The Hidden People of North Korea (44 page)

By far the easiest way to escape North Korea is to cross the border into China, although that leaves the defector a long way from South Korea. A 2003 Korean Workers’ Party (KWP) document offering guidelines on how to stop smuggling could be used as an instruction manual for defectors. The document urges officials in border areas to confiscate Chinese cellular phones (with which smugglers and defectors can contact Chinese brokers and guides) and to “reinforce control of passage on the railroad and roads in the areas along the borders,” especially “areas where human traffic is scant, the areas with rivers of narrow widths and shallow depths, [and] the areas that are close to residential areas in neighboring countries or that are connected with roads leading to towns.” Local officials are also instructed to “properly block train stations in the regions along the borders, roads that are close to shores on the other side, and railway bridges.”
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A 2002 SSD lecture titled “Let Us Strengthen the Struggle to Deter Escapees by Enhancing Revolutionary Vigilance” tells border guards stories about the sorry fate that allegedly awaits defectors in China, Russia, and South Korea, where they are said to be tortured “without exception.”
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The lecture also points out that by escaping, defectors bring shame on their homeland. According to the lecture, indications that someone is planning to escape include their selling their homes and appliances, preparing dried food, claiming that they need money to buy medicine for a sick relative, making visits to border areas, and becoming nervous when receiving unexpected visitors.

For those who do not live near the border, domestic travel restrictions complicate escape. To travel outside one’s province requires a travel document issued by the county government, which distributes these passes to workplaces for official travel. It is possible, however, to purchase these passes with bribes or simply to counterfeit them. Travel to restricted areas, including the border and the Pyongyang metropolitan district, requires in addition an endorsement number given by the security office at one’s point of origin. Travel passes and endorsement numbers are checked at entrances to train stations, on the trains, and at roadside checkpoints, especially on the outskirts of towns and cities. Because most travelers lack the proper documentation to enter the border areas, they disembark from trains about twenty-five miles short of the border and walk or hitchhike the rest of the way. Walking along the road from town to town is not likely to draw attention because that is how most people travel. When travelers without valid documents or sufficient money to pay suitable bribes are stopped at police checkpoints, they can expect to be beaten and have their possessions confiscated, and if they are repeat offenders, they may be jailed until their hometown police can come to retrieve them.

The final obstacle defectors face is the river. The Tumen River marking the eastern border is narrow and shallow except near its mouth along the border with Russia. For several months in winter, the river can be crossed on the ice, and in the summer it can be forded. The Yalu (Amnok) River along the more populated western border is too wide to cross without a boat, and crossing one of the dozen bridges over either of the two rivers is possible only with official passes. North Korean border police are posted in guard shacks every five hundred meters along the river near populated areas and more thinly in the countryside. Defectors stopped at the river are usually allowed to go on their way if they pay a bribe of at least $20, which is more than most people make in a year, although border crossers may be allowed to proceed without paying a bribe if they can convince the guards that they are just going to China on business and will pay them on their return journey.

Surviving in China

Despite the danger and hardships, crossing into China is relatively easy; living in China without being caught is another matter. The Chinese government does not consider defectors legitimate refugees, even if they are starving and face certain punishment on their return home. Defectors are instead considered illegal aliens, just like people who illegally cross the Mexican border into the United States. Both China and Russia have agreements with the North Korean government to return defectors, and the Chinese also tolerate, perhaps even welcome, North Korean security agents who operate on their side of the border. The real challenge then is for defectors to get out of China and into South Korea or another country that will treat them as legitimate economic or political refugees.

Before they can find a way out, however, most defectors end up living in China for years. A 2003 poll of five hundred defectors revealed that they spent an average of almost four years in a second country before arriving in South Korea. Over 25 percent said they had lived as refugees for between five and six years before arriving in South Korea, whereas only 12 percent had reached the South in one year.
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The best way for defectors to elude the police is to make contact with one of the South Korean religious organizations that operate clandestinely in the border cities or to take refuge in the home of a Christian Chinese Korean.

As mentioned above, more women than men defect. In some cases North Korean marriage brokers arrange for North Korean women to defect and pass them on to Chinese brokers. Other women are lured by agents who hang around train stations and markets looking for attractive women who seem to be on their own. In the best of cases, marriage brokering is a legitimate business proposition that benefits all parties. In the worst of cases, women are traded like a commodity, with price markups at each stage in the distribution chain. The North Korean broker may sell her across the border for as little as $50, the price of a pig, and a Chinese broker may get $1,000 to $2,000 for her on the retail marriage market.
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The typical customer for a North Korean woman is an older Chinese farmer who has lost his wife or been unable to find a wife because of age, poverty, or personal defect. Many of the North Korean women who go to China to marry are single or widowed, but some are already married and sell themselves in the hope of reducing the economic burden on their families.

It is difficult for North Korean women to gain legal residency in China, even if they marry a Chinese, although local officials are not always strict about enforcing the law. Defectors must be wary of neighbors who might call the police in order to earn a government bounty of $100 or more. For this reason a new wife is likely to be especially accommodating to neighbors and, of course, to her new husband. Cases of physical and sexual abuse are common. Some women quickly tire of their new life and try to escape. Realizing this, many husbands hold their wives as virtual prisoners, harshly punishing any escape attempts.

