SEOUL— Hyeonseo Lee didn’t escape from North Korea because she was starving, in prison or physically abused like many other defectors. Her family was relatively wealthy and favorably positioned in “songbun”—North Korea’s caste system that ranks citizens by how loyal their forebears were to the regime.

But like other North Koreans, Ms. Lee says she knew she faced a life of limited opportunity and constant surveillance. As a child she was instructed to revere the leadership and resent the U.S. for the hardship she was told it had imposed on her country.

Today, Ms. Lee is among a handful of North Korean escapees with memoirs coming out this summer. The odysseys of defiance and endurance recounted in their books build on testimony by defectors and others in a United Nations report last year on human rights in North Korea.

The flurry of books in part reflects greater international interest in defectors’ stories following the U.N. report, said Sokeel Park of Liberty in North Korea, a nongovernmental organization that supports North Korean refugees.

Growing up beside a river that divides North Korea and China, Ms. Lee could see neon signs on the opposite side while her city, Hyesan, lay in darkness at night. The lights represented possibilities. A friend suggested they cross over.