Trees fly by as the old jeep barrells
down the highway on November 13, 2017. It’s 3:11 pm and 24 year old
North Korean soldier Oh Chong-song grips the steering wheel with slick palms.
He glances over his shoulder to glimpse the empty road behind him. Thankfully no
other vehicles are chasing him...yet. His heart pounds wildly as he struggles to keep
the jeep from fishtailing. He has challenged fate by fleeing. He has to make it or he’ll
die- either immediately by firing squad or they’ll send him to a concentration
camp where he’ll slowly waste away. Up ahead, a split in the road. Oh turns the
steering wheel, veering left. Wrong choice, up ahead is a guard post. He jams the
accelerator to the floor trying to make the jeep go faster. The engine shrieks
and the jeep rattles like it is on the verge of falling apart. He hunkers down
in the driver’s seat, bracing for impact. The soldiers at the checkpoint race out
to meet him, shouting for him to stop. Thankfully the jeep easily blows past the barrier, blasting the wood to pieces. The soldiers chase
after him, but the jeep is already out of reach. Panting, Oh focuses on the road ahead. He is close
now, the jeep is almost at the 72-hour Bridge. Luckily the bridge is easily crossed. He heads
into a straightaway leading into the Joint Security Area. Oh has to ease off the gas as he
veers past the Monument of Signature and makes a right turn around the corner. Up ahead the road
ends in a wooded area, beyond that is freedom. Oh drives off road, the jeep immediately
crashing into a drainage ditch. He stomps on the pedal, trying to move
the vehicle forward, but it is stuck. Meanwhile soldiers are bounding down
the steps of the Panmungak Pavilion, sprinting down the street, guns at the ready,
rushing after him. Oh twists the steering wheel, rocking the jeep, but it is stuck fast.
The soldiers are only yards away by now. Oh scrambles out of the jeep, leaves crunching
underfoot. He has only taken a few steps when he hears a pop and excruciating pain burns through
his shoulder. But he lumbers forward anyway, pushing through the pain to cross
the DMZ. The soldiers fire a hail of bullets after him. Oh finally
collapses in a pile of leaves near a low perimeter wall of South
Korea's Freedom House complex. The JSA security battalion has been watching Oh’s
dramatic escape on CCTV. They continue watching as DPRK soldiers violate the armistice by firing guns
into South Korea and briefly crossing the DML. The soldiers gather near the Monument of Signature,
trying to decide what to do about the defector. Dep. Commander Kwon Young-Hwan and another
South Korean soldier crawl along the ground, carefully inching towards Oh, very aware that
they were in range of a DPRK Guard Tower. Finally they reache him at about 3:43 pm, nearly
half an hour after he had been shot. They gently drag the wounded, unconscious soldier to a
safer area and load him onto a vehicle. Oh is quickly transported to a helipad where a US
medic team puts him on a stretcher and starts life saving treatment. Soon after a medevac team
arrives on an American BlackHawk helicopter. The pilots pushes the helicopter to the max and
makes the 30 minute flight to AJou University Hospital in Suwon in 22 minutes. Oh is rushed
into surgery, he has been hit six times--in the stomach, right side of the pelvis,
both arms, and both legs. During a 5 1/2 hour operation doctors repair Oh’s perforated
bowel. He has lost more than half his blood. Also during surgery, doctors find more
than 52 intestinal worms in Oh’s gut. On top of that, he is malnourished,
has hepatitis B and tuberculosis. All signs of living in an impoverished
country with little health care. Oh eventually recovered after multiple surgeries, 12 days in the ICU and over 5 weeks in hospital.
For the first several days of his recovery, South Korean Special forces guarded Oh in the
hospital because the government worried that North Korea would try to assassinate him
as a warning to other would be defectors. In later interviews Oh claimed that when
he woke up on the morning of November 17th, he hadn’t planned to defect from North Korea.
