Category: North Korean refugee

The determined story of a North Korean defector caught trying to escape Part 1

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Scott Kim first escaped North Korea at the age of 17 in 2001. At the time, he and his mother only wanted to get across the border to China so they could eat hot meals. Kim had spent much of his childhood starving.

Today, Kim owns a business trading automobile and railway parts in South Korea. But it was a long and dangerous six years in and out of China and North Korea before he got to Seoul.

Paying a broker was far out of reach for Kim and his mother the first time they crossed the river into China. Instead, he and his mother lived as undocumented immigrants and worked as farm laborers. But one year after escaping North Korea, Kim’s neighbor reported his status to the police, who brought him and his mother back to North Korea. Kim was taken to a detention center, where authorities determine where to send defectors next.

Kim was put in a cell with 20 other defectors. There was one toilet in the corner and no space to lie down. Day and night, the defectors sat on the ground. When he or other defectors were told to down the corridor to the warden’s office, they were made to crawl on their hands and feet. Officers beat them with gloves and sticks as they went.

Despite the fact that one of North Korea’s biggest reeducation camps is in Chongori, near his hometown in Musan, Kim was sent to a center further south. Because no one knew him — and internet and phone service was nonexistent at the time — he was able to lie about his age. He told the guards he was only 15 years old and had been in China looking for his mother.

Rather than send him to one of the country’s brutal labor camps or political camps, he was sent to a medical center for orphaned children. Shortly after arriving, he escaped and went back to China, where he got work as a farm laborer near Helong, a city in northeastern China. Read more

The determined story of a North Korean defector caught trying to escape Part 2

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When Scott Kim was in China he looked for his mother, and was caught a second time, when a neighbor again reported him to the police. He was sent back to North Korea, to a concentration camp near his hometown. From there he was sent to a labor camp, where he chopped down trees on a mountain for months. He escaped one day when he realized that all his fellow laborers were at the top of the mountain chopping while he was at the bottom.

He ran away as fast as he could until he found a train that he could take him north to cross the border with China again. After some time in China, he was caught a third time and sent to a camp for political prisoners — the worst place to be sent, as imprisonment there is interminable. He escaped the camp by bribing the authorities through a broker, who helped him make it across the border with China a final time.

In China, he went back to work to pay off his debt to the broker. One day, he got a call from a North Korean woman who told him that his mother was dying of cancer. For the first time in many years, the two saw each other.

“When I opened the door of my mother’s house, I froze, and couldn’t say anything, because my mother looked incredibly different,” he said. “There was no fat on her …. I just went outside and cried for a long time and came back again, and I embraced my mother and we cried together.”

Several days later, a friend of his mother offered his mother the opportunity to escape to South Korea via Laos and Cambodia. A broker was taking a group through; they had an extra space. Unable to walk, Kim’s mother told Kim he should go instead.

The long journey began. The night before Kim and the group of defectors were to cross the border into Laos, he received a call telling him that his mother had died.

In 2007, Kim finally made it to South Korea, six years after he first escaped.

[Business Insider]

A ‘life of hell’ for Christians in North Korea

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North Korea is ranked the most oppressive place for Christians in the world and has had that ignominious status for years, according to Open Doors USA.

Choi Kwanghyuk is one of the lucky ones. The 55-year-old managed to escape from the work camp where he was sent after being targeted and persecuted for his Christian faith by the North Korean government.

While hiding his faith in plain sight while living in North Hamgyong province, Choi still felt compelled to bring religion to others when he started an underground church.

In 2008, North Korean authorities caught up to Choi and arrested him. He was held in prison by the state security department where he says he was interrogated about his faith. “I was tortured there,” he said.

“Choi’s statements describing oppression, as well as his report of imprisonment for owning a Bible or practicing faith, align with everything we know about North Korea,” Open Doors President David Curry told Fox News.

“Rated the worst place for the persecution of Christians, North Korea treats Christians horrendously and registers them as ‘enemies of the state’ for their faith.”

[Fox News]

North Korean defector claims South Korean Intelligence blackmailed him

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Ho Kang Il, a North Korean restaurant manager and his staff of 12 women who defected to South Korea now claims he was blackmailed into doing so after the National Intelligence Service (NIS) coerced them.

