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World News See other World News Articles Title: ‘We Are Ready to Die.Â’ Five North Korean Defectors Who Never Made It. ‘We Are Ready to Die.’ Five North Korean Defectors Who Never Made It. The New York Times By JANE PERLEZ and SU-HYUN LEE 10 hrs ago © CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP/Getty Images In this photograph taken on January 10, 2018 North Korean soldiers walk in the North Korean town of Sinuiju opposite the Chinese border city of Dandong in China's northeast Liaoning province. Around 30,000 North Koreans have successfully defected to the South. But under the reign of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, far fewer people are getting out. ______ BEIJING — Ms. Choi was worried about her sister in North Korea. The last time they spoke, two months earlier, her sister had sounded desperate. She said she had been imprisoned and beaten, and could no longer bear the torment. She said she wanted to escape and join Ms. Choi in South Korea. She said she would carry poison, to kill herself if she were captured. For Ms. Choi, 63, a grandmother with large brown eyes and a steely fortitude, getting the rest of her family to South Korea was the most important thing left in life. She had fled North Korea herself 10 years ago. Her son had made it out too, as had her sister’s daughter, now a hairdresser living near her in Seoul, the South’s flashy capital. Ms. Choi longed to be reunited with the sister, a 50-year-old dressmaker with her own home business, and also the nephew she had left behind. She wanted to get them to safety, out of the reach of the government that had arrested her husband, her brother-in-law and her son-in-law on suspicions of helping people leave. They had been targeted as enemies of the state and were never seen again. ──── She said she would carry poison, to kill herself if captured. ──── One evening this past summer, Ms. Choi got the news she had been waiting for. As she opened her apartment door, her niece, 25, shouted: “My brother called. He said: ‘We crossed the border. We’re in China. Get the car.’” Ms. Choi, who must go by only her last name to protect her and her family against possible retribution from the North Korean government, was jubilant. But she and her niece felt a new anxiety. They knew well that the journey to South Korea was a long and treacherous one because they had made it, too. Defectors usually leave North Korea by crossing into China. The border is tightly guarded by soldiers under the command of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, who views those trying to leave as traitors. Once in China, defectors must rely on smugglers who charge extortionate rates to evade Chinese security and North Korean agents. Capture or betrayal could lead to prison, or worse. They often make their way to China’s southern border to seek passage to a third country, usually Thailand. From there, the South Korean government flies defectors to Seoul. The attitude of the Chinese government makes the journey even more dangerous. Although China’s relations with North Korea have soured, China pleases North Korea by detaining any defectors it finds and returning them to almost certain harsh imprisonment, and possible torture. China has forcibly deported tens of thousands of North Koreans — a conservative estimate since there are no statistics available — and looks the other way when North Korean agents capture defectors inside its borders, according to the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. In total, around 30,000 North Koreans have made it to the South, where they are welcomed with free housing, inexpensive medical care and training for the cutthroat job market. However, the passage has become more difficult since Mr. Kim became the North’s supreme leader in 2011. Last year, 1,127 North Koreans arrived in the South, just one-third of the annual number before he came to power. China deports the North Koreans despite having signed a 1951 United Nations convention not to return refugees to countries where they will suffer persecution. The United States, the European Union, South Korea and the United Nations regularly ask China to stop such repatriations of defectors, whom they consider political refugees. China has paid no heed. It says it views the North Koreans not as political refugees but as economic migrants seeking jobs. It says it sends them back because it can’t afford to have its depressed northeastern region destabilized by an influx of outsiders. An Unexpected Hitch Ms. Choi and her niece started making arrangements for the clandestine overland journey after the sister’s phone call. They soon faced an early hitch. The group of defectors was larger than they had expected. The sister and her son, 28, were joined by the son’s girlfriend and two of his friends. Now there were five people to move through China without attracting notice. Ms. Choi and her niece phoned a South Korean man whom they had hired to handle the escape. Known in the smuggling business as a broker, he had arranged the niece’s journey out of the North during less tense times five years earlier. “Get the driver,” her niece told the man. To calm her own nerves, the niece sent a text to her Christian pastor to read at the Friday evening service she usually attended. The congregation was mostly well-to-do South Koreans, who tended to be standoffish toward the poorer North Koreans in their midst. “Please pray for my family’s safety,” the message said. ──── North Korean defectors are sent back to possible torture. ──── As the hours passed, Ms. Choi paced the little apartment. She thought about the call she received last spring from her sister, who lived near the Chinese border and had climbed a tree on the edge of her town to make the call without being caught. Make sure the plan goes well, her sister had said. Look after me on the journey. Most of all, Ms. Choi remembered her sister’s warning. She would kill herself rather than be sent back. The Perils of China The group of five could hardly have picked a more precarious time to flee into China. Chinese security was on high alert, searching for North Korean defectors. China was angry at South Korea for deploying an American missile defense system, known as Thaad. The Chinese saw rounding up North Korean defectors who were heading to South Korea as a way to irritate the government of the South’s newly elected president, Moon Jae-in. At the same time, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, was pressing an anti-corruption campaign that was making Chinese officials much less amenable to the bribes often offered by brokers to release North Koreans arrested at the border. China also appeared to have given greater access to North Korean security agents to scour its northeast for defectors to drag home. Making it to South Korea depended on the skill and reliability of the broker. Ms. Choi and her niece had paid the broker an advance fee of $13,000, most of it earned by the sale of the niece’s apartment in Seoul. They would need to pay him much more if the group reached the South safely. Poster Comment: This is quite a tale of daring. Hats off to them. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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