| Jin Gyeong-suk | |
| Native Name: | 진경숙 |
| Birth Date: | 24 June 1980 |
| Death Date: | January 2005 (aged 24) |
| Death Place: | Chongjin, North Korea |
| Nationality: | North Korean |
| Citizenship: | South Korean |
| Other Names: | Jin Kyung-sook |
| Known For: | North Korean defector |
Jin Gyeong-suk (; 24 June 19802005), also known as Jin Kyung-sook, was a North Korean woman who, after successfully defecting to South Korea in 2002, was arrested in China two years later for conducting espionage and forcefully deported back to North Korea, where she was tortured and murdered.[1]
In August 2004, Jin, who had acquired South Korean citizenship after her arrival there two years earlier, and her husband, Mun Jeong-hun, traveled on their honeymoon to the Jilin Province in northern China. Commissioned by a Japanese film production company, the couple had planned to make a video about the involvement of North Korea in the drug trade. In this context, they met a supposed middle-man on the Chinese side of the Tumen River, which forms a border between China and North Korea. This middle-man was supposed to smuggle a video camera into North Korea, to facilitate gathering of evidence on film of the drug production taking place there. The meeting with the middle-man turned out to be a trap. Jin and her husband were abducted by four men disguised as road construction workers, but who, it is believed, were agents of the North Korean secret service. While her husband managed to escape, Jin Gyeong-suk was forced into a sack and transported across the Tumen River into North Korea. Later investigations showed that she was deported to the Chongjin concentration camp in the northern Hamgyong Province, where she was interrogated, tortured, and eventually murdered.
The case proved to be politically highly charged for two reasons:[2]
Jin's abduction to North Korea garnered a flurry of media attention. Various human rights organizations intervened, seeking Jin's release; they attempted as well to determine whether Jin was still alive. The family petitioned to then South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun and pushed for her return to South Korea, without, however, receiving a response from the president.[4]
Jin died around early January 2005, at the Chongjin concentration camp. The cause of death was determined to be the result of the residual effects of torture to which she had been subjected.