Crazy enough, it was a spur of the moment idea. Since 2000, some 33,000 North Koreans have
defected to South Korea. Very few defectors flee via the DMZ, the 160 mile (257 km)
long stretch of heavily militarized border separating the two Koreas. Most flee to China
and make their way through Laos and Vietnam to refugee friendly Thailand which will grant
them asylum and fly them to South Korea. Once in South Korea, North Korean
defectors are granted citizenship. In recent years, Kim Jung-un has tightened
security along the DPRK/China border. Also, China considers North Korean defectors illegal
economic migrants and under a border agreement, deports them back to the DPRK where they are
executed or harshly punished in prison camps. Chinese citizens who aid defectors
face steep fines and imprisonment. As a result the cost to use an ‘escape broker’ who
arranges transportation and shelter for defectors has greatly risen. Currently using
a broker can cost around $18,000, about 5 times the cost from a few years
ago. However there are some activist and religious groups that also transport escapees
through underground networks. In recent years, alternative defection routes through Russia
and Mongolia have also become popular. Here’s another tale of a
crazy escape from North Korea. On the night of February 7, 2017, 26 year old Park
Hyun-woo and his father left their home in the North Hamgyong province of North Korea separately
as to not arouse suspicion. They met up later that night near the semi frozen Tumen River which
serves as a border between North Korea and China. The two of them had a comfortable life
by North Korean standards. They both worked for the railway. Many years before
Park’s two sisters had defected to South Korea before and regularly sent them money
through a secret network. However, father and son were frequently being hassled by local
authorities for having defectors in the family. They took with them a smartphone
memory card. It contained pictures taken of printed photographs they had to
leave behind. They left the rest of their possessions behind in their house so as to
not raise suspicion that they were escaping. The only other thing they each carried was a small
pellet of rat poison wrapped in plastic in their mouths, in case they were discovered. Father and
son waded through icy water to cross the Tumen. It was a miserable walk, their
wet clothing started to freeze. On the Chinese side of the river they
met up with one of Park’s sisters. The three of them crawled under a fence
and took a waiting van to a safe house. At the house Park and his
father burned their clothes and buried their North Korean leaders lapel pins. Three days later Park and his father along
with some other escapees caught a train from Yanji to Shenyang. The group arrived safely and
the Parks split off to meet up with a pastor who took them on another train to Jinzhou.
They stayed in Jinzhou at the pastor’s home for several days and experienced many
firsts including their first hot showers. After saying goodbye to the pastor,
Park and his father took a train to Beijing with some other defectors. Then they
boarded their first in a series of 6 buses, they were headed to Kunming,
their last destination in China. Their final bus pulled into a dimly lit
gas station near the outskirts of Kunming around midnight on February19th. Something
felt off. Park and his father had made a pact that if things went wrong, he
would run and leave his father behind. So he fled. His intuition was correct,
Chinese police were about to raid the bus. The police chased after Park. He tried a dangerous
yet clever move to escape--he sprinted onto an expressway and had to dodge speeding trucks. The
police turned back, deciding not to take the risk. Terrified and disoriented, Park wandered the
area, eventually hiding in a graveyard in the mountains. Chinese Lunar New Year had just passed
and Park survived by eating the food offerings left by visitors on graves. When he ran out of
food, he finally went into the nearest village, bought fruit and was able to get a phone
signal. He got in touch with his handlers, who sent a car to take him
to a safe house in Kunming. In Kunming, Park met up with other
defectors and they trekked through dense, mountainous rainforest into Laos. Park
ended up carrying an exhausted elderly woman who said that she couldn’t go any
further and wanted to be left behind. Once in Laos, the refugees took a half
day’s car ride to the Mekong River, the final border before Thailand. Thankfully they
were able to safely cross the turbulent river on a wooden longboat. They surrendered themselves
at a police station in Chiang Khong, Thailand. After staying in a detention center center
in Bangkok, on March 24th Park flew to Seoul, it was his first airplane flight ever. He was sent to government facilities to be debriefed
and learn how to navigate South Korea. Meanwhile, his sisters tried to find
out what happened to their father. Park senior had managed to evade
