The Dark Truth Behind North Korea's Teenage Spy Program: The Case of Kim Hyon-hui

Spy Kids, Agent Cody Banks, Totally Spies, Kim Possible. There are plenty of depictions of teenage secret agents in

movies and television, but they're all just children's fantasy, right? Well, what if I told you that teen spies do

actually exist? Except they aren't specially gifted North American kids tasked with saving the world. They're

North Koreans stolen from their families at a young age and trained to kill innocent people for the glory of the

supreme leader. Admittedly, no one outside of the hermit state knows much about North Korea's spy system, which is

a big part of why we wanted to make this video. It's hard not to be intrigued by the mystery of it all. So, when we went

on a deep dive into what is known about North Korean espionage, reading through human rights records, memoirs, books,

and interviews, we found a case that gives a shocking look behind the curtain. One that surprisingly few

people talk about. The story of Kim Hyon-hui, an ordinary schoolgirl transformed into an undercover mass

murderer along with countless teenagers just like her. Let's get into it. Pyongyang, 1980. Kim Hyon-hui was 18

years old when her life changed forever. She was studying Japanese at Pyongyang Foreign Language College when she was

summoned into the Dean's office. Inside was a man with a flag-shaped badge, the mark of North Korea's Central Party, the

country's ruling and only political party. After brief greetings, the man asked her to recite one of the many

virtues of the nation's leader, Kim Jong-il. These virtues were propaganda stories every North Korean was raised

on. Tales of Kim Jong-il's supposed brilliance and heroism. She knew he was testing her loyalty to her country.

Hyon-hui ran through all of the stories she was told as a child. After a moment of hesitation, she recalled one of

Jong-il's visits to a battlefield, highlighting how dedicated he was to his country and kind to those who fought for

it. The man then asked where her father worked, what his rank was, and whether she was doing well in school before

sending her back to class without explanation. A week later, Hyon-hui and her female classmates were ordered to

line up in the school gym. Visiting men in Central Party uniforms looked them over, took notes. If the men liked what

they saw, they would ask the girls their names. Hyunhee was one of the few asked to return for a private meeting with a

group of officers. They, too, asked about her studies, her plans, her ability to recite from memory key pieces

of propaganda. But then, the men went silent. After a moment, one of them finally spoke up, asking her, "Kim

Hyunhee, would you be willing to die for the party?" Hyunhee didn't expect the question, but her answer came out

effortlessly. [music] "Of course, I will do everything the party asks me to, even if it means

giving my life." Hyunhee was given the good news. She had been chosen. For what? She didn't know yet, but the man

informed her that she would have just one more night with her family before she would be taken away. Since she was a

young child, Hyunhee had been taught to think of North Korean leader Kim Il-sung as a kind of god, someone that she

should put before even her own parents. She prayed to him every [music] night, thanked him for everything. She

wholeheartedly loved her country and believed in its mission. And now, she was being asked to serve it. Hyunhee's

siblings were thrilled that the regime had chosen their sister, but her parents were more conflicted. Her mother was

upset, bordering on grief. Her father seemed totally unfazed by the news. It wasn't the glorious response she had

expected. The next day, Hyunhee got into a car and left her home, waving off her family. She told herself that "Every

child has to leave home at some point. I could hardly ask for anything better." Despite not yet knowing what honor she

was about to receive. The car took her far out of civilization, miles away from any city or town, deep into a remote

valley at the foot of Mount Ibul. Hyunhee had arrived at Kyongsong Military College, North Korea's elite

espionage school. That was the moment she realized what the regime wanted for her. They wanted a spy. Kim Hyunhee was

given a new name, Kim Ok-hwa. Her real identity was to be forgotten, never spoken of. Now, at 19, she began

training what would consume the next 8 years of her life. The schedule was brutal. From 6:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.,

she and hundreds of other female students were worked to the bone. Their every movement was monitored and

carefully controlled. Physical training pushed her body to its limits. She learned to master pistols, rifles, and

grenades. She trained in taekwondo, tang soo do, and hapkido, drilling the movements thousands of times until they

were instinctive. She sparred with men twice her size until she could overpower three of them at once. Experts taught

her how to hit the fatal points on the human body, how to kill with their bare hands. But the regime made it clear that

physical training was only one piece of the puzzle. The real transformation to a great spy was psychological. The

trainees were taught that the outside world was evil, that America was a beast, that the West was decadent and

corrupt, and that South Korea was an impoverished, oppressed nation whose authorities were the most evil of them

all, a barbaric group known to gouge eyes and rip out fingernails and teeth. All they needed to know about [music]

the world was that North Korea was the only place they would ever be safe. And her sacred duty was to aid the regime's

mission to keep it that way. They also had to be isolated. Every North Korean recruit was totally cut off from their

families, their past lives, and anything that could potentially make them question their mission. Kim Hyon-hui's

18-year-old roommate, Suk-hee, became like a sister to her during those years because she was all Hyon-hui had.

