Yeon Mi Park escaped North Korea when she was 13 years old. And escape only brought more challenges. North Korean defectors risk being killed, imprisoned,…
Yeon Mi Park escaped North Korea when she was 13 years old. And escape only brought more challenges. North Korean defectors risk being killed, imprisoned, and trafficked after they escape. This is Park’s harrowing story. Following is a transcript of the story.
Narrator: More than 1,000 North Koreans try to escape the country every year. They risk being killed, imprisoned, or trafficked, as they escape through China, Mongolia, and different regions of southeast Asia. This is Yeon Mi Park. She escaped North Korea when she was just 13 years old, and she described her ordeal to us.
Yeon Mi Park: I think, just life was so unbearable in North Korea. I found this note that my sister left, saying that, «Go find this person, and she will help you to go to China.» We got that note, and my mother and I found the person, that lady. And then she told me that she had a few daughters, but she sent them all to China, and told me she could help us to go to China. And we did not know that she was a broker, or anything, just we thought, «This stranger woman wants to help us,» and that’s how we just followed her lead and we escaped at night, the very same day. Initially, I escaped to China, and I was being sold and trafficked and enslaved for two years there.
Narrator: Park wasn’t alone. Around 70% of North Korean defectors are women, and many of them are targeted to be sold as brides or trafficked. Defectors are considered illegal migrant workers, and are sent back to North Korea to face punishment if caught.
Park: My mother and myself We crossed the Gobi Desert to Mongolia. And, from Mongolia, we were there a few months, and then we flew to South Korea. I think that when I was crossing the Gobi Desert, in minus 40 degrees at night in 2009, I was 15 by then. I think wasn’t scared of dying in that desert, I just thought, «Even this universe abandoned me.» Like, I was punished that I was born in North Korea. My crime was as simple as that, that I was born on the wrong side of the river.
Narrator: She and her mother finally arrived in South Korea two years later in 2009. Once a North Korean defector makes it to South Korea, they’re granted citizenship under the South Korean Nationality Law, which states that any person born on the Korean Peninsula is eligible to be a South Korean citizen, but first, they have to go through a lengthy screening and reeducation process.
