When Park Choong-kwon made the decision to flee North Korea, he had no idea where his risky attempt to escape would lead, only that he could not stay in the country he had always called home.

Fifteen years later, he has a Ph.D. in materials engineering from South Korea’s top university and a job as a senior researcher at Hyundai Steel, specializing in automotive components.

His stunning success — going from studying ballistic missile technology at the DPRK’s National Defense University to working for one of the ROK’s biggest companies — has not gone without notice, and last month, South