wealthy South Korean in Shanghai, gives her emotional stability and ultimately pushes her toward seeking legal freedom. The events in this pool chart the secondary beats that made Lee's survival so precarious and her eventual freedom so meaningful.

The supporting events that shaped Lee's world, survival, and path to freedom.

Lee observes a classmate living in desperate poverty, contradicting everything she was taught about equality in North Korea.

Lee's grandmother reveals that the man who raised Lee is not her biological father and shows her a secret photograph.

Lee listens to illegal South Korean pop music cassette tapes for the first time and senses a world beyond North Korea.

Lee's family secretly watches Chinese television behind blanketed windows, revealing a far more prosperous world across the river.

Lee's father confides to her mother that he suspects he is being monitored by the authorities.

Lee visits Pyongyang during the famine and discovers the capital is entirely unaffected while the rest of the country starves.

Uncle Jung-gil in Shenyang reveals that Kim Il-sung was a Soviet puppet, that North Korea's history is fabricated, and that the North started the Korean War.

A housemate tells Lee that South Korea considers all North Koreans to be citizens and grants them asylum if they reach Seoul.

Lee's knowledge of Mandarin characters, taught by her father in childhood, saves her from deportation during a police interrogation.

Lee establishes secret weekly phone calls with Min-ho using an illegal Chinese cell phone, reconnecting with her family after years of silence.

Lee devises a plan to fly through Seoul's Incheon Airport on a Thai visa and claim asylum the moment she lands on South Korean soil.

After a lengthy interrogation, South Korean authorities officially confirm Lee is a North Korean defector and grant her asylum.

Lee chooses her seventh and final name, Hyeon-seo, meaning sunshine and good fortune, as an act of self-determination.

Lee's mother abandons her plans to return to North Korea, realizing that separation from her children would be harder than any hardship in the South.

Lee gives a TED talk about her story that goes viral globally, leading to an invitation to testify before the United Nations.

Lee's journey out of North Korean ideology begins long before she crosses the border — with glimpses of inequality, illegal music, and foreign television that quietly crack the shell of propaganda built around her since birth. The discovery that her stepfather is not her biological father reshapes her sense of family and identity, while her uncle's explosive revelations in China shatter her understanding of her country's entire history. Piece by piece, Lee learns things she was never supposed to know: that South Korea welcomes all North Korean defectors as citizens, that her father's childhood Mandarin lessons saved her life during a police interrogation, and that the world beyond North Korea operates on principles of freedom she can barely comprehend. In South Korea, she chooses her own name for the first time, a small act that represents an enormous reclaiming of self. The pool closes with Lee's mother choosing family over familiarity, and Lee stepping forward at a global stage to make the world see what North Korea's regime hides.

The discoveries and decisions that shattered Lee's worldview and forged her identity.