According to Lee, she was a manager in a North Korean government office that distributed goods and materials to the country's people when she was falsely accused of dishonesty in her job.
[1][2][3] For six years, Lee was imprisoned in Kaechon concentration camp where she reports witnessing forced abortions, infanticide, instances of rape, public executions, testing of biological weapons on prisoners (see human experimentation in North Korea), extreme malnutrition, and other forms of inhumane conditions and depravity.
[3] It is not clear why she was released, although Lee suspects that the officials responsible for jailing her were the subjects of investigations by higher-ranking members of North Korea's government.
Since escaping with her son via China to South Korea in 1995, Lee has written Eyes of the Tailless Animals: Prison Memoirs of a North Korean Woman, a memoir of her six-year imprisonment on false charges in Kaechon concentration camp and testified before the US Congress.
[6] Lee's accusations of human experimentation in North Korea have been described as "very plausible" by a senior US official quoted anonymously by NBC News.