Why Would a Defector Return to North Korea? It's Complicated
This undated screen grab taken on July 19, 2017, from video posted by www.uriminzokkiri.com shows North Korean defector Lim Ji-Hyun, who appeared in several South Korean TV shows featuring North Korean refugees after settling in Seoul in 2014, speaking on North Korean propaganda television at an unknown location in the North.
WASHINGTON — 
The case of a Korean woman who defected from North Korea, made a new life for herself as a TV personality in the South and then "returned home" to the communist state three years later has left South Koreans wondering why such people return to the repressive state they once fled.

South Korean police are attempting to determine whether Lim Ji-hyun was kidnapped in April, when she traveled from Seoul to China and then disappeared. A video featuring her was posted last week on North Korea's official website (Uriminzokkiri), and in it she says life in the capitalist South was like "living in hell."

Lim, who now identifies herself in the North as Jeon Hye Song, said "a false illusion" that she could earn a lot of money prompted her to defect to South Korea in January 2014. Reality was different, she said in the North Korean video, and she found herself working in bars to get by.

Television appearances and starring roles in reality shows made Lim famous in the South, but she now says she was living in physical and psychological pain.