The Tears of My Soul

In The Tears of My Soul, Kim Hyun Hee tells the story of how she was trained as a North Korean espionage agent and selected to carry out the mission given by Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s “Dear Leader,” to blow up a South Korean airliner. Kim Hyun Hee was apprehended after Korean Air Flight 858 crashed, killing 115 passengers. In this book she explains how for weeks after being taken captive she attempted to conceal her real identity, but the South Korean investigators methodically carried out their interrogation, uncovering numerous flaws in her argument. Eventually she gives up, confessing her true identity and the crime she had committed. After a dramatic trial confirming her guilt she was nevertheless pardoned by the South Korean government, which deemed that the North Korean regime, and not Kim Hyun Hee, was to blame for the tragedy.

After being so completely brainwashed by the North Korean system, Kim Hyun Hee was shocked to find that Seoul and South Korean society were in fact nothing like the awful descriptions given them in North Korean propaganda. She thus comes to the sad realization that all she had been taught in the North were lies. She feels terrible for the crime she committed. She is welcomed by the South Korean church and she finds forgiveness in Christianity. Moreover, she was filled with joy to find out that her mother’s relatives live in the South.

Family is one of the major themes of the book. Kim recalls with fondness the youth she spent with her family in Cuba, where her father served as a diplomat. A division was created between her and her family, however, after she was selected to serve as an agent. During her years of training her visits home became increasingly rare. From her father’s perspective she was no longer his daughter but a daughter of the North Korean communist party. Before departing on her fateful mission, Kim Hyun Hee stole away from the training compound in the mountains to visit her family in an attempt to make things right. Throughout the book Kim would become emotional whenever describing her feelings for her family in the North.

Kim Hyun Hee wrote this memoir in order to expose the North Korean regime and, in a gesture of contrition for her terrible crime, she donated all of the proceeds from this book to the families of the victims of KAL 858.