Oh Kil-nam

Oh Kil-nam (born 1942) is a retired South Korean economist, who was offered a job as an economist in North Korea, and so defected to North Korea with his wife Shin Suk-ja and daughters, then left them behind when he obtained political asylum in Denmark, where he was working in the North Korean embassy.

Early life and education Oh was born in Uiseong, Gyeongsangbuk-do, in the southern half of the Korean peninsula, and then went to Busan for high school. He graduated from Seoul National University in 1970, where he majored in German literature. In 1972, he married Shin Suk-ja, a fellow South Korean migrant in Germany. The couple had two daughters, Oh Hae-won (born 1976) and Oh Kyu-won (born 1978). He filed his doctoral dissertation at the University of Bremen in 1985, on the topic of Japanese Marxian economist Nobuo Okishio and the labour theory of value.

Defection to North Korea and back Oh became involved in political activism against the South Korean government in the early 1980s. Oh's fight to reunite his family gained wider media coverage with the 2011 establishment of the Daughter of Tongyeong Campaign, which aims to petition UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to address the situation. In 2012, North Korea stated that Oh's wife Shin had died of hepatitis, the same disease for which Oh took her to North Korea to seek treatment decades before. Choi Sung-yong of the North Korea Abductee Family Association suggested that the statement was a ploy by North Korea to quell rising South Korean criticism of the treatment of Oh's family.

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