Atlanta (CNN) -- Song Byeok had every reason to be pleased with his success. A gift for drawing led to a prestigious career as a propaganda artist and full membership in North Korea's communist party. Then the food shortages started. Like tens of thousands of other North Koreans in the mid-1990s, Song made forays across the Tumen River to find food in China. Despite witnessing a better material life across the border, he says, he never doubted that North Korea was culturally superior. He never considered leaving his homeland for anything more than food. "I was a believer. I saw North Koreans as pure," Song said. "And we needed the Great Leader to protect us from outsiders."
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Once a propagandist, defector Song Byeok now paints satirical works about North Korea
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His paintings dwell on miseries of life in his homeland, joy of the freedoms he found in the South
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From a country of 25 million, only about 20,000 North Korean defectors live in the South
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Song is optimistic new leader Kim Jong Un will be an agent for change
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Song is passionate and sometimes brooding when discussing @placeholder but gracious and open about his deeply personal passage from propaganda artist to painter who anguishes over oppression in North Korea.
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Despite his rank as a party member, getting caught meant questioning and torture by North Korean guards to confirm that he was not working for the South Koreans or the foreign missionaries based in @placeholder who proselytize among defectors.
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By one plausible account, teenage defectors of the past decade are 5 inches shorter and 25 pounds lighter than their @placeholder counterparts.