Escape from North Korea (6 page)

The officer then said good night and went home. When he arrived at work the next morning and opened the door to the North Koreans' cell, he found four corpses. The mother and children had been strangled; the father had hanged himself. Koo Bom-hoe ended his article with the following observation: “It seemed as if the family
had concluded that instead of going back to North Korea where they could be punished or even put to death for betraying their country that it would be better to die with full stomachs.”

The North Korean famine hit the provinces bordering China first and hit them hardest. Before the famine, every North Korean had depended for his daily sustenance on food rations provided by the government-run public-distribution system. The rations were especially vital in the three northeast provinces, which had few other potential sources of food. The coast, along the Sea of Japan, is highly urbanized and industrialized, and the interiors are mountainous and rocky. Unlike the rice-growing provinces farther south, there is little arable land in the northeastern part of the country and agriculture is not a significant industry. In 1992, the government cut the official food rations by 10 percent, and the distribution system began to break down altogether. By 1994, the government appears to have decided that the citizens of the northeast region were expendable. It stopped sending food shipments altogether, preferring to channel limited food supplies to citizens of higher political status. Large numbers of starving North Koreans began crossing the river to China.

As the famine took hold, the search for food was the major factor pushing North Koreans to China. The starvation stories are legion. One survey of North Korea refugees in China asked whether they had family members who had starved to death. Of the respondents, 23 percent of men and 37 percent of women said yes.
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A commonplace observation of North Koreans who reached China was that Chinese dogs ate better than North Korean humans. The hungry refugees marveled at watching dogs devour scraps that were more nutritious than anything they had seen for years. They also marveled at seeing dogs. In North Korea, most of the dogs had been eaten.

By the early 2000s, hunger was only one of the motives for flight.
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Refugees cited other reasons for leaving, such as fear of persecution due to family background or frustration over lack of opportunities. By this time, North Koreans who lived close to the border
had heard stories about life in China and had inklings of China's increasing prosperity and growing freedoms. Some crossed the river to find jobs. The pay wasn't lucrative by Chinese standards, but it was a fortune by North Korean ones. Men could earn ninety dollars a month in the construction industry, and women made fifty dollars a month as waitresses. The average monthly salary in North Korea was only two or three dollars, so these Chinese jobs were highly attractive.
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Others went to China to join relatives who had already left, a pattern that accelerated in succeeding years.

It is difficult to come up with a reliable number for the North Koreans who are hiding in China. Beijing does not release information on the refugees, nor does it permit the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to operate there. The estimates come from international aid organizations and Christian relief groups that work quietly in the border areas. During the famine years of the mid-to-late 1990s and into the mid-2000s, there was a consensus that the refugees numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Many observers put the number as high as half a million. A leaked Chinese border police document, dated January 10, 2005, seemed to confirm these estimates. The document put the number of illegal North Korean immigrants at four hundred thousand, adding that “large numbers continue to cross the border.”
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By the late 2000s, some observers in northeast China estimated that the numbers of North Koreans hiding in China had dropped to the tens of thousands. Large numbers of North Koreans had been arrested and repatriated. In addition, many North Koreans went home on their own initiative, unable to find work in China and unwilling to cope with life on the run. Other observers rejected such low estimates. They pointed out that North Koreans who were integrated into Chinese society—women sold as brides, for example—were so far off the radar screen that they were not easily counted. The short answer to the question of how many North Korean refugees are hiding in China: No one knows.
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For a North Korean who wants to escape, the first hurdle is getting to the border. Free movement around North Korea is extremely difficult. A traveler needs official permits to leave his city or county of residence, or he needs to be prepared to pay off officials along the way to let him pass. Soldiers and police officers man checkpoints on main roads at the entries and exits to most towns.
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The restrictions on internal travel violate Pyongyang's obligations under international law. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulates, “Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.” It further states, “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.”
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Such rights are also guaranteed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which specifies that everyone “shall have the right to liberty of movement” within his own state and “shall be free to leave any country, including his own.”
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North Korea pays lip service to its international legal obligations regarding freedom of movement within the country. But that is all it is—lip service. In 1998, under pressure at the United Nations, North Korea added a provision to its national constitution that formally guaranteed the right of movement. “Citizens shall have the freedom of residence and travel,” Article 75 states.
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But those are only words on paper. No such freedoms exist in practice. North Korea continues to enforce a system of strict control over where citizens may live and where they may travel. Pyongyang has rationalized the controls as necessary for making sure that every citizen benefits from the nationwide system of food rationing. But the real purpose for restricting citizens' movement has always been to prevent potential assemblies, protest rallies, and external contacts. If citizens can travel freely, they
might obtain information from people in other regions that might in turn lead to organized dissent.

