- [Translator] This is a picture
with my fellow elementary school classmates taken in 1992
in North Pyongan Province, Pihyon, North Korea.
You can tell this is before
our public food system collapsed.
When I was in middle school,
I began to notice empty chairs
in front of the desks in my classroom.
After 1994, many people from my hometown
in North Korea died from starvation,
including my classmates.
The coal mines deep in the mountains where we lived
were filled with desperate people, planning to flee,
because there was nothing to eat.
Even my neighbors, behind us, next to us,
they all starved to death.
Those who tried to prolong life
by eating tree bark and grass,
they too ended up dying.
On April 12, 1995, my grandmother
finally succumbed to starvation,
and I watched her die with my own eyes.
For the last seven decades, the ruling Kim family
has deceived the North Korean people.
Even as my classmates were dying from starvation,
our teacher continued to push the notion
that our happy system of socialism
was the best in the world.
Kim Jung Il ordered people to press on,
despite the hunger, telling us that food
would soon be made available,
and that he, too, was suffering also,
along with the people.
I later found out that the public distribution system
had broken down, and that Kim Jung Il
withheld food from the hungriest parts of my country,
intentionally starving us to death.
At the far end of my hometown
was the Camp 22 Political Prison Camp.
Here, the political prisoners
mined 1200 tons of coal every day,
without break or rest.
One day I realized that I could scavenge
and sell this coal for money to buy corn to feed our family.
I would go out at night,
together with my mother and younger sister,
who was 12 years old at the time,
to gather and steal the coal.
A freight train ran from this prison camp to a power plant,
and we would grab on to it as is sped by,
or sneak aboard it as it departed the station.
We did this to avoid the armed soldiers
who were guarding the trains all the time.
There were times that we were caught,
and we were beaten until our bones were broken.
I can still feel, to this day, the weight of my coal sack.
For a starving person, who weighed just 45 pounds
and was four feet two inches tall, like myself,
this was such a difficult, hard task.
Because I was so skinny and gaunt, the heavy coal sack
would scrape against my back.
Sometimes, my skin would break and blood would gush out.
In the early morning of March 7th, 1996,
when I was 14 years old,
I ran up to a moving train and pulled myself aboard.
The car number was number 4031,
and it was carrying almost 60 tons of coal.
There were many others like me,
who were secretly loading their sacks with coal.
Except for their eyes and teeth,
their entire body was black from soot, sweat, and coal dust.
I was dizzy as I worked,
because I had not eaten for several days,
and soon blacked out.
When I opened my eyes, I was lying in between
the two railway tracks.
The train had passed over my left leg, and it was hanging
from the rest of my body by just a tendon.
Blood gushed out every time I took a breath.
It is hard to describe the fear and the pain I felt
at that exact moment.
I tried to stop the flow of blood by grabbing my leg,
but then I noticed that three fingers of my left hand
were cut off, and blood was gushing out there as well.
I cried out to my mother, my father,
and my sister to save me,
but the subzero temperature in North Korea
at that time made my injuries so cold
and so much more painful.
My sister found me, but all she could do
was wrap her scarf around me, and shake in fear.
Finally, several men came and carried me
to a local hospital.
I was so cold and I was so thirsty,
even when I arrived at the hospital,
and I can still remember the surgical tools
laid out in the room.
There was no blood transfusion,
and no painkillers provided for me.
I still remember very vividly to this day,
the sound of the saw cutting through my leg bone and flesh,
and the vibration that it caused
throughout the rest of my body.
I still remember what it felt like when a smaller scalpel
was used to trim the splintered bone.
And I can still feel the sound the pan
below the surgical table made as my blood dripped on it.
The doctors slapped me, to force me to stay awake,
every time I began to pass out.
And my mother passed out when she heard me scream in pain.
Without any additional medicine, or anesthetics,
I was sent home, and we had no money to buy any medicine.
It was harder than death to try to cope
and survive like this, each day after the surgery.
Every night, I cried out in pain,
whispering "please kill me, please kill me."
Repeatedly.
And falling asleep only later in the morning,
as the new day began.
North Korea was still deep in famine,
and everyone except government officials were starving.
And I felt guilty for eating the food
that my younger siblings worked so hard to obtain for me.
My younger brother scrounged leftover scraps and noodles
in the trash from the local market all day,
and washed and boiled them, and always shared them with me
by putting the noodles into my mouth.
I will never forget my feeling of gratitude for him,
and I will forget the taste of those noodles
my brother scrounged from the trash.
He and my sister resorted to eating grass
and wild mushrooms while I recovered,
and their growth was stunted.
For this, I will always be grateful, until the day I die.
When summer came, the flesh around my amputations
turned gangrenous, and with the horrible stench,
pieces of my leg bone pierced through the inflamed skin.
It was not until November of that year,
240 days after the accident,
that the pain began to go away.
But now I was a cripple,
I thought there was no future for me.
And I thought about killing myself,
because there was nothing to live for.
Eventually I felt that I could no longer
be a burden to my family,
so in the year 2000 I crossed over into China,
using crutches, in search of food,
and was able to obtain a few kilograms of rice.
While I was there, I noticed that dogs in China
ate better than my family did in North Korea.
On my way back into North Korea,
I was arrested by the local North Korean police.
They said to me, "a worthless cripple like you
is embarrassing our nation,"
and that because I had gone over to China
to beg for food in my condition,
I had defamed and damaged the dignity of the dear leader.
They confiscated all of my rice, and tortured me.
Another person was arrested along with me,
but he didn't get beaten as badly as I did,
because they reserved special treatment for disabled people,
and that was what hurt me the most.
That injustice motivated me to leave North Korea in 2006,
using crutches, and with my brother I planned my escape.
Before we left,
my father and brother and I had a drink together.
We cried, embraced,
and promised to see each other soon, again.
My brother and I, we went to the north,
to the border, to the Tumen River.
In crossing the river, holding my crutch,
I fell into a deep part in the river,
and I began to drown and swallow water,
and I felt my life ebbing away.
But at that moment, my brother spotted me,
grabbed me by the hair, and dragged me across.
I owe my life to him.
Using the crutches, I embarked on a 6000 mile journey,
through the jungles of Southeast Asia,
through an underground Chinese railroad network.
I crossed from China, into Laos, through Burma,
and eventually to Thailand.
It was so difficult, especially going through Laos.
I was in so much pain that I literally wanted to die.
At that moment, I cried and lamented the fact
that I was born in North Korea.
I prayed and made a vow at that moment
that I would work to make sure that no one else
would have to live through this experience.
In July of 2006, I finally made it to South Korea.
My greatest wish, up until that moment,
was to have a prosthetic arm and leg.
These, too, were soon provided for me
by the South Korean government.
I wanted to share this joy with my father,
and I eventually was able to make contact
with people from my hometown.
But I heard the terrible and shocking news
that my father was dead.
I learned that after my brother and I escaped,
my mother and sister defected also, and then he followed.
But he was caught and detained.
The agents wanted to find out where his children went,
so they tortured him to death.
Because he had no family left,
the officials just carried him
in a wheel barrow and left him in our empty house.
Despite my family's tragedy, and my handicap,
I did not give up.
I rose up defiantly against the Kim regime,
and did something I once could not
even dream of in North Korea,
which was walking on my own,
and fulfilling my father's wish for me to attend college.
Now, I am in graduate school,
studying criminal law and justice.
I also formed the non profit organization NAUH,
N, A, U, H, with friends, and for the past six years
we have rescued more than 260 North Korean defectors,
and brought them to safety in South Korea.
The North Korean people have no internet,
so we broadcast radio messages of truth,
culture and knowledge to them.
It is very important for us to talk to the world
about what goes on inside North Korea,
but it is more important for us to tell the North Korean people
about the outside world.
With outside information arriving by radio
and through black markets,
I believe that North Korea will continue to change.
And because of the generosity of many individuals,
our organization was able to raise enough money
to move into a beautiful office space.
And two years ago, after watching my first speech
at the Oslo Freedom Forum,
a company donated a new prosthetic leg to me.
It is because of people like you
that I continue to walk, to dream and take action.
Today, I stand here, having come from the brink of death,
to triumph against all odds.
These are the crutches that I used
to drag myself across 6000 miles.
I never lost these crutches.
To me, they symbolize that you can achieve anything
if you do not give up.
They are also a memory of my father,
who made them for me, as his last gift to me
before he died.
I will do my very best where I am
for the freedom of North Korea.
The dream of free North Korea is possible with your help.
Please, stand together with me.
Thank you.
Please join with me together in this journey together.
Thank you.
[applause]