“Originally, I was a cooperator of the NIS and brought information to them,” Ho told South Korea’s Yonhap news agency. “They threatened that unless I come to the South with the employees, they would divulge to the North Korean Embassy that I had cooperated with the NIS until then.”

The intelligence agency allegedly first lured Ho into defecting, promising him that he and his staff would be allowed to open a restaurant in South Korea’s capital, Seoul. However, when Ho appeared reluctant to leave North Korea permanently, he claims agents threatened him.

“I had no choice but to do what they told me to,” Ho said. He also explained that his employees did not know their fate until they had boarded the plane, believing they were headed to a restaurant in southeast Asia.

Questions about the North Korean defectors were first raised two months ago after a South Korean television channel aired interviews with Ho and three of his staff members. Ho said they had been coerced into leaving North Korea.

Last week, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, Tomás Ojea Quintana, said that a thorough and independent investigation into the case is needed, calling for a formal inquiry.”There is a need to respect their rights as victims. When I say victims, I am implying that they were subject to some kind of deceit in regard to where they were going,” Quintana said, German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported.

The South Korean government offers defectors $860,000 if they cross into the country and provide intelligence that improves the country’s security. The amount was previously just over $200,000, but was quadrupled last year.

[Newsweek]

North Korea’s ex-poet laureate has a human-rights message for Trump

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A former senior North Korean official has warned President Donald Trump he cannot just focus on denuclearization but must also deal with Kim Jong Un’s human-rights abuses if there is any hope of achieving peace and stability.

The North Korean government is well known for its atrocities, which the United Nations and others have said are just as bad if not worse than those committed by the Nazis. And yet, at their historic summit last month, President Trump repeatedly praised Kim Jong Un as “tough” and made little mention of his regime’s dire human-rights record.

Jang Jin Sung said this was a mistake. “When people try to separate the nuclear issue from the human-rights issue, it’s not really possible because these things are both working toward the same cause. They both uphold a political system that prioritizes Kim in every aspect, ” he said when asked about the summit.

For Jang, North Korea’s human-rights abuses should be seen in the same way, a means to keep the population down and prevent any challenge domestically.”This is a system that needs bombs, this is a system that inherently and essentially commits crimes against humanity,” he said. “The only real, permanent solution, whether that’s on nuclear issues or human rights, is one that deals that with both. Unless you have political transformation, you won’t make any genuine progress on these issues.”

Jang served as poet laureate to Kim’s late father, Kim Jong Il. Jang defected in 2004 after he read South Korean books, which he had access to because of his job, and realized the truth about his country. He is now a bestselling author living in South Korea. Jang is also a panelist for the Global Slavery Index, which released a report Wednesday saying North Korea was the worst country in the world for “modern slavery.”

[NBC]

Seoul charges North Korean defector with selling military secrets

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A South Korean court has charged a North Korean defector with breaching a law on military secret protection, media reported Thursday. The man identified only by his surname, Lee, was detained for selling sensitive data about the South’s military to a foreign agent.

Lee is suspected of leaking 109 pieces of data, including personal details of South Korean spies working abroad, to a person from an unspecified East Asian diplomatic mission.

The classified military information was reportedly obtained from former ranking officials at the South Korea Defense Intelligence Command.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said earlier that North Korea had stolen information from dozens of Seoul top government officials’ smartphones.

[Yonhap]

North Korean defector-turned-Christian

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Sung-min (not his real name) was well-off and a college graduate in North Korea. But he was disenchanted with his country and decided to leave. In January 2007, he crossed the Tumen River into China.

“The border guards told me to go to a church where I could get help but I refused because I was an atheist. At first, I hid out in an apartment in China. A Chinese man I got to know during the river-crossing ended up bringing over a preacher to me who I had refused to meet him at first. He said he understood my hardships and told me that Jesus died on the cross to give me eternal life.

“I cried, knelt down and prayed with him and made the decision to become a Christian.”

Today, Sung-min works on a Christian radio program in South Korea, which promotes unity among North and South Koreans in preparation for reunification. He says, ” I believe around 10 million North Koreans are listening to our program on mobile devices.”