The government-mandated travel procedures call for a would-be traveler to submit an application to the accounting section of his official workplace two weeks in advance of his proposed travel date. Approval depends on a review of the applicant's ideology and his work record. If he makes it through this first level of scrutiny, the applicant next takes his request to the permit section of the local police office, which determines whether he is a security risk. Upon arrival at his authorized destination, the traveler is required to report to the head of the local neighborhood political unit to be registered. Anyone who provides accommodation to an unregistered traveler is subject to a fine or, according to the law, two months in a labor camp. Bed checks by security agencies are not uncommon, especially in the border areas.
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That is the official system. While it is ostensibly still in place, a parallel black-market system has mostly supplanted it. Refugees report that clerks at factories and offices sell domestic travel permits off the books. More and more people are also willing to risk traveling without permits. If caught, they count on being able to bribe officials to avoid penalties.

Train travel remains next to impossible without the proper papers, because travelers are required to present permits before purchasing tickets and on-board security checks are frequent. But the market has stepped into the breach here as well, and travelers increasingly rely on an unofficial system of private transportation known as servi-cars, which transport travelers for a fee. These unauthorized services are operated by work units and government agencies that are trying to make extra income with their government-issued cars, trucks, or buses. Even the military has gotten into the illegal transportation business, with official vehicles diverted for the use of paying passengers. A video smuggled out of the country showed private
citizens handing over money to a uniformed soldier before hopping aboard an army truck.
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Travel to China requires a special category of permits, available to North Koreans who do business or have family in that country. Applicants must pass ideological muster and be able to pay for the permits. Overseas travel is subject to even more restrictions. Passports are a rare commodity. They are issued only to those whose loyalty to the regime is beyond question, and they must be relinquished immediately upon the traveler's return home. Even then, diplomats and other officials who are allowed to travel overseas are not fully trusted; it is assumed that their exposure to foreign thinking corrupts them. To discourage defections, diplomats posted abroad can be forbidden to take all their children with them. Sometimes the regime requires diplomats to leave at least one child at home as an unofficial hostage. If the official decides to defect, he understands that the price will be the life of a son or daughter.

No North Korean makes the decision lightly to flee to China. The law stipulates a term in a labor reeducation camp for the crime of illegally crossing the border. Those who cross the border with the intention of defecting to South Korea or seeking asylum in a third country receive harsher sentences: a minimum of five years in a political prison camp. So, too, do those who meet with Christians, Americans, or South Koreans while in China. Returnees can be subject to indefinite terms in prison, confiscation of property, or even execution. Minors over the age of fourteen are tried as adults.

The level of enforcement varies, but everyone knows the risks. In the months leading up to the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008, Pyongyang initiated one of its periodic crackdowns on border crossings. This was done at the request of the Chinese government, Western diplomats said at the time. Beijing did not want a flood of
refugees from North Korea to divert world attention from the happy face it was putting on the international Games.

To make sure its citizens got that message, on February 20, 2008, six months before the opening ceremony of the Games, the regime executed fifteen people who had been arrested while trying to cross the border into China. The executions—thirteen women and two men—were by firing squad and took place on a bridge in the town of Joowon in Onsung County, North Hamgyung Province. Several of the people who were executed were found guilty of planning to go to China to get help from relatives. Others were convicted of selling their services as guides to North Koreans who wanted to go to China.

Good Friends is a Buddhist organization based in Seoul with sources in North Korea who witnessed the executions. It quoted a North Korean official on the spot as saying, “We wanted people to have the right frame of mind on this issue.” The official expressed outrage that his countrymen would go to China. “This is why we carried out the executions,” he said. Good Friends also quoted citizens who were ordered to watch the executions. They were matter-of-fact about it. The executions were “a matter of bad luck for those who got killed,” said one witness. “They were made into examples.”
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