My Conversation With a North Korean Defector

By Emma Goldrick 

The DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) is a region on the Korean peninsula that draws the demarcation line between North Korea and South Korea. The DMZ zone represents the nation’s unfinished conflict and serves as a reminder that the Cold War in Korea is yet to end and illustrates the challenges of a divided nation very much present today.

Countless, desperate North Koreans use the DMZ region to escape to South Korea, attempting to swim the length of the river that divides the area. However, I was told by a North Korean Defector that I met in the area, that the preferred and safer route is via the Chinese border. She claimed 90% of North Korean defectors that now reside in the South gained access to the country through the Chinese border, commonly travelling via Vietnam before reaching South Korea.

A female North Korean defector explained to me her life in North Korea, her process of escape and her assimilation into the South Korean culture. Due to privacy concerns, and as her family still resides in North Korea, she requested that I refrain from using her name or taking her photo.

The women detailed her upbringing in Yonsa, a small North Korean town close to the border of China. She explained that the town is known in North Korea for its ties to illegal Chinese smuggling, both of products and people, alongside being one of the only regions to periodically gain media information from the South. It is estimated that 80% of households in Yonsa have at least one defector family member. Yonsa has the strongest access to outside information in the whole of North Korea, with the central region’s only media access being solely state driven and predominantly utilised to spread propaganda and manipulation.

After I questioned what the trigger was for her escape she explained; her brothers, like all other males in North Korea, were assigned government work in both farms and construction sites after they completed their ten years of military service. The assigned work offers no salary, but rather the government redistributes whatever is made in production and is meant to give people a sense of purpose as they contribute to society. She says while this life is not desirable, it is much easier to live as a male than a female in North Korea. The patriarchal system means women's rights are scarce. The task of housework and attempting to grow extra produce in order to sell at the markets for extra income is a burden that is often never satisfactorily met according to their male counterparts. 

She described how her motivation for leaving North Korea heightened after a distant family member was suspected by authorities to be planning an escape. Her family was put under a strict regime of surveillance and curfews as the government deemed them a threat to national security. It was this additional government surveillance that lead her to plan her escape in early 2016. 

Knowing that only 1000 people managed to gain access to South Korea from the North every year (a mere one third of the people who attempt the escape), she was adamant that risking her life was worth the potential payoff. Utilising a contact that she obtained from a friend that worked on the Chinese border, she was able to pay a Chinese broker the equivalent of $15,000 USD to assist with her escape. She explained that many people who could not afford the up front fees that the Chinese broker businesses demanded would promise to transfer their settlement payments given by the South Korean government upon their successful arrival in the South.

Whilst her escape process took over six months, she explained that she was one of the lucky ones, as it is common to be held up by the Chinese traffickers and sold onwards for marriage. Thankfully she was able to leave the traffickers five months in, where she then hid from the authorities in Vietnam for a month. When she felt as though she was safe to proceed without identification she attending the South Korean embassy in Vietnam where her process of resettlement began.

Upon arrival in South Korea she went through an intensive screening and investigation process in order to confirm her identity and the genuine nature of her case. After the South Korean government was satisfied with her identification, she entered an orientation and education process of three months aimed at supporting North Korean defectors into readjusting to South Korean life.  The government has a policy of assistance in which she received a settlement payment and rent assistance for a period of time in order to aid her in setting up her new life in the South.

When I asked about her family, she claimed it to be common practice for one family member to attempt an escape at a time. The North Korean regime is able to track the movement of a large group of people and are more likely to respond than that of a single individual. She believes the safest way for her family to find peace in the South was for her to trial the escape first, then upon her arrival beginning the process of saving for the next family members broker fee. 

She now speaks to her family through a Chinese telephone number, as Yonsa is close enough to the border to do so. She visits the DMZ region as a reminder that her family are on land close enough to see, that while the two worlds are parallels, they are not that far apart.

Sending money to them monthly, she prays that one day they will be able to join her in Seoul.