Hyon-hui and Suk-hee trained side by side from dawn to midnight for the next 8 years. They shared everything, their

exhaustion, their fears, their small victories. If one struggled, the other would push her forward. They were told

repeatedly that they were serving their nation together, and that this was the most notable, honorable sacrifice they

could ever make. Eventually, Hyon-hui was occasionally allowed to see her family, but it was obvious that things

had changed. She couldn't help but notice that her parents were visibly upset about the government taking her

from them. Yet, every time she left, she felt ashamed of how attached they were to her, as if it was an attack on her

honor and purpose. At the training facility, Kim Hyon-hui was surrounded by women with stories very similar to her

own. They had been selected by the regime because of their exemplary performance at their schools and

colleges. In fact, that is a key element of how this system operates. From the moment children enter school in North

Korea, they're evaluated not only on their grades, but on their potential. Teachers are expected to report on their

intelligence, their physical abilities, their ideological commitment, essentially their devotion to the Kim

family. But, according to documented human rights reports we have from multiple defectors and survivors, the

state looks for one other thing, the right family background. Your family's class rank in North Korean society

determines almost everything about your life, especially the opportunities you will get. Kim Hyon-hui came from a

privileged background. Her father was a diplomat who frequently traveled the world for work. She had lived in Cuba

for a time as a child, attended good schools, and displayed an impressive aptitude for languages. She was an ideal

candidate. Hyon-hui was assigned a teacher, a Japanese woman who would live with her at the training facility. Her

name was Yaeko Taguchi, but the North Koreans renamed her Yon-hui. Unlike the North Koreans, Yaeko didn't join

voluntarily. She had been abducted from Tokyo in June 1978, snatched off the street, and smuggled to North Korea,

leaving behind two very young children that she would never see again. Her purpose wasn't to become a spy. It was

to help create them. For 3 years, Yaeko lived with Hyon-hui in a cramped room, teaching her to speak Japanese fluently,

to adopt Japanese mannerisms, to think like a Japanese woman. Day after day, they studied together, while Yaeko's

family desperately sought answers an ocean away. And Yaeko's story is not a one-off occurrence. Defectors have

confirmed that at least throughout the 1980s and 90s, North Korea regularly kidnapped foreigners to train their

spies, using real people as human templates for their operatives to learn from and copy. While adults like Yaeko

were taken for their language skills and native cultural knowledge, the regime, more often than not, prefers children or

teenagers. Japanese citizens, some as young as 13, were regularly abducted from beaches and city streets. South

Koreans were taken from boats and coastal towns. Hundreds, perhaps even thousands of people, simply vanished,

presumably forced to serve as unwilling cogs in North Korea's intelligence machine. Like Megumi Yokota, who was

just 13 years old when she was kidnapped from Japan in 1977. She had been walking home from badminton practice when North

Korean agents grabbed her. According to a South Korean source, she was sent to a spy training facility in Pyongyang soon

after her abduction. The regime had told her that if she studied hard and learned Korean well, she would be sent back to

Japan and reunited with her family. For 5 years, Megumi studied hard, becoming fluent in Korean, but the North Koreans

kept her away anyway. Megumi's fate varies depending on the source. Some claim she died, others say she was

institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital. The regime's official story is that she died in 1993, but defectors

claim to have seen her alive in 1994. The truth, as with everything in North Korea, is murky at best. A UN Commission

of Inquiry report on North Korean human rights documents many more cases just like these. The UN report also noted

that the regime specifically targeted young people because their minds were more malleable, their identities not yet

fully formed. They could be indoctrinated and manipulated into doing whatever the regime wants. Kim Hyon-hui

was recruited at the age of 19, but others have been reported to have been taken much, much younger, some as young

as 16. As Hyon-hui progressed through training, the full scope of North Korea's spy program became clear. After

