Living in North Korea, an escape experience

Why living in North Korea is difficult?

Living in North Korea is too complicated thus, it is one of the most difficult countries in the world to leave, with attempted defectors facing life in prison camps or even execution. After 2020, when the nation closed its borders, escaping only became more difficult. But in the Spring of 2023, a smuggler and a fisherman risked their lives to sneak their family out of the country and, against all odds - through armed guards and deadly minefields - crossed the sea to freedom. But what kinds of horrors might push a person to risk their life and the lives of their families just to escape? Because even if you’ve heard stories, you don’t know half of living in North Korea.

North Korea, or the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, is frequently discussed in the news, and rarely for something positive about living in North Korea. Proclaimed Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, who inherited that title from his father and his grandfather before him, makes headlines for threatening South Korea, the United States, and Japan with nuclear missile strikes.

The Kim family

The Kim family has ruled the nation with an iron fist for over seventy years. Within the borders of North Korea, political dissidents are imprisoned, and high-ranking officials who disagree with Kim Jon Un are removed from office - and often also removed from the mortal coil. It’s a government so ruthless that even the relatives of its rulers aren’t safe - as Kim Jong Un’s half-brother, Kim Jong-Nam, discovered when he was assassinated by North Korean agents for his defection from the regime in 2017.

During its 2017 World Report, Human Rights Watch referred to North Korea as "one of the most repressive authoritarian states in the world." In 2014, the United Nations Commission issued a report on human rights abuses regarding living in North Korea, which included "extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, [sexual assault], forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation.”

In the years since the UN Human Rights Council has officially condemned human rights abuses in the DPRK, and though the nation has ratified four international human rights treaties and includes rights protections in its constitution, Human Rights Watch states that: "In reality, the government restricts all basic human rights, including freedom of expression, assembly, and association, and freedom to practice religion. It prohibits any organized political opposition, independent media, free trade unions, and independent civil society organizations.

Arbitrary arrest, torture in custody, forced labor, and public executions maintain an environment of fear and control." Over the years, North Korean citizens have fled to China and South Korea, with the first outpouring of refugees beginning in the late 1990s. As you might imagine, the North Korean government has done its best to crack down on these defectors, and over the years, the numbers have declined.

Escape rate

There was a sharp drop in defectors in 2020, only 229 resettled in the South compared to the 1047 in 2019, or the 1137 in 2018. This drop brought numbers to their lowest level in two decades. But what caused this drop? Several factors played a role, and nearly all can be traced to the North Korean government's increased security measures and tightened borders in 2020.

Journalists can do their best to put together the details. Still, it is often difficult to paint an exact picture of the goings-on inside the country because of its insular nature and the aforementioned tightened borders.

The first North Korean defector interview

However, in December 2023, the first North Korean defector to give an interview since 2020 spoke to the BBC.

He told them the incredible story of his escape and the horrors that drove him to risk his life and flee the country. Seoul Correspondent Jean Mackenzie reported on it, along with additional reporting by Hosu Lee and Leehyun Choi. The defector asked to be referred to only by his last name, Kim, to protect his family in both the North and South. As such, he is referred to throughout the BBC's coverage and will be referred to here as Mr. Kim.

Mr. Kim's journey

Mr. Kim's journey toward planning and executing an escape from North Korea began in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Covid restrictions were strictly enforced, to the point of broadcasting images of the dying from around the world, sending those who broke the rules to labor camps, and even quarantining entire villages in response to a single case inside.

They would cut off the people of the quarantined village from outside resources. Mr. Kim told the BBC, "After they'd starved people for a while, the government would bring in truckloads of food supplies. They sold the food cheaply so that people would praise them - like starving your baby, then giving them a small amount so that it would thank you."

As this response continued, Kim and others like him began to wonder if the North Korean government was using the pandemic as an excuse to profit off of its citizens. When North Korea closed its borders, issues of resource access and the conditions of living in North Korea only got worse. The authorities stopped importing grain from China and no longer imported fertilizers or machinery needed to farm their food.

COVID 19

North Korea has never had a reputation for an abundance of food or other resources, but as of Spring 2022, things were looking especially dire, and living in North Korea got more difficult. People were reportedly starving to death in their homes, and the scarcity prompted comparisons to the horrible famine that North Korea experienced from 1994 to 1998, also known as "The March of Suffering." In one particularly harrowing story, the police conducted a mass interrogation of everyone in a certain village, investigating the alleged murder of an elderly couple that had been found dead there.

However, an autopsy concluded that their cause of death was not murder but rather starvation. Investigators had suspected murder due to the bloody, violent sight that they found when the bodies were discovered, but there was no killer. The supposed injuries had been caused by scavenger animals, likely rats, eating the fingers and toes of the corpses.

In April of 2022, two farmer friends of Mr. Kim's starved to death. This was, tragically, not uncommon. If the year's harvest was lacking, state authorities would often force farmers to make up for the loss of their food supply.

Here is a summary of the common activities that are considered crimes there and make living in North Korea too difficult:

BBC's report

The BBC could not independently confirm these deaths, but the 2023 Global Report on Food Crises has stated that, though it is difficult to get an accurate read on the situation with the nation's borders closed, there have been "indications the situation is worsening" there and the circumstances of living in North Korea got worse. Before the borders closed, Mr. Kim had made the majority of his income selling smuggled items from China on the black market.

He specialized in motorbikes and televisions. But he switched up his products of choice as the food crisis mounted and trade across the Chinese border became all but impossible, switching from motorcycles and TVs to vegetables. He would set up his operation at home or in secretive alleys. He called himself a "grasshopper seller," as he would be ready to pick up his wares and run if danger started to close in, "like a grasshopper." Also, in April of 2022, Mr. Kim witnessed the public execution of a 22-year-old man he had known personally.

