There are 91 North Koreans in the Netherlands but many are not accepted as refugees and fear deportation to South Korea.
The names of the North Korean defectors have been changed in this article to protect their identities.
Gilze en Rijen and Musselkanaal, The Netherlands – Kyung-Ae Choi*, a North Korean woman in her early fifties, first arrived in Europe on a fake Chinese passport, in 2012.
It had been given to her by a Chinese broker who arranged flights for her and her three children to France.
“I couldn’t understand what the writing [on signs] meant, but it all looked like English to me. That’s when I realised that I was in Europe,” she told Al Jazeera, at a reception centre in the Netherlands.
She had seen written English before in a North Korean film, People and a Hero, which she had watched in secondary school.
From Paris, guided by the Chinese broker, Choi took several trains and buses to a reception centre in Ter Apel, a Dutch village in the northwest.
“I was as cheerful as a kid,” she said of her first train ride in Europe, describing an unprecedented sense of freedom.
She is currently living at a reception centre in Gilze en Rijen, in the country’s south.
Choi crossed the North Korean border to China in 1998.
North Korea has a 1,400km border with China, a border barrier – the 250km Demilitarized Zone – with South Korea, and a 17km terrestrial/22km maritime border with Russia.
It is safer to cross into China than South Korea, so most of the 30,000 or so North Korean defectors living in the South travelled via China.
Most defectors from the North are eventually offered South Korean citizenship, leading to some European countries deporting asylum seekers there.
But right activists protest against this, saying North Koreans complain of discrimination in the South, which is ill equipped to handle so many refugees.
There are currently 91 North Koreans in the Netherlands, 25 of whom are refugees, according to official statistics .
Because she is undocumented, Choi is unable to work.
At the centre, her family lives in two small rooms and receives 112 euro ($130) a week for living expenses. Her children attend a local school.
Each month, Choi is obliged to meet the Repatriation and the Departure Service (DT&V), an organisation under the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security in charge of expediting the departure of foreign nationals who are not entitled to remain.
“I really feel like I want to die [after each meeting]. I have even thought about leaving the kids behind and killing myself,” said Choi, explaining that she suffers with stress, insomnia, and depression.
The Supreme Court has denied her permanent residency application twice. She is now making a third attempt, but fears another rejection.
Choi’s husband was caught by Chinese authorities. While she is not certain of his whereabouts, she assumes he is back to North Korea.
China considers North Koreans as illegal economic migrants, not refugees, and usually sends them back.
