All North Korean scholars know who Hwang Jang-yop was. A Dalai-lama-style picture of him sitting with a sad smile and crossed fingers has been featured again and again in articles on high-ranking North Korean defectors.

There are, however, people who are at least equally (and, in my humble opinion, more) interesting, but whose memoirs are much less know to the North Korea studies community.

I compiled a small summary of their lives, with each section opening with a reference to a Korean book. All these books have one thing in common – they were not directly written by these refugees,