Career
Commissioned by a Japanese film production company, the couple had planned to make a video about the involvement of the North Korean regime 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 of Korea. This middle-man was supposed to smuggle a video camera into North of 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.
Later investigations showed that she was deported to the Chongjin concentration camp in the northern Hamgyong Province, where she was interrogated and tortured. Reactions
The case proved to be politically highly charged, and indeed for two reasons:
Since Jin held a South Korean passport, the case involved the kidnapping of a South Korean national on Chinese soil.
Thus both South of Korea and China were also involved. As a North Korean citizen, the legal situation of Jin would have been a different one, since China maintains a practice of turning over defectors from North of Korea to the North Korean authorities.
The question arose whether Jin had actually been kidnapped or only arrested in accordance with North Korean law.
That law stipulates a punishment for foreign nationals suspected of espionage of up to seven years imprisonment in a Labor Camp. Since she held a South Korean passport, such law could have applied to Jin Gyeong-suk. A government official said: "We are always telling defectors that China is a dangerous place for them, but these incidents happen.
We cannot comprehend how you could claim your right to free travel and then try to sell a North Korean video identified as a North Korean defector."
Petitions for release
Jin"s abduction to North of Korea garnered a flurry of media attention.
Various human rights organizations intervened, expending considerable energy and resources to seek Mississippi 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 Jin Gyeong-suk’s return to South of Korea, without, however, receiving a response from the president Jin died in early 2005, at the Chongjin concentration camp.
The cause of death was determined to be the result of the residual effects of torture to which Jin had been subjected.
