Tag: defectors

Via One Free Korea comes this interview with 21 year old North Korean defector Yeonmi Park that explains what life was like for her in the “Socialist Paradise”:

In an interview with the Irish Independent, Yeonmi told how her first memory is of being told by her mother at the age of four “not to even whisper because the birds and mice could hear you”.

“That’s what I learned from my mum and that was really early – so that’s the way she could protect me from that terror,” said Yeonmi.

People are not really “living” there, she says of life in that country. “They are surviving there, and surviving is not that easy actually.”

When she was nine, she was forced to watch her best friend’s mother being executed on the street before her eyes.

Her only crime had been she had watched a James Bond movie and shared the DVDs with neighbours.

Watching her body crumble to the ground was a seismic moment in how Yeonmi viewed the world.

“She was a very nice, gentle mother,” she said.

“Always I knew that in North Korea when they kill the people, they justify themselves by saying these are criminals trying to destroy our socialist paradise.

“But I knew that lady. She was not that bad. She was not going to destroy our country,” she said.

“She was just being killed because she watched the Hollywood movie, James Bond. And that’s why she got killed.”

That same year, Yeonmi’s life changed catastrophically when her father, a mid-ranking civil servant, was arrested and imprisoned for selling precious metals to China on the black market.

Her mother, too, was interrogated and thrown into jail. Yeonmi and her sister, Eunmi were left to fend for themselves, at the age of nine and 11, foraging on the mountainsides for grasses, plants, frogs and even dragonflies to avoid starving to death. “Everything I used to see, I ate them,” she said.  [Irish Independent]

You can read more plus watch a video interview with Yeonmi at the link. Make sure to read One Free Korea’s commentary as this link as well.

ALERT: North Korea test-fires 4 short-range rockets, says Yonhap http://t.co/KVGyDrPaev

— NK NEWS (@nknewsorg) July 30, 2014

I wonder how much of a choice these defectors had in regards to returning to North Korea after they were caught in Laos?:

North Korea on Wednesday paraded before the state press nine young defectors who were coerced into returning from Laos last month. The teenagers, who are believed to be orphans, recited declarations of loyalty to the repressive state and accused South Korea of attempting to kidnap them.

The official KCNA news agency on Thursday said the young defectors “returned to the arms of their fatherland” after being tricked into leaving the North by the “puppet regime” of South Korea.

The young defectors had attempted to reach South Korea via China and Laos, but were taken back to North Korea late last month by North Korean agents, who apparently badgered them into submission in a Lao detention center. [Chosun Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

Courtesy of OFK, comes this great interview of a modern day Korean sex slave in China.  Here is a sample of the interview:

For a while, all seemed well: she earned her keep, and a little pocket money, by working on the family farm, obtained a false identity and even began a romance with the farmers’ son.

Then, four years ago, she was caught by the Chinese police, searching farm to farm in a crackdown on illegal immigrants. “They checked my documents, and they were fake,” said Miss Ban.

“They said they would arrest me and give me back to the North Korean authorities. We all know what that means.”

The policemen forced her to have sex with each of them in turn, and then demanded she hand them most of her savings in return for keeping quiet.

The only alternative then was to go on the run again. “I knew they would not leave me alone,” she said. “These people are like leeches. They would suck you dry, and when you are of no further use to them, give you away.”

That was when a North Korean friend offered her a job at the massage parlour, where she is “protected” because the owner bribes the police.

She is unusual in having gone there of her own accord: many of her colleagues, she says, have been “sold” to the parlour in order to pay their debts to cross-border people-trafficking gangs. The slightest word of complaint, and the police will be tipped off about their illegal status.

This is what Ms. Ban had to say about returning to North Korea:

People like Miss Ban, however, have extra reason to feel a shudder when they glance across the river. Should she be caught by the Chinese authorities and deported, she would face jail, labour camp and possibly even execution, all for the crime of abandoning the “paradise on earth” created by Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s tyrant leader.

She vows, however, that this will never happen. “The only way I’m going back to Korea is in a coffin,” she said, a look of defiance flashing across her face. “F*** you, comrade Kim Jong-il.”

Make sure you read the whole thing because her story is tragic and representative of the tens of thousands of North Korean refugees hiding in China that South Korea and the rest of the world prefer to pretend do not exist.  This is why I have a hard time taking seriously the demagogues that condemn Japan for sexual slavery of women during World War II, but they do nothing to stop the trafficking of sex slaves in China today.