Defector runs for parliament in South Korea

The crutch-wielding North Korean lauded by Donald Trump in a State of the Union address is seeking a seat of his own in the South's parliament to defend other defectors who have fled their reclusive homeland but often find themselves marginalized.

Ji Seong Ho was stealing coal to feed his starving family during a devastating 1990s famine when he fell from a train wagon.

The drop knocked out the then 13-year-old and a train ran him over, severing his left leg and hand.

A quarter of a century later and on the other side of the Demilitarized Zone that divides the Korean peninsula, Ji is running for South Korea's main opposition, the conservative United Future Party, in legislative elections.

The vote takes place tomorrow, the same day the nuclear-armed North will celebrate the 108th birthday of its late founder Kim Il Sung.

Swimming across the Tumen river to China with his brother's help, Ji went on a 10,000-kilometer, six-month odyssey through Laos, Myanmar and Thailand to reach South Korea, where he was given a prosthetic leg and hand.

"I was able to walk again," said Ji, who went on to study English, typing with one hand as he eventually obtained a master's degree in law.

Ji, now 38, works as a rights activist running an organization that has helped around 500 North Koreans make their way through China and into third countries from where they can travel to the South.

Ji, who is standing for a proportional representation seat, feels the 33,000-odd defectors in the South have been neglected by the current government in Seoul.

The dovish President Moon Jae In held three summits with North Korea's Kim Jong Un in 2018, but human rights issues have largely been off the table.