SOUL Life is like hell on earth.
This is how the reality of North Korea is described by a man who fled the country last year. He is one of the few who have managed to escape from the closed dictatorship in recent years.
Life has become a struggle for survival.
– In the area where I live, it was common for people to starve to death or to be killed for food. People robbed and murdered each other to survive, Kim says.
Kim is talking with her back to the camera. won’t tell Kim’s first name for her safety. At least once, North Korea has been caught the defector’s murder about planning.
Kim also believes that the North Korean authorities would take revenge on his relatives if his identity were revealed.
North Korea became even more closed during the corona pandemic. Almost all representatives of the outside world left the country and few have returned.
That’s why the information shared by Kim is unique.
is one of the first ones of foreign media to whom Kim tells her story. He gives exceptionally detailed information about, among other things, the famine in North Korea.
Kim’s interview opportunity in Seoul was organized by the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In this story, also publishes unique photo material about the plight of North Korea. has not been able to verify several details of Kim’s story, but they fit the overall picture of the situation in North Korea.
Kim says that he shot the video below of a starving man with his cell phone in April 2023. The filming location is not known to . This video has not been released in Europe before.
Closing the borders led to food shortages
North Korea’s misery worsened during the corona years. The government’s meager food aid to the people was further reduced, and the defector Kim’s family also suffered from this.
Kim started trading in food because there was a dire shortage of it.
– I thought that if I didn’t do business, I would starve to death, says Kim.
He procured vegetables, rice and corn as cheaply as he could and sold the food where the famine was worst.
– On my sales trips, I saw people lying on the side of the road every 20-40 kilometers, says Kim.
Kim says he shot this cell phone video in Yanghwa Village, South Hwanghae Province in February 2023. He says he met a vagrant on the side of the road who talked about food shortages and soldiers’ arbitrariness. In addition to South Korea, the video has previously only been shown in Japan.
Due to the food shortage, prices skyrocketed during the pandemic. Fresh according to the study the market price of corn doubled and the price of rice rose by about a third.
There were only enough delicacies for the richest. Kim says that, for example, the price of a kilo of sugar rose from less than a euro to a maximum of 18 euros.
During the corona pandemic in the spring of 2022, North Korea’s state news agency KCNA shared a propaganda video with which it tried to make people believe that there is no famine in the country. In the video, women unload cabbage from a truck in the capital, Pyongyang.
– The authorities banned the sale of food. If you were caught, you were branded a traitor and arrested, and could end up in a re-education camp, Kim says.
With bribes, Kim was able to dig for gold
North Korea famine has gotten easier since the corona years. Still, life was unbearable in Kim’s opinion.
He was a successful entrepreneur by North Korean standards, but his activities were based on bribery and exploitation of state property.
Previously, Kim worked in gold mines, where he hired a group of men as diggers. He exchanged the sales proceeds into foreign currency.
Thanks to the income, he was able to often buy meat for his family, which for ordinary citizens is mainly a special treat for holidays.
In North Korea, it is customary that by paying the state, one can be freed from the obligation to work for the state, so that one can focus on one’s own businesses. The defector Kim’s voice has been dubbed so that he cannot be recognized.
The hardest part was persuading the wife to go on an escape trip
Kim started running away from the brood at a young age.
At first, Kim only watched entertainment shows. As a junior high school student, he was also interested in other things. The differences between the two countries were huge.
– I started to think about my life in North Korea and realized that everything is not as good as claimed, but that I am being tricked, Kim says.
He understood that North Korea was an arbitrary dictatorship that had to be gotten out of.
– South Korea began to feel more and more like paradise. While living in North Korea, I was constantly faced with unfair and unreasonable situations, and it can only be described as hellish, says Kim.
Growing up, Kim remained a bachelor for a long time so that he could escape the country without his wife and child when the opportunity arose.
– I didn’t stop dating women. I had relationships. However, I didn’t go too far with them, says Kim.
In the end, love still took its toll – and immediately brought problems.
The husband did not want to run away. It was only pregnancy that changed her mind. The child’s future in the home country would be bleak.
He told his spouse about the escape plan only two weeks before the defection.
Kim: “I was drenched in sweat because of the excitement”
For the defection, Kim got a job and a place to live in Kangryong on the south coast of the country. He worked in a company that builds population shelters.
A brother was involved in the plot. Both families and the brothers’ mother would be taken along for the daring escape.
The brothers bribed the soldiers guarding the coast. They worked out the soldiers’ patrol routines and radar technology. After the escape plan was finalized, they waited for suitable weather.
During a storm warning, there would be less risk of North Korean patrol boats catching them because they wouldn’t venture out into the open sea.
The men of the escape party were armed with 50-centimeter homemade knives.
– If we had been caught, we would have fought the North Korean soldiers with knives. The women, on the other hand, had poison that they would have taken if they had been captured, Kim says.
On May 6, 2023 at 10 p.m., the party set out to sea from a place that was as close as possible to the regional water line. There were nine people in the boat, Kim and his brother and their families.
First, they let the boat drift slowly without lights with the low tide so that its movement would not attract radar attention. As the sea line loomed, they revved the engine to full power.
After crossing the border, Kim’s boat headed towards the South Korean navy ship.
– From that moment I knew we were safe. We felt a sense of relief, says Kim.
After arriving in South Korea, Kim says he slept for two days straight.
– I was drenched in sweat because of the excitement. It felt like my whole body went limp and all my energy had dwindled, says Kim.
Confirmation of defectors’ stories is sought from other defectors
Kim’s escape is very unusual. According to the South Korean authorities, it was first boat escape from North Korea to South Korea after 2017.
That’s why asked the experts how reliable they think Kim’s life story is.
According to the researcher, Kim’s stories about, for example, food shortages and soldiers’ bribery sound relatively believable.
– We cannot say whether the defectors’ stories are 100% believable or not. We are seeking confirmation from other defectors, says the researcher Lee Kyu-Changwho interviews North Korean defectors for his work.
South Korea’s social benefits came as a surprise to Kim
Although Kim’s safety is strictly guarded, he and his family try to live as normal a life as possible.
At first, Seoul’s public transport was difficult, and they didn’t know how to navigate in the big city, but now everything is going well in Kim’s opinion.
– Even my mother goes outside and enjoys her life, Kim says.
The family is together. Kim’s late father is even included – the brothers dug up his bones from the grave, cremated them and took the urn with them on their getaway. This way, North Korea cannot desecrate the father’s grave in revenge for the defection.
According to Kim, all family members are studying to do better in their new home country. They have no salary income, but the family receives money from the South Korean government for food and housing.
Kim says she is happy. In the fall, he plans to officially marry his common-law partner. The nightmare of North Korea is behind us.
– If I ever go to hell, I’m not afraid of it. I’ve already had to live in hell.