Fleeing North Korea

Escaping from totalitarian North Korea on the so-called “underground railroad” can take months. Anchor Marco Werman talks with Patrick Winn who has written about the challenges faced by North Korean defectors in the Global Post.

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Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World, the co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. Imagine you live in the Northern United States and you want to immigrate to Canada, but instead of simply heading north you have to make a circuitous 3000 mile journey via Panama to get there. Well that’s sort of what’s going on for some North Koreans trying to escape to South Korea. They’re using a kind of underground railroad that takes them through South East Asia before getting them to freedom in South Korea. Patrick Winn has written about that for Global Post, where he’s a South Asia correspondent. He’s speaking with us from Bangkok. So Patrick, visualize this for us, where are these North Koreans starting, where do they end up and what kind of transport do they use to get there?

Patrick Winn: Well they’re starting in North Korea and just imagine an extremely bleak, a famine stricken farm, that’s a pretty typical environment for a North Korean. The next step to get out of North Korea involves crossing the river border into China and many wait until the river freezes over, some chance it and find a shallow stretch to swim across. But when they’re crossing, they have to worry about border guards on both sides. So getting out of North Korea is the first step and it’s a pretty difficult one. From China they need to get to a secondary country that will not send them back to North Korea; Chinese police will. So they have to go all the way down to South West China and into one of the South East Asian nations, either Vietnam, Burma or Laos. Neither of these countries are very sympathetic to incoming refugees, so the best bet is to make it into Thailand, which is a pretty strong South Korean ally. From there, the South Korean government will give them the necessary things to patriate into Seoul and then they can begin their life anew in South Korea.

Werman: And how long does this trip typically take?

Winn: It depends on the defector, once they get to China and they find a safe house, run by this defector’s network, they spend about a month, simply eating. They come out of North Korea so starving and bone thin, that they need to eat for about a month, just to pass as Chinese, otherwise they’re pretty easy to spot because of the malnutrition.

Werman: Wow.

Winn: So, that’s one month right there. Some end up falling into various traps in China. Prostitution is pretty common for women that don’t have any other options, forced labor happens as well. So, some fall into these traps in China and, and perhaps never make it out. And some manage to scrounge up a little money in China and that helps smooth the way into that 3rd country, where they can finally fall into the, into the care of the South Korean government and make it all the way to Seoul.

Werman: And what kind of transport do they use to kind of make this trip, all the way down to Bangkok, is it mix of walking and buses and mass transit?

Winn: It’s actually mostly public transportation. The defector’s network doesn’t really, as far as I could tell, it doesn’t really run its own routes, by keeping people on the back of truck beds or anything like that. They actually put them on trains and public buses and there’s always this ever present fear that they’re going to be stopped by the Chinese police officer, they’re going to be tipped off by a local that notices someone that looks or is acting a bit strange. And even if they can present a fake Chinese ID, you know, they don’t speak the language and it’s pretty easy to figure out that they’re not actually South Korean and from there end up in prison.

Werman: And this network of people that help them along the way, do they accompany them along the trip and would you describe them more as Samaritans, the one who help North Koreans or are they more like money-grabbing coyotes?

Winn: I would describe it as a mix. Yeah, usually if they’re plugged into the network, then they can get someone to guide them all the way to Thailand or at least through most of that journey. Once they, if they can finally get to South Korea, they get a cash payout from the South Korean government to help them start their lives. And about 1500 to 2000 dollars of that payout is expected to be paid to the network that helped them escape. So, yes there is money to be made, it has this Samaritan feel to it as well, and I think there is a mix of the money-grubbing coyotes like you would have shuttling people from say Mexico to the United States, they’re some of that as well.

Werman: What’s the North Korean government doing to thwart this underground escape route?

Winn: Some North Korean intelligence officers’ figure out which family has left from what village and they look up their kin and they start monitoring to them to see if they are getting money from defectors that have made it all the way to South Korea and have decent jobs. So, I’m sure that some of them basically looking for families to extort and they don’t necessarily mind that they have left for that reason. But it’s widely understood to any North Korean, if he try to escape and you’re caught, you very well maybe executed and that threat alone keeps a lot of them sort of scared in place.

Werman: Patrick Winn, South Asia correspondent for Global Post. He’s been speaking to us about a long journey that some North Koreans are willing to take to get to South Korea. Patrick, thank you very much.

Winn: Thank you Marco.

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