Her pen name is Yasu Yadoroku. She has acquired a popular following in Japan, yet she keeps her identity – and her real name – private, at least partially because of hate speech against Koreans in her country of residence.

This is especially the case because she has been educated in schools run by Chongryon (the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan), and frequently writes about North Koreans and the lives “Choson” (North Korea’s name for itself) residents who maintain North Korean nationalities in the land of the rising sun.

But she is not a defector who somehow ended