When she was young and it had snowed overnight, Park Ji Hyun would go outside and build a snowman. Then she would pour a kettle of boiling water over its head to destroy it.

In her game, the snowman was an American, and thus a deadly enemy of her country, North Korea, and its beloved leader, Kim Il Sung.

Park, now 49, no longer thinks so highly of the Kim family dictatorship. The women's rights activist and two-time escapee has spent the last 10 years living in Britain.