Washington (CNN) Ji Seong-ho, a North Korean man who made it out of the rogue nation and now resides in South Korea, received a standing ovation at President Donald Trump's first State of the Union address Tuesday night.

Recognizing the guest, Trump told Ji's story, one of a starving boy in North Korea some 20 years ago, whose limbs were run over by a train after he collapsed in exhaustion on the tracks before enduring torture at the hands of North Korean authorities.

Trump said Ji was a "witness to the ominous nature" of the authoritarian North Korean government.

Ji grew up in North Korea in the 1990s around the time when the public food distribution system in the country collapsed. As people starved to death, Ji scavenged coal to help feed his family. While collecting coal from a railroad car, he passed out and woke to find that a train had run over his limbs.

Ji has publicly spoken of hardships he faced and of the brutal punishment meted out by North Korean police when he was caught bringing rice back from China. He spoke of how he escaped North Korea at the Oslo Freedom Forum in 2015.

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