Stay and endure a life of privation and oppression or escape and risk being sold into sexual slavery: this is the stark choice facing many women in North Korean, bestselling author and activist Hyeonseo Lee warns.

The daughter of a military official, she is not your typical defector. It was curiosity, not desperation that pushed her to venture beyond its borders. Almost 20 years on she has become a powerful voice of dissent, laying bare the reality of life under the totalitarian regime in her memoir The Girl with Seven Names.