Escape from North Korea: defectors risk all on a perilous trek
With death feared less than repatriation, a physically and emotionally arduous journey stands between North Korea and safety for many fleeing the hermit kingdom
It takes one hour and 45 minutes to fly from Shenyang, the sprawling capital of Liaoning province, in northeastern China and not far from the border with North Korea, to Seoul, the capital of South Korea. It’s the kind of flight in which passengers have to gobble down their beef and rice before the attendants come around telling them to stow their tray tables for landing. But for the North Koreans who escape from Kim Jong-un’s regime, by way of China, there is no quick flight onward.
Instead, they embark on a gruelling journey that – best-case scenario – involves travelling almost 4,350km on buses, motorbikes and boats, in taxis and on foot over mountains, on a roundabout route that scores of North Koreans each month are embracing as the best possible way to reach South Korea, where they will immediately become South Korean citizens.
I was worried that we were being used as guinea pigs on the route. But if we were going to die, we were going to die. We had already decided to kill ourselves rather than be sent back to North Korea.
For most, the journey will first pass through China, Vietnam and Laos, where they must be on the alert for police who might arrest them and send them back the way they came – to certain and brutal punishment in North Korea. Not until they cross a fourth frontier from Laos into Thailand are they finally safe.
Kim, the young and tempestuous North Korean leader, is issuing threats to the outside world, flying missiles over Japan and threatening to strike the United States. For the people of North Korea, his threats are not just bluster. They are a very real part of daily life. Behind the salvoes of missiles, ordinary North Koreans are risking their lives to make this invisible journey out of Kim’s clutches and to safety.
The Thai authorities do not send them back. Instead, they will slap them with a minor immigration violation and alert the South Korean embassy in Bangkok, which will start the process of transferring them to Seoul – not far from where many started their journey.
“I want to learn all about computers,” says a 15-year-old boy who has arrived in Thailand from Laos, just 12 days after escaping from North Korea. “I want to become a computer expert.”
“I want to be good at computers, too,” chimes in his eight-year-old sister, who is playing with an imitation Barbie that a humanitarian worker gave her on arrival in Thailand. It is the first doll she has ever owned, she says.