US President Donald Trump sent a letter to Ji Seong-ho, a former South Korean lawmaker who defected from North Korea in 2006, congratulating him on his wedding on Saturday.
"Congratulations on your wedding! We are pleased to join your family and friends in celebrating this wonderful occasion," Trump wrote in the letter Ji provided to The Korea Herald.
Ji was acknowledged by Trump during the US president's first-ever State of the Union address to Congress in 2018, where he called Ji's journey out of North Korea "an inspiration to us all."
"Seong-ho's story is a testament to the yearning of every human soul to live in freedom," the US president said.
At the address, Ji received a standing ovation as he held aloft his wooden crutches, on which he crossed the Tumen river dividing North Korea and China and made his way into Thailand, Laos and Taiwan before eventually reaching South Korea.
He grew up in North Korea during a period of severe famine in the 1990s. In 1996, 13-year-old Ji fell off a running freight train trying to steal coal to exchange for food. He lost his left arm and leg in the accident.
Ji was elected through proportional representation in the National Assembly in Seoul in 2020. Before his time in the Assembly, he was a human rights campaigner.
Ji is currently serving as the governor of North Hamgyong Province, his hometown province in North Korea. He was appointed to the post in September last year. South Korea appoints heads of municipal offices to govern areas north of the inter-Korean border, which are recognized as South Korean territory under the Constitution.
arin@heraldcorp.com
