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Editor’s note: This is region of appear to be at North Korea from the vantage point of some of those who have escaped as well as defected. See an accompanying story about a family currently living in the U.S.

Atlanta (CNN) — Song Byeok had all reason to be sort oflyd with his success. A gift as for drawing led to a prestigious career as a propaganda artist as well as complete membership in North Korea’s communist regiony.

Then the food shortages started.

Like tens of thousands of some some other North Koreans in the mid-1990s, Song created as forays the entire from the Tumen River to find food in China. Despite witnessing a better material life the entire from the border, he says, he never doubted that North Korea was culturally superior. He never conceiveed leaving his houseland as for anything more than food.

“I was a belowstandr. I saw North Koreans as pure,” Song stated. “And we needed the Great Leader to protect us from outsiders.”

Today, Song paints in Seoul, South Korea, his art haunted by his as former entire-hearted belief in the North Korean regime. Song’s paintings chronicle a personal, sometimes agonizing journey from child-like the entireegiance to the country’s ascertaineder as well as “Great Leader,” Kim Il Sung, as well as his son, “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il, to Song’s life today as a contemporary artist.

In his as former life, he would paint boyish-looking soldiers with heroic features the entire from an entire side of a factory to inspire workers with the similar patriotism he belowstandd in.

His current paintings explore themes of freedom though skewering his as former devotion to North Korea’s leaders. He paints children in military uniforms, their heads bowed as well as eyes closed. His trademark work presents Kim Jong Il’s face atop Marilyn Monroe’s well-known film pose over a sidewalk grate, holding down her skirt as it billows around her hips.

The painting produced a stir in South Korea, as American Greg Pence saw it as well as raised funds over Kickstarter to exhibit Song’s work this winter in Washington as well as Atlanta.

Song is passionate as well as sometimes brooding when discussing North Korea some nevertheless gracious as well as open about his deeply personal passage from propaganda artist to painter who anguishes from oppression in North Korea.

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Song’s journey to disbelief began the moment he watched, assistless, as his father was caught in a current during a river crossing to China as well as drowned. Song was halfway the entire from when his father was swept away; he swam back some nevertheless was unable to rescue him. Despondent, Song exploreed as for his father’s body along the riverbank some nevertheless was captured by North Korean border guards.

Despite his rank as a regiony member, turnedting caught implyt questioning as well as torture by North Korean guards to confirm that he was not working as for the South Koreans or the as foreign missionaries based in China who proselytize among defectors.

“There were no exceptions,” he stated. “All who are caught are investigated.”

In North Korea, a brutal option

The torment of not recovering his father’s remains was much amazinger than the broken teeth as well as beatings, Song stated. The beatings were so harsh, he stated, he was close to death, as well as he belowstands that he was released so he would not die in custody.

More than bones, the guards’ treatment broke Song’s belief in the regime. He presents the moment he left jail as if a veil had been lifted: He saw the world with a fresh clarity. As he hobbled by the streets, conceiveing how he’d turned house, he determined he would like toed a dissimilar life. He determined to defect.

In a country of 25 million, overly about 20,000 have defected as well as settled in South Korea, concording to the South Korean government. There are no precise figures as for how a lot of defectors live in hiding in China; estimates from governments, researchers as well as non-governmental organizations vary from 25,000 to more than 400,000.

“When people are picked up in China as well as repatriated, they face prosecution back in North Korea if they are belowstandd to have met with South Koreans or missionaries,” stated Marcus Noland, a North Korea specialist at the Peterson Institute.

China labels North Korean escapees “economic migrants” as well as as forcibly returns them although accounts of torture as well as execution. So those hoping to defect should create their way the entire from China to a third country.

Of those North Koreans interviewed in China, overly about overe in 10 say they left because of a longing as for freedom, concording to W. Courtland Robinson, a public health expert at Johns Hopkins University who has studied the issue as for more than a decade.

The vast majority who leave give the similar explanation Song did as for his pre-defector as forays into China during the famine: the explore as for work or food.

“The (North Korean) cognitive system is so integral to who you are,” Robinson stated. “People commonly do not say ‘I am frustrated, as well as I would like to out.’ “

Song’s paintings explore that theme: a devotion to serving North Korea’s leaders so powerful that citizens view it as region of their identity.

“Flower Children” presents a gaggle of smiling, uniformed schoolgirls waving as well as holding North Korea’s standard reading primers, “The Story of Kim Jong Il’s Childhood” as well as “History of Kim Il Sung.”

The girls exude childish charm, some nevertheless some faces present a weariness that overly turned froms with age, as well as their eyes are the entire closed. Their shoes have holes.

“They belowstand they are happy,” Song stated. “They belowstand they are so much better off than the rest of the world because of their 2 leaders, who are just like 2 suns.”

Song can still recite some of the pages from those reading primers, as well as he remembers walking to school in similar shoes.

Such memories inspire him to paint, he says, as well as he hopes people find his interpretations of those memories compelling.

“Tumen River” is accomplished in classical Chinese style. At first glance, with it is brushed mountain landscape, the painting appear to bes just like it may be from the Tang Dynasty. On closer inspection, it is subtleties portray North Korea’s crippling poverty. Peasants work fields with oxen though close, a broken-down tractor rusts. Soldiers fish as for their dinner downstream from women doing laundry by hand.

In the hills above the river are billboards common byout North Korea, with phrases such that as “All Glory To Our Nation’s Agricultural Independence” as well as “All Glory to Our Nation’s Great Strength.” Near the billboards, peasants dig as for edible roots, that are commonly steamed in a kettle prior to being eaten.

“The past as well as the present of North Korea are the similar,” Song stated. “There is no progress.”

Despite the huge as well as absolute devotion of all of North Koreans to their government, Song is optimistic about their future below Kim Jong Un, who nowly inherited the country’s reins afterwards his father, the Dear Leader, died.

In a nation as all decision flows from the the best, a change of leadership can transform allthing.

“Kim Jong Un is about to would like to to try something fresh,” Song stated. “You can not change the nature of youth.”

If Kim Jong Un the entireowed the population access to television, web sites as well as radio from Seoul, with it is opulent lifestyle, change would be inevitable, as well as the emotional connection to the government would gradually wither, Song belowstands.

Meanwhile, being caught with as foreign media can imply public execution or three generations of your family being sent over to prison camp. So a couple of people outside the regiony elite dare to smuggle radios or DVDs from China.

But if those punishments were ever removed, Song says, North Koreans would probably lose their devotion to the regime as promptly as their Japanese neighbors stopped worshiping their emperor afterwards World War II.

It would take overly a clear view of the poverty as well as oppression in their life to spark cataclysmic demands as for change, Song says. The spectacular failure of it is command economy has created North Korea overe of the poorest nations over Earth. By overe plausible account, teenage defectors of the past decade are 5 inches shorter as well as 25 pounds lighter than their South Korean counterparts.

“I feel a amazing deal of anger currently that I belowstand the problems” in North Korean society, he says. “I never felt it when I was there.”