3 years, Kim and her roommate Suk-hee were called to take the final exam, a week-long test of everything they'd

learned, the most challenging part of training yet. The exam consisted of a number of physical, written, and field

tests, with each component worth 100 points. To pass, a candidate needed 90 in each section, but it was notoriously

difficult, with only about a third of candidates succeeding. Those who failed got a second chance. Those who failed

twice were expelled and disgraced. The physical test pushed the trainees' bodies to the limit for an entire day,

with minimal breaks in between. The spies had to run 10 miles at a high pace up a mountain, followed by bench presses

and pull-ups, sprints, martial arts testing, unarmed and armed combat, and even driving skills. For the written

test, the spies had to write essays about North Korean ideology, demonstrate their skills in languages, math, weapon

capabilities, and knowledge of military equipment. The final test, the field test, was the most difficult of all. The

tests were tailored to each individual person, intended to simulate something they may actually experience in the

field. Kim Hyon-hui's test was to infiltrate a highly secured building, memorize confidential information

inside, and return without being captured. Throughout the various challenges, Kim Hyon-hui experienced

moments of temptation. In her exhaustion, her brain urged her to give up and rest, but she had pushed it all

aside. Against all the odds, and with Suk-hee's moral support, Kim Hyon-hui passed all three sections with high

marks. North Korea was thrilled, having successfully sculpted yet another perfect secret agent. Now, she had

completed her training. She was ready for deployment, no longer the naive 19-year-old who had been plucked from

college. In her place was a loyal operative, willing to die, and more importantly, to kill for North Korea. In

the years following her graduation, Kim Hyon-hui was given a couple of low-stakes missions. She had been

assigned a partner, Kim Sung-il, a much older and more experienced agent. The missions had them traveling all over

Europe without being identified as a North Korean, simply to get her adjusted to moving around undercover posing as a

Japanese father and daughter. By 1987, Kim Hyon-hui had proved herself an exceptionally talented spy and was now

stationed with So-hui in Guangzhou and Macau living as a Chinese national. While Hyon-hui was focused on her

career, So-hui had started thinking about life outside of her spy craft. She was always critical of the regime, but

now she was seeing with her own eyes how much better life was outside of North Korea. She told Hyon-hui that if the

regime ever sent her to Europe, she would defect. There's 10 times as much food, everybody has a car, and you can

choose whatever career you want. I just want to be free. Deep down, Hyon-hui knew that everything So-hui said was

true. She had seen Europe herself and had the same doubts, but she knew what the regime did to traitors. Hyon-hui

warned So-hui to be careful with her words. One mistake could cost her life. In the middle of the night, Hyon-hui

received a message. She was to leave China immediately and return to Pyongyang. The regime had a major

assignment for her, an assignment that would alter the course of her life and the lives of many others. Hyon-hui left

that night. She never saw So-hui again. But before we get into that, the work we do for each one of our videos requires a

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let's get back to Hyun Hee and her special assignment directly from the supreme leader himself. Hyun Hee was

brought to a secure location, meeting face-to-face with high-ranking officials from North Korea's intelligence agency.

She was reunited with Kim Sung Il, now in his 50s, who also had no idea what they would be facing. The officials

started with the target. "Your mission will be to destroy a South Korean airplane." They claimed this was

personally requested by Kim Jong Il in a handwritten message, calling it "the most important undertaking that foreign

intelligence has ever attempted." While Kim Il Sung was still very much in charge of North Korea, his son, Kim Jong

Il, had become the obvious heir apparent. And throughout the late 1980s, he began making his mark on the world.

The system was centered around him, requiring his approval on everything. But, this wasn't the first time the

regime wanted to destabilize its enemies. While not much is known about North Korea, there are a few documented

incidents, many of them targeting its southern neighbor. Such as in 1968, 31 North Korean commandos infiltrated

