Song Byeok

Song Byeok (b. 1969, North Korea) is an artist currently residing in South Korea.

He was born into a working-class family in North Korea and raised under the state’s Juche ideology. For seven years he worked as a propaganda artist at a state enterprise until the country’s economic collapse in the mid-1990s, which led to a devastating nationwide famine. His father drowned as they were attempting to cross the Tumen River in a desperate search for food, and Song was captured and imprisoned on three separate occasions.
Disillusioned with the regime, he eventually escaped and resettled in South Korea in 2002. There, he studied fine art and began creating works that satirize dictatorship and express the North Korean people’s longing for freedom. His paintings have been exhibited in the United States and Europe, and in 2018 he received the Global Artist Award for his contribution to human rights advocacy.
His story has been featured by major international media, including CNN, BBC, and NHK.
His autobiography Escaping North Korea: The Journey of a Propaganda Painter to the Free World was published in May 2025, vividly chronicling his transformation from a state propagandist to a free artist.