A True but sad story

The young man's crime? Listening to South Korean music, watching South Korean films, and sharing them with his friends. For this, for 70 songs and three movies, Kim said the young man was shot to death in front of a crowd, to set an example. Though this specific story could not be verified, it does match up with a law passed in December 2020, making the dissemination of South Korean media in North Korea punishable by execution.

Mr. Kim witnessed one horror after another, but according to him, one specific tragedy broke his spirit more than any other. A friend of Kim's wanted to divorce his wife and marry the woman he loved. State officials refused to approve the divorce unless the man agreed to spend time in a labor camp. The man refused, afraid of what might await him in the camp, and fell deep into debt trying to find another way. The man collapsed into a despair so deep he could not climb back out and living in North Korea was too hard.

Sadly, with no other path in sight, Mr. Kim's friend took his own life.

Mr. Kim couldn't take any more of living in North Korea. He had to get out. But first, before he could come up with an escape plan for living in North Korea, he needed to get his family on board. First, he reached out to his brother, who had run a seafood business until the government's crackdown on unofficial sellers and fishermen. He was no longer allowed to fish, but he and his wife still owned their boat. Kim's brother agreed to flee with him, and they began to hatch a plan.

Once they had an airtight escape route in place, Kim could work on convincing the rest of his family to join. The Kim brothers were living in a small fishing town in the south-west of North Korea, relatively close to the South Korean border. They might not have been able to escape through the border to China, but this location gave them another option: the sea. Mr. Kim's brother began working at a military base nearby, which employed civilian fishermen to catch fish that could be sold to pay for equipment and weapons.

This would give them better access to the water and give Kim's brother a reason to have his boat there in the first place. In the meantime, Mr. Kim learned more about the schedules and shift patterns of the security guards and coastguards in the area, memorizing their movements until he and his brother were certain they could get out on a boat at night without being caught. Now that Kim was confident in his plan, it was time for him and his brother to convince their mother to come.

At first, she refused, but the two told her they would not leave without her and that it would be her fault they stayed behind in a country that made them miserable. By miserable, she meant living in North Korea. After hearing their argument, she tearfully agreed. Mr. Kim's wife was not so easy to convince. It took someone other than Mr. Kim to change her mind: their unborn child.

You can also watch this video about this:

When Mrs. Kim discovered she was pregnant, Mr. Kim saw the opportunity to persuade her. "You're not just your own body anymore," He said. "You're a parent. Do you want our child to live in this hellhole?" Living in North Korea is the present you give him? She decided that no, she did not. She would join him and the rest of the family in their escape. But the planning wasn't done yet. There were still eventualities that needed to be accounted for. Kim and his brother feared that, if their escape was successful, state authorities would desecrate their dead father's grave in retaliation.

Unwilling to risk the possibility, they dug up his body, restored the ground around the grave to make it look undisturbed, and burnt the body in the wilderness. Then, there was the matter of the path they would need to take to get to the water. The part of the coastline with the least guards on duty at night was a literal minefield. Landmines had been planted there to prevent people from attempting to escape that way.

So, the Kims would need to cross that minefield safely, and they would need to do it in the dead of night. The brothers pretended to be picking medicinal herbs in the area when they were determining the best way through. With their route planned, they just had to be patient and wait for the tide to turn.

Finally, they ran

On May 6th, 2023, the time finally came. 10 PM, to be precise. The sea waters were turbulent and rough, Southern winds bringing a storm that had driven surveillance ships from the area.

His brother gave his children sleeping pills to keep them still and quiet on the journey. Carrying the sleeping children in his arms, he carefully traversed the minefield with the rest of the family. One wrong step, and they could all be blown to bits. And that was not where the danger ended. They knew that if they were caught at any point, they could be put to death.

They had armed themselves with what little they could: swords for the men, poison for the women, and hollow eggshells packed with chili powder and black sand that they could crack in the eyes of a guard in a close-quarters fight - a tactic first employed by the Japanese ninjas of old. They made it through the minefield without incident and reached the boat they had stashed along the shore. They wrapped the children, still asleep, in old grain sacks to keep them hidden and piled into the boat together. Then, they pushed away from the shore, setting off into the water.

They moved slowly, hoping to blend in with the reefs, rocks, and other rubbish exposed by the low tide. Gradually, the boat began to pick up speed as they approached the maritime border to South Korean territory. Mr. Kim turned to look behind them and saw a ship following them, but it was too late for it to catch up. They crossed the border, and finally, Mr. Kim could breathe again and relax. Up ahead, they could see Yeonpyeong, a South Korean island.

Moving to South Korea

They flashed their light, signaling the South Korean navy that they were there. After two hours at sea, they were rescued and taken to shore. Mr. Kim described the joy he felt at the plan coming together without a hitch, "It was like the heavens helped us." Their journey was not quite done, however. First, South Korean intelligence agents had to speak to them to determine whether or not they were North Korean spies.

Once it was determined that they were genuine defectors, they were placed at a resettlement center and taught about the nature of life in South Korea, their new home. In October, the Kims moved into a new apartment, and Mr. Kim's wife gave birth to their child. The story of the Kims is miraculous, given the rarity of sea defections and how difficult it has been to defect since the pandemic border closures. Many who attempt to leave North Korea never make it out.

They are unable to navigate the waters safely, or they are caught and imprisoned or executed. Even if they do make it out, there is no guarantee that defectors will find a safe home waiting for them.

Difficulties of living in North Korea

If we want to summarize the difficulties of living in North Korea, the below points could be considered: