Trees fly by as the old jeep barrells down the highway on November 13,
2017. It’s 3:11 pm and 24 year old North Korean soldier Oh Chong-song
grips the steering wheel with slick palms. He glances over his shoulder to glimpse the
empty road behind him. Thankfully no other vehicles are chasing him...yet.
His heart pounds wildly as he struggles to keep the jeep from fishtailing. He has challenged
fate by fleeing. He has to make it or he’ll die- either immediately by firing squad or
they’ll send him to a concentration camp where he’ll slowly waste away.
Up ahead, a split in the road. Oh turns the steering wheel, veering left. Wrong choice,
up ahead is a guard post. He jams the accelerator to the floor trying to make
the jeep go faster. The engine shrieks and the jeep rattles like it is on the
verge of falling apart. He hunkers down in the driver’s seat, bracing for impact.
The soldiers at the checkpoint race out to meet him, shouting for him to stop.
Thankfully the jeep easily blows past the barrier,
blasting the wood to pieces. The soldiers chase after him, but the jeep is already out of reach.
Panting, Oh focuses on the road ahead. He is close now, the jeep is almost at the 72-hour Bridge.
Luckily the bridge is easily crossed. He heads into a straightaway leading into the Joint
Security Area. Oh has to ease off the gas as he veers past the Monument of Signature and makes a
right turn around the corner. Up ahead the road ends in a wooded area, beyond that is freedom.
Oh drives off road, the jeep immediately crashing into a drainage ditch.
He stomps on the pedal, trying to move the vehicle forward, but it is stuck.
Meanwhile soldiers are bounding down the steps of the Panmungak Pavilion,
sprinting down the street, guns at the ready, rushing after him. Oh twists the steering wheel,
rocking the jeep, but it is stuck fast. The soldiers are only yards away by now.
Oh scrambles out of the jeep, leaves crunching underfoot. He has only taken a few steps when he
hears a pop and excruciating pain burns through his shoulder. But he lumbers forward anyway,
pushing through the pain to cross the DMZ. The soldiers fire a hail
of bullets after him. Oh finally collapses in a pile of leaves near
a low perimeter wall of South Korea's Freedom House complex.
The JSA security battalion has been watching Oh’s dramatic escape on CCTV. They continue watching as
DPRK soldiers violate the armistice by firing guns into South Korea and briefly crossing the DML. The
soldiers gather near the Monument of Signature, trying to decide what to do about the defector.
Dep. Commander Kwon Young-Hwan and another South Korean soldier crawl along the ground,
carefully inching towards Oh, very aware that they were in range of a DPRK Guard Tower.
Finally they reache him at about 3:43 pm, nearly half an hour after he had been shot. They gently
drag the wounded, unconscious soldier to a safer area and load him onto a vehicle. Oh
is quickly transported to a helipad where a US medic team puts him on a stretcher and starts
life saving treatment. Soon after a medevac team arrives on an American BlackHawk helicopter.
The pilots pushes the helicopter to the max and makes the 30 minute flight to AJou University
Hospital in Suwon in 22 minutes. Oh is rushed into surgery, he has been hit six times--in
the stomach, right side of the pelvis, both arms, and both legs. During a 5 1/2
hour operation doctors repair Oh’s perforated bowel. He has lost more than half his blood.
Also during surgery, doctors find more than 52 intestinal worms in Oh’s gut.
On top of that, he is malnourished, has hepatitis B and tuberculosis.
All signs of living in an impoverished country with little health care.
Oh eventually recovered after multiple surgeries,
12 days in the ICU and over 5 weeks in hospital. For the first several days of his recovery,
South Korean Special forces guarded Oh in the hospital because the government worried that
North Korea would try to assassinate him as a warning to other would be defectors.
In later interviews Oh claimed that when he woke up on the morning of November 17th,
he hadn’t planned to defect from North Korea. Crazy enough, it was a spur of the moment idea.
Since 2000, some 33,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea. Very few defectors
flee via the DMZ, the 160 mile (257 km) long stretch of heavily militarized border
separating the two Koreas. Most flee to China and make their way through Laos and Vietnam
to refugee friendly Thailand which will grant them asylum and fly them to South Korea.
Once in South Korea, North Korean defectors are granted citizenship.
In recent years, Kim Jung-un has tightened security along the DPRK/China border. Also,
China considers North Korean defectors illegal economic migrants and under a border agreement,
deports them back to the DPRK where they are executed or harshly punished in prison camps.
Chinese citizens who aid defectors face steep fines and imprisonment.
As a result the cost to use an ‘escape broker’ who arranges transportation and shelter for defectors
has greatly risen. Currently using a broker can cost around $18,000,
about 5 times the cost from a few years ago. However there are some activist and
religious groups that also transport escapees through underground networks. In recent years,
alternative defection routes through Russia and Mongolia have also become popular.
Here’s another tale of a crazy escape from North Korea.
On the night of February 7, 2017, 26 year old Park Hyun-woo and his father left their home in the
North Hamgyong province of North Korea separately as to not arouse suspicion. They met up later
that night near the semi frozen Tumen River which serves as a border between North Korea and China.
The two of them had a comfortable life by North Korean standards. They both
worked for the railway. Many years before Park’s two sisters had defected to South
Korea before and regularly sent them money through a secret network. However, father
and son were frequently being hassled by local authorities for having defectors in the family.
They took with them a smartphone memory card. It contained pictures
taken of printed photographs they had to leave behind. They left the rest of their
possessions behind in their house so as to not raise suspicion that they were escaping.
The only other thing they each carried was a small pellet of rat poison wrapped in plastic in their
mouths, in case they were discovered. Father and son waded through icy water to cross the Tumen.
It was a miserable walk, their wet clothing started to freeze.
On the Chinese side of the river they met up with one of Park’s sisters.
The three of them crawled under a fence and took a waiting van to a safe house.
At the house Park and his father burned their clothes
and buried their North Korean leaders lapel pins.
Three days later Park and his father along with some other escapees caught a train from
Yanji to Shenyang. The group arrived safely and the Parks split off to meet up with a pastor
who took them on another train to Jinzhou. They stayed in Jinzhou at the pastor’s
home for several days and experienced many firsts including their first hot showers.
After saying goodbye to the pastor, Park and his father took a train to
Beijing with some other defectors. Then they boarded their first in a series of 6 buses,
they were headed to Kunming, their last destination in China.
Their final bus pulled into a dimly lit gas station near the outskirts of Kunming
around midnight on February19th. Something felt off. Park and his father had made
a pact that if things went wrong, he would run and leave his father behind.
So he fled. His intuition was correct, Chinese police were about to raid the bus.
The police chased after Park. He tried a dangerous yet clever move to escape--he sprinted onto an
expressway and had to dodge speeding trucks. The police turned back, deciding not to take the risk.
Terrified and disoriented, Park wandered the area, eventually hiding in a graveyard in the
mountains. Chinese Lunar New Year had just passed and Park survived by eating the food offerings
left by visitors on graves. When he ran out of food, he finally went into the nearest village,
bought fruit and was able to get a phone signal. He got in touch with his handlers,
who sent a car to take him to a safe house in Kunming.
In Kunming, Park met up with other defectors and they trekked through dense,
mountainous rainforest into Laos. Park ended up carrying an exhausted elderly
woman who said that she couldn’t go any further and wanted to be left behind.
Once in Laos, the refugees took a half day’s car ride to the Mekong River,
the final border before Thailand. Thankfully they were able to safely cross the turbulent river on
a wooden longboat. They surrendered themselves at a police station in Chiang Khong, Thailand.
After staying in a detention center center in Bangkok, on March 24th Park flew to Seoul,
it was his first airplane flight ever. He was sent
to government facilities to be debriefed and learn how to navigate South Korea.
Meanwhile, his sisters tried to find out what happened to their father.
Park senior had managed to evade the police at the gas station,
but was arrested while trying to cross into Laos. He ended up in a Chinese prison in the
Liaoning province. It was unclear if he would be sent back to North Korea.