Sung-min believes many of the North Koreans who have defected and become Christians have returned to their country in order to share the Gospel. He estimates 30,000 of them belong to the underground churches in North Korea.

Sung-min adds, “I believe God has a plan for us and will reunite Korea in his time and in his way. Our program aims to embrace the differences and restore common identity of the people of two Koreas.”

[CBN News]

North Korean defections to South down in first half of 2018

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The number of North Korean defectors arriving in South Korea during the first half of 2018 fell by 17.7% compared to the same period in 2017, according to official statistics recently released by the South’s Ministry of Unification (MOU).

If the trend continues through to December, this year could become the first time since prior to 2001 where fewer than 1000 defectors enter the South in one calendar year – just one-third of the peak recorded in 2009.

Of the defectors arriving in South Korea, 88%, were women – representing a small rise in the female-to-male ratio compared with the same period in 2017. This ratio has slowly risen in recent years, first reaching 80% of the total in 2015 and 83% for the full year in 2017.

Women currently make up 72% of all recorded defectors, which, according to the MOU, now stands at 31,827, having passed the 30,000 mark in November 2016.

But numbers have been dropping since Kim Jong Un assumed power at the end of 2011, due to a range of new and varied proactive measures by North Korean authorities.

Before settling in South Korean society, all newly arriving North Koreans are required to undergo three months of “training for social adaptation” inside the MOU-operated Settlement Support Center for North Korean Defectors, also known as Hanawon.

[NK News]

North Korean defector the lone survivor of five siblings

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Jae-un is the lone survivor in a family of five siblings. Her father was taken to a labor camp in North Korea when she was 2 years old, and never heard of again. During the Great Famine in the mid-1990’s, her only brother died of malnutrition. Her mother died on the road while trying to find food to bring back to her starving family.

Jae-un, vividly recalled in tears, the hardship they went through. “During the famine, we only got rice once in three days. When my mother died, we did not have the strength to bury her. My older sister went to China to earn a living for the family. She sent money once to buy rice but I never heard of her after that. I learned that she was sold as a slave. My other sister engaged in smuggling, got caught, and was sent to a labor camp where she also died.”

Out of desperation, Jae-un decided to escape from North Korea. One night in December of 1999, she crossed the Yalu River and swam for the Chinese border. The water was freezing and the current was so strong but she was determined to survive.

After arriving in China, she was sold to a man who she ran away from because he did not treat her well.

It was then that Jae-un joined a Bible study group in China. She remembered the woman she met prior to her escape who spoke to her about God. Jae-un said she was impressed with the woman’s kindness. “She gave me money to buy three months’ worth of rice and she told me that God is alive and is with me since He is the Father to the fatherless and the defender of the widows. I had heard of God in North Korea but I was also aware that believers are taken to prison.”

Jae-un married a North Korean man she met in church and they eventually made it to South Korea.

[CBN News]

Trump’s battle of wills with North Korea and China

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The Trump message to Kim Jong Un was direct and blunt: You, your father, and your grandfather have all touted your nuclear program as a guarantee of regime security. Policies of previous U.S. administrations allowed you to persist in that delusion. Not this one.

President Trump used a two-track approach to drive the threat home. First, his “fire and fury” rhetoric was accompanied by credible, calibrated leaks of administration preparations for kinetic action that, depending on Pyongyang’s response, could readily escalate to destruction of the Kim government.

At the same time, the president seized on an even more plausible and readily available instrument of regime change: North Korea’s internationally-condemned crimes against the humanity of its own population. With the proper mix of covert action, strategic communications, and coordination with North Korean defectors, the despised Kim machine could be effectively dismantled without the massive carnage inherent in major military conflict.

To China’s Xi Jinping, Trump was equally clear: You will no longer be able to garner undeserved international prestige as a responsible and moderating force while duplicitously enabling and protecting North Korea’s mounting existential threat to South Korea, Japan and the United States. Chinese entities, both official and commercial, which subvert international sanctions against North Korea, will pay an increasingly heavy price.

These indicators of Trump’s seriousness brought Kim Jong Un to agree to meet with President Trump in Singapore.

Presently, It is clear there is now a test of political will between Washington and Beijing on trade, Taiwan, the South China Sea and North Korea.

[The Hill]