Seoul, attempting to assassinate South Korean President Park Chung Hee at the Blue House. The mission failed, ending

in a massive firefight that killed dozens. In 1983, North Korean agents planted a

bomb at the Martyrs Mausoleum in Rangoon, Burma, attempting to kill President Chun Doo Hwan during a state

visit. The bomb detonated prematurely, missing the president but killing 21 people. One North Korean agent was

captured alive and confessed to being a military officer acting under direct orders from Pyongyang. North Korea's

message was clear. They would strike anywhere, anytime, using whatever means necessary. Now, in 1987, Kim Jong Il

wanted to top them all by destroying a plane and killing more people than ever to prevent the upcoming Seoul Olympics,

the first major international event South Korea would host. The spies believed that the threat of terrorism

would scare athletes around the world, push them to drop out, and make the Olympics unsustainable. But, that was

just the beginning of their plan. The intelligence officials told Hyun Hee and Sung Il during the briefing, "If we

succeed in preventing the games from taking place, and if we succeed in worsening the political turmoil, there

may well be the chance that our two Koreas could then be reunited. If you comrades succeed in this mission, you

will be nothing less than national heroes." Hyun Hee couldn't say no. Not that she wanted to. At that moment,

sitting in that briefing room, she felt a surge of pride. This is what 8 years of training had been for. The officials

told her she would be saving her country, bringing the two Koreas together under the righteous leadership

of Kim Il Sung and his son, Kim Jong Il. This was her chance to serve the great leader, to become a hero of the

revolution, and she believed them, completely. Hyun Hee and Kim Sung Il were given fake Japanese passports and

new cover identities as Mayumi and Shinichi Hachiya, a father and daughter touring Europe together. Their prior

successes together under cover in Europe gave them confidence. They knew how the airports worked and believed they could

easily slip under the radar. The plan was simple. Hyun Hee and her partner would board Korean Air Flight 858 from

Baghdad. They would fly to Abu Dhabi, where they would place the bomb contained with a transistor radio in the

overhead luggage rack. Then, they would disembark to take a different flight. 9 hours later, over the Indian Ocean, as

the plane flew toward Bangkok, the bomb would detonate, killing everyone on board. But, the North Korean authorities

wanted to make sure they understood something essential. The officials told Hyun Hee and Sung Il during their final

briefing, "Because of the extreme secrecy and importance of this mission, it will be the last one for each of

you." The mission would be so high-profile that they would be expected to retire as heroes or die as martyrs.

In the case of failure, they were given a pack of Marlboro cigarettes each. Inside the filter of one cigarette,

marked with black ink, contained small amounts of hydrocyanic acid, also known as cyanide. The North Korean regime made

it clear that they could not be caught. They could not be interrogated. They had to die before any of that could happen.

But Sung Il had concerns about the escape route. He told his handlers that the plan felt rushed, that there were

too many variables, too many places where they could be caught. His concerns were dismissed. The mission would

proceed as ordered and he was not to question the leadership any further. Within days, the spies flew from

Pyongyang to Moscow, then to Budapest, and finally to Baghdad. On November 29th, 1987, Kim Hyon-hui and Sung Il

arrived at Baghdad Airport with the bomb. As they climbed onto the bus that would take them to their target plane,

Kim Hyon-hui experienced another unusual pang of doubt. Almost everyone on board was South Korean. She had been

conditioned to see herself as a soldier in a holy war or a revolutionary fighting for her nation's very survival.

But in this moment, all she could think about was how artificial and pointless the North and South divide truly was.

These were actual people, like her. She had to tell herself that killing 115 innocent civilians was necessary, that

she was serving something larger than herself, that this was for the good of both countries. It was the only way she

could go through with this unthinkable act. Korean Air Flight 858 took off from Baghdad carrying 104 passengers and 11

crew members, most of them South Korean. When the plane landed in Abu Dhabi, Kim Hyon-hui and Sung Il disembarked,

leaving the transistor radio in overhead compartment, the timer set to detonate in 9 hours. The flight continued towards

Seoul. Somewhere over the Andaman Sea, the radio bomb detonated. All 115 passengers and crew died instantly, gone

in a flash of fire and debris. Kim Hyon-hui and Sung Il continued on the next leg of their journey, hiding out in

Bahrain. Their mission had been an undeniable success. But then they got an unexpected visit to their hotel room.

Two men from the South Korean Embassy came to ask questions, but they couldn't speak Japanese, and Sung Il refused to

abandon his undercover identity. The Koreans told Sung Il that the plane disappeared before reaching its

destination in Bangkok and was believed to have crashed. Hyun Hee listened from the next room as Sung Il committed to

his fake identity. When the man left, Hyun Hee couldn't sleep. She'd done it. She'd completed her mission for the

great leader. It had gone perfectly, exactly as planned. She had been loyal to the regime, and unification was one

step closer. However, a growing sense of dread filled her. The South Koreans were onto them. People were looking for them.