the police at the gas station, but was arrested while trying to cross into
Laos. He ended up in a Chinese prison in the Liaoning province. It was unclear if
he would be sent back to North Korea. The siblings lobbied the South Korea government,
UN officials, anyone they could contact. In August of 2018, Park senior was finally
released to South Korea. It had taken him 1½ years, and a journey of over 5,000 miles
(8,046 km) to reach Seoul, South Korea, a destination just 400 miles
(644 km) from his home. Interestingly while men, often soldiers tend
to make more dramatic escapes from North Korea frequently for political and ideological
reasons, the majority of defectors are women. In the last 10 years over 75% of North
Korean defectors to South Korea were women. There are a few reasons why defectors
skew female. Women are the bread-winners of the family and often bear the
brunt of financial hardships. A significant number of DPKR women have
service sector jobs or don’t have official posts so they pursue off the books employment
such as selling smuggled goods. They also cross into China through established smuggling
routes to live and work in the border region, sending money back home. Their defection
may be temporary with them returning home. Also, unfortunately female defectors a re likely
to get caught up in human trafficking schemes. Korean NGOs estimate that 70% to 80% of North
Korean women who make it to China are trafficked, for between 6,000 and 30,000 yuan ($890 to
$4,500), depending on their age and beauty. Lee Yumi grew up in a family of low-level party
members. She had plenty to eat, but her parents were extremely strict and wouldn’t allow her
to follow her dream of studying medicine. One day after a fight with them, she decided to
leave the DPRK. Lee found a broker to help her make the journey. He promised her work in
a restaurant in China. But that was a lie. One night Lee crossed the chillyTumen River
with 7 other girls. Once they reached the city of Tumen which sits on the river, Lee and
the other girls were transported to Yanji, a city in Jilin province about
30 miles (50 km) from Tumen. In Yanji, Lee was taken to an apartment
on the 4th floor of a large building. There, her broker sold her for 30,000 yuan
(about $4,500) to the operator of a cybersex chatroom. Two other North Korean women
were also imprisoned there. Lee bonded with 19 year old Kwang Ha-Yoon who had already
been locked up for 2 years when Lee arrived. The women had to log on onto an online
chat platform on which South Korean men can pay to watch girls perform sexual
acts via webcam. If they refused, their boss would beat them. Lee spent upwards of
12 hours a day interacting with men on the site. The apartment front door was always locked from
the outside and there was no handle on the inside. The boss would allow the women outside about every
6 months, taking them to a small nearby park. In 2015, Lee tried to escape by climbing
out of a window and down a metal drain, but she fell and hurt her back and leg.
She still has a slight permanent limp. One of her customers realized that
she was North Korean from her accent and guessed that she probably was being held
captive. The customer let Lee control his laptop remotely, so she could send
messages without her boss noticing. He also gave her the phone number of a
South Korean pastor named Chun Ki-Won. Pastor Chun runs a Christian
aid organization, Durihana, which has helped over 1,000 defectors
reach Seoul since 1999. In September 2018, Lee contacted Pastor Chun on
a Korean messaging service. Over several weeks of secret chats they
hatched a plan for Lee’s and Kwang’s escape. On October 26, while Lee’s boss was out, an
extraction team from Durihana arrived at the foot of the building. The girls tied their
bedsheets together and dropped them out of their window. The team then tied a rope
to the sheets, which the girls hauled up and then used to lower themselves safely to the
ground. They jumped into a car and sped away. The whole operation was completed in just minutes. Lee and Kwang traveled from one safe house
to another across China on buses and trains using fake Korean passports. Their last stop was
Kunming. From there, they spent several hours hiking through the mountains and then walking
through the jungle to cross into a neighboring country. For safety, Durihana didn’t reveal
to the media which country the girls went to. Near the end of their travels, they met up with
Pastor Chun. For the next two days he escorted them by car and bus to the capital city. He left
the girls at the South Korean embassy. They were debriefed for 10 days and then taken to South
Korea. Both girls were looking forward to going to school and beginning new lives. Kwang had spent
nearly 8 years in slavery while Lee had spent 6. If you ever wondered about differences between
American citizens and North Korean citizens, check out this video! A disgraced top level executive who stole
hundreds of millions of dollars Nissan made a crazy escape from Japan
to Lebanon, how did he do it?
