Lee Pyung Jun Michael Park for BuzzFeed News SEOUL — At first, Lee Pyung had no desire to tell the whole world the difficult, emotional story of how he escaped North Korea. When he first started livestreaming in 2015, he dropped it in casually — “I’m from North Korea” — like you might tell someone at a party where your hometown is. To his surprise, many of his viewers didn’t believe him. “A lot of people were intrigued by the fact that I didn’t ‘look like’ a North Korean. They imagined I’d be short, have small eyes and dark skin,” said 25-year-old Lee. Lee is tall — more than 6 feet — with a sleek haircut and the casual confidence to match. His right arm is covered with bright tattoos, and he used to earn a living modeling clothes at a shopping mall. In short, he doesn’t exactly fit the stereotype. “I guess that reveals a kind of ignorance about North Korea,” he said. ”It’s the belief that we are like a completely different race, even though in school South Koreans learn over an...
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