Sung Il's concerns about the whole plan suddenly felt very reasonable. The next day, in Bahrain, Hyun Hee and Sung Il

tried to blend in, waiting for their escape flight to Rome. Both were now extremely nervous about this flight, but

just as they were about to board, an official asked to see everybody's passports. When he got to them, he took

their passports and disappeared. The flight to Rome departed, but Hyun Hee and Sung Il were not on it. When the man

finally returned, he revealed that he worked for the Japanese Embassy and that their passports were confirmed fakes.

As they waited for questioning, Sung Il took a chance to give his young protégé one final order. "You must be strong and

bite the cyanide. Now that we've been discovered, it would only prolong your agony if you don't. I have no regret to

die now. I have lived long enough. But you, I'm so sorry." Hyun Hee and Sung Il were searched, but authorities

found nothing. Sung Il had been smoking throughout his search, normalizing it for the police officers. He handed her a

cigarette to make it less suspicious, but Hyun Hee knew it was time. One of the officers demanded the cigarette, but

Hyun Hee knew she could not give it up. The officer tried to rip it from her hands, but she snatched it back and bit

down on the arsenic capsule inside. Before she knew it, everything went black. For the North Korean regime,

their deaths were the best-case outcome for a spy operation that had been compromised. No intelligence agency in

the world would ever be able to ask questions, allowing the regime to continue operating in the shadows. There

was just one problem. Hyun Hee wasn't dead. She didn't ingest enough cyanide. Instead, she woke up in a hospital room,

an IV strapped to her arm. She got the awful news right away. Sung Il was dead. His cyanide pill worked perfectly. For

days, she tried desperately to die, refusing food, trying to tear out the IV, anything to finish what the poison

had started, but she couldn't. All she could do was sit and pray to God, not Kim Il Sung this time, who, in her

words, was the closest thing to a deity that I had ever known. Hyun Hee eventually found herself face to face

with two investigators. One was Japanese, the other was South Korean. Hyun Hee was questioned for so long she

lost track of time. They had seen through her Japanese cover story, but she had a backup plan, one she'd

practiced during her years stationed in Guangzhou. There, she had assumed the identities of existing Chinese women as

part of her training. Now, she pulled out that second cover, a Chinese national named Pai Choi Hui. Hyun Hee

claimed she was an orphan, a tourist who'd been traveling with an elderly companion when he suddenly died. She

claimed to have no idea why, and she knew nothing about the attack on Flight 858. Ian Henderson, chief of the

Bahraini police force, didn't believe a word of it. He brought in a Japanese interrogator named Okubo to break

through her lies. But Hyun Hee had told so many lies that even she couldn't keep track. Okubo quickly realized that the

key to breaking Hyun Hee was to attack her emotions, specifically the one person she had any emotional attachment

to, her father figure, Sung Il, or as they knew him, Shinichi. Okubo asked insulting questions, increasingly

disrespecting her partner until Hyun Hee snapped. She leapt over the table, kicking Okubo in the face and breaking

her nose. As Henderson tried to subdue her, she drew on all her martial arts training, fending off a Kubo, Henderson,

and a third guard before she was taken down by a stun gun and put in handcuffs. Henderson called it a day, saying, "Get

her out of here. She belongs to the South Koreans now." Hyun-hee was brought to the Namsan interrogation complex,

famous among North Korean spies. They had been told that this was the home of some of the most unthinkable, brutal

acts of torture. They had been told no North Koreans have ever returned from Namsan alive. Everything Hyun-hee had

been taught told her she should never confess. She was a soldier for the great leader. Her duty was to remain silent,

to protect the regime, and to die with honor rather than betray the cause. But underneath that ideological belief was

fear, pure, primal fear. The regime had filled her with pride, telling her she was a special, chosen hero. But she had

been repeatedly warned that if she was ever captured or betrayed the mission, it would be unthinkable torture. Her

duty and her fear were pulling her in opposite directions. But Hyun-hee was never tortured. The agents treated her

with respect. They told jokes and sang songs, easing her in with kindness. It didn't make any sense. This was supposed

to be the most fearsome enemy she would ever face. For the next 8 days, Hyun-hee was interrogated. They were pushing her

to see something she had been desperately trying not to think about, that the North Korean regime did not

care about her. Those seeds of doubt that had been planted all the way back in her training days were now impossible

to ignore. But Hyun-hee was still not ready. To accept that would mean that everything she'd done, all those people

she'd killed, was meaningless. On the ninth day, the authorities decided to do something different. They told her they

were going sightseeing. The police drove her through downtown Seoul. Hyun-hee had stared out the window in disbelief. The

city was modern, not the impoverished nation she had been told. The streets were full of Korean cars driven by

Koreans, not just rich, oppressive foreigners like North Korea had long claimed.