Korean men who work in China earn their living as laborers, usually on farms, where they may work for little more than room and board. Like women defectors, they are in constant danger of being turned in to the police. Employers of illegal aliens can be fined the equivalent of several thousand dollars, so defectors must keep a low profile. Farmers employing defectors have been known to turn them in as transients to the police right after harvest so they do not have to pay them. Some defectors go into the mountains, even living in small hillside caves they have dug for themselves. The defectors who have the toughest time are the young children, who survive by begging and committing petty crimes. Most of them are caught after only a few days or weeks along the border, but those who are able to make it to a large inland city can elude the authorities for a longer time.

Chinese police keep a sharp eye out for defectors, making sweeps of homes and businesses in border towns to check identity papers. North Korean agents also operate in the border area, looking for specific individuals such as defecting North Korean border guards or members of the North Korean elite class. Female agents of the
Kisaeng Yodan
(“Geisha corps”) take jobs in bars and other places where defectors may work or gather in order to intercept them.

The goal of most defectors, other than those who have gone to China to earn money or visit relatives, is to reach South Korea. To do so usually requires the assistance of a professional guide, who is often provided by one of the South Korean religious organizations that help defectors. Transit has become more difficult since the early 2000s as the Chinese government has cracked down on these guides, sentencing them to prison terms of five to ten years.

There are three ways to get out of China.
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Defectors who can afford to purchase counterfeit identity papers, a forged passport, and a plane or boat ticket can travel in style, but the cost is in the range of $10,000, which is more than most defectors can get their hands on. A less expensive alternative, which became popular in the early 2000s, is to rush through the gates or climb over the walls of a foreign embassy, consulate, or school in a Chinese city, as a number of defectors have done to get into American, South Korean, Japanese, Spanish, German, and Canadian compounds. In most cases foreign groups or individuals who want to publicize the plight of the refugees organize these attempts. Once inside the foreign compounds, the refugees often have to wait for months until the foreign government is able to negotiate a safe passage out of the country with Chinese authorities, often to an intermediate destination to avoid angering the North Korean government. For example, twenty-five North Koreans made their way into the Spanish embassy in March 2002, from which they were transported first to the Philippines and then on to South Korea.

The Chinese have taken vigorous steps to block intrusions into diplomatic compounds. In 2002 Chinese police even forced their way into the Japanese consulate in Shenyang and dragged out five North Koreans while consular officials looked on, although thanks to the public outcry in Japan, the North Koreans were later released and permitted to go to South Korea.

Some defectors head overland for Mongolia, whose government tries to maintain good relations with South Korea and consequently does not repatriate defectors to North Korea. However, to reach Mongolia a defector must travel almost a thousand miles over open plains. Only one main rail line goes into Mongolia from China, and the Chinese police watch it closely, as they do the border area.

Currently, the longest, but most reliable, route to South Korea is through Southeast Asia, with the most popular destination being Thailand. Typically, groups of five to ten defectors are guided across China in an underground railway that employs trains, buses, and automobiles to cover a distance of some three thousand miles, before they slip across the border into Vietnam, Laos, or Burma and from there cross into Thailand. The cost for this service begins at about $2,000 and can go up to $10,000 or more depending on the escape route and the number of defectors in the party. Some defectors have sought asylum in Vietnam, but since the 2004 mass defector exodus, Vietnamese officials have discouraged defectors from taking refuge there. In 2007, twenty years after North Korean agents embarrassed the Burmese government by killing a visiting delegation of seventeen South Korean government officials, Burma reestablished diplomatic ties with North Korea, thereby reducing the attractiveness of this country as a destination for defectors. The most popular route for defectors heading for Thailand seems to be Laos, which, despite having good relations with the North Korean government, is so poor and corrupt that defectors with money can bribe the police to gain safe passage through the country. Once they reach the banks of the Mekong River, a short ferryboat ride brings them to Thailand.

The Thai government, which has a history of legitimate business dealings with North Korea (especially as an exporter of rice), honors North Koreans’ refugee status and permits them to travel on to South Korea. Upon entering the country, defectors are arrested by Thai police and required to pay a fine of about $300 or spend a month in jail before they are eligible for an exit visa. Conditions in Thai jails can be difficult, but living in a hot and crowded jail is better than being sent back to North Korea, and most defectors immediately surrender to the police.

The defectors who have the easiest time getting out of China are those upper-level cadres whom the South Korean government considers a valuable source of information. In one case, for example, a cadre who had a close relative serving in a top military position illegally crossed into China and went into hiding. Because the defector had high party connections, North Korean officials put out an all-points bulletin on him and told the Chinese police he was wanted for murder. One day he was relaxing in a steamy Chinese bath when he heard several North Korean agents talking about his case and the difficulty of finding him. Realizing how close he was to being caught, the defector decided to trust his fate to the South Koreans and made contact with an agent of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS), who provided him with false papers and spirited him out of China within days.
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Forced Return to North Korea

Human rights organizations have estimated that every year China forcibly returns about five thousand defectors, whose fate varies from case to case according to the changing policies of the Chinese and North Korean governments.
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After the number of defectors started growing in the late 1990s, the Chinese government became more active in tracking them down, as it did in the months leading up to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
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Chinese police take captured defectors to a neighborhood police station, where they undergo preliminary interrogation before being transported to a larger police station, where their possessions are confiscated and they are put in a holding cell, often without their belt or shoelaces to prevent suicide attempts. Interrogation may last a week or longer and sometimes includes beatings. The police are interested in learning why the defectors are in China and whom they have contacted. When the investigation is completed, defectors are turned over in groups to the North Korean police, who take them back across the border.