The siblings lobbied the South Korea government, UN officials, anyone they could contact.
In August of 2018, Park senior was finally released to South Korea. It had taken him 1½
years, and a journey of over 5,000 miles (8,046 km) to reach Seoul, South Korea,
a destination just 400 miles (644 km) from his home.
Interestingly while men, often soldiers tend to make more dramatic escapes from North
Korea frequently for political and ideological reasons, the majority of defectors are women.
In the last 10 years over 75% of North Korean defectors to South Korea were women.
There are a few reasons why defectors skew female. Women are the bread-winners
of the family and often bear the brunt of financial hardships.
A significant number of DPKR women have service sector jobs or don’t have official
posts so they pursue off the books employment such as selling smuggled goods. They also
cross into China through established smuggling routes to live and work in the border region,
sending money back home. Their defection may be temporary with them returning home.
Also, unfortunately female defectors a re likely to get caught up in human trafficking schemes.
Korean NGOs estimate that 70% to 80% of North Korean women who make it to China are trafficked,
for between 6,000 and 30,000 yuan ($890 to $4,500), depending on their age and beauty.
Lee Yumi grew up in a family of low-level party members. She had plenty to eat, but her parents
were extremely strict and wouldn’t allow her to follow her dream of studying medicine.
One day after a fight with them, she decided to leave the DPRK. Lee found a broker to help her
make the journey. He promised her work in a restaurant in China. But that was a lie.
One night Lee crossed the chillyTumen River with 7 other girls. Once they reached the city
of Tumen which sits on the river, Lee and the other girls were transported to Yanji,
a city in Jilin province about 30 miles (50 km) from Tumen.
In Yanji, Lee was taken to an apartment on the 4th floor of a large building.
There, her broker sold her for 30,000 yuan (about $4,500) to the operator of a cybersex
chatroom. Two other North Korean women were also imprisoned there. Lee bonded
with 19 year old Kwang Ha-Yoon who had already been locked up for 2 years when Lee arrived.
The women had to log on onto an online chat platform on which South Korean men can
pay to watch girls perform sexual acts via webcam. If they refused,
their boss would beat them. Lee spent upwards of 12 hours a day interacting with men on the site.
The apartment front door was always locked from the outside and there was no handle on the inside.
The boss would allow the women outside about every 6 months, taking them to a small nearby park.
In 2015, Lee tried to escape by climbing out of a window and down a metal drain,
but she fell and hurt her back and leg. She still has a slight permanent limp.
One of her customers realized that she was North Korean from her accent
and guessed that she probably was being held captive. The customer let Lee control his
laptop remotely, so she could send messages without her boss noticing.
He also gave her the phone number of a South Korean pastor named Chun Ki-Won.
Pastor Chun runs a Christian aid organization, Durihana,
which has helped over 1,000 defectors reach Seoul since 1999. In September 2018,
Lee contacted Pastor Chun on a Korean messaging service.
Over several weeks of secret chats they hatched a plan for Lee’s and Kwang’s escape.
On October 26, while Lee’s boss was out, an extraction team from Durihana arrived at the
foot of the building. The girls tied their bedsheets together and dropped them out of
their window. The team then tied a rope to the sheets, which the girls hauled up
and then used to lower themselves safely to the ground. They jumped into a car and sped away.
The whole operation was completed in just minutes.
Lee and Kwang traveled from one safe house to another across China on buses and trains
using fake Korean passports. Their last stop was Kunming. From there, they spent several hours
hiking through the mountains and then walking through the jungle to cross into a neighboring
country. For safety, Durihana didn’t reveal to the media which country the girls went to.
Near the end of their travels, they met up with Pastor Chun. For the next two days he escorted
them by car and bus to the capital city. He left the girls at the South Korean embassy. They were
debriefed for 10 days and then taken to South Korea. Both girls were looking forward to going
to school and beginning new lives. Kwang had spent nearly 8 years in slavery while Lee had spent 6.
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