>> [music] >> The agents spoke freely, women drove cars, walked alone, laughed.

Suddenly, it all came clear to her. Everything she'd been taught was a lie. South Korea wasn't the impoverished

oppressed nation she'd been told about. They were free, prosperous, living lives she couldn't have imagined. Even the

South Korean authorities, the ones she'd been told would gouge out her eyes and rip off her fingernails, have been kind,

even after she had killed over a hundred of their people. If this was a lie, then everything else must have been too.

Looking out over the city lights from Namsan Mountain, Kim Hyon Hui realized that all of her work, and her training,

her entire life, had been founded upon lies. When she returned to the interrogation room, Kim Hyon Hui told

the officers, "Forgive me. I am sorry. I will tell you everything." In an 8-hour confession, she told the South Korean

officials how she had been recruited as a teenager, about the training facilities, about the mission ordered by

Kim Jong Il himself. She discussed Yaeko Taguchi, the abducted Japanese woman who taught her. She exposed the system that

had turned her and other young people into a weapon. Seeing Seoul had liberated her from the propaganda, but

liberation couldn't erase what she had done. In early 1989, Kim Hyon Hui was tried in South Korea for the murder of

the 115 people on board Korean Airlines Flight 858. In April, she was officially sentenced to death, but that death

sentence would never be carried out. In 1990, Kim Hyon Hui received yet another act of unexpected kindness. The South

Korean president, Roh Tae-woo, pardoned her, freeing her from all legal responsibility for her actions. The news

was hugely controversial, outraging the families of the victims, but President Roh showed mercy, saying, "This child is

as much a victim of this evil regime as the passengers aboard KAL 858." But for Kim Hyon Hui, freedom came with a

different kind of prison. She now lives in an undisclosed location in South Korea, surrounded by six bodyguards at

all times. Even decades later, the regime she betrayed hasn't forgiven her, branding her a traitor. North Korean

assassins still want her dead. Hyun Hee wrote a memoir telling her story, The Tears of My Soul, where most of the

information from this video comes from, donating all proceeds from book sales to the families of those she killed. She's

met with some of those families, seeking forgiveness she's not sure she deserves. In an interview, Hyun Hee was asked if

she knew what might have happened to her family back in North Korea. "I once heard a story that a defector saw my

family in a concentration camp about 15 years ago, but to this day, I have no idea what happened to them." There are

hundreds of documented cases of North Koreans being coerced into committing unspeakable acts for the regime, and of

foreigners like Megumi Yokota being abducted. The UN Commission of Inquiry documented extensive evidence of North

Korea's systemic abduction and training of foreigners, highlighting incidents of fishermen forced into spy training,

students made to sign documents pledging never to reveal their abductions, and civilians kidnapped to teach languages,

culture, and customs to North Korean agents. We'll never know the full extent of this system. North Korea is one of

the most secretive countries in the world. Information about what happens inside comes out in fragments. But we

know that North Korea's spy apparatus continues to operate, and the evidence suggests they're still recruiting young.

They've just adapted to the digital age. According to defectors, the regime still identifies gifted children early and

funnels them into elite schools in Pyongyang. But instead of training them to plant bombs on airplanes, they're

training them to hack into computer systems, steal data, and infiltrate Western companies. According to

cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, North Korean operatives posing as IT workers have infiltrated more than 320 American

companies in 2025 alone, using fake identities, stolen social security numbers, and deep fakes. Once hired,

they work remotely, stealing company data and funneling their salaries back to the regime to fund its weapons

program. Kim Hyon-hui was 19 when she was taken. By 25, she was a killer. Now, in her 60s, she's spent more years

trying to atone for her sins than she spent as an agent. Somewhere in North Korea, there's a teenager who is living

a life built on lies, being prepared to do something unforgivable for a regime that does not care for their existence.

Until that system is dismantled, children will continue to be stolen from their families, from their futures, and

twisted into something they would never have chosen to be. But, the worst thing is, we'll probably never even know about

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