Defector's Journey: Escape from North Korea to South Korea

Sohyun Kyung, a North Korean defector, shares her journey and experiences in South Korea after escaping from North Korea.

### From North Korea to South Korea: A Defector's Journey
* 🇰🇵 Sohyun Kyung shares her upbringing in North Korea, where she **played with boys, went fishing, and learned survival skills**.
* 🚫 Economic struggles due to Kim Jong-un's policies led her family to decide to defect, feeling there was **no future in North Korea**.
* 🏞 The defection process involved **crossing mountains into China**, then traveling to **Laos and Thailand** before reaching **South Korea**.
* 📱 Kyung's phone with photos of her journey was confiscated by the National Intelligence Service upon arrival in South Korea.
* 🛬 Upon landing at Incheon Airport, she was initially intimidated by the sharp-dressed officials, but later found them to be **friendly during the investigation process**.
* 🎓 Kyung is currently in her second year of university in South Korea, enjoying the **freedom and club activities** available compared to North Korea.
* 📺 She has appeared on South Korean TV shows, initially feeling nervous but later finding it **more comfortable than expected**.
* 💬 Kyung shares her story on various platforms, including Chijijik, to **raise awareness and connect with others interested in her experiences**.

Hello, nice to meet you. Please introduce yourself. My name is Sohyun Kyung, and I am a defector who has been living in South Korea for eight years. I appreciate your support. What kind of upbringing did you have in North Korea? I just grew up, choosing this and that. It felt a bit like a life of weeds; no matter how much I was pulled out, I would just grow back. It was a strong survival process, completely different from here. It was like the living conditions I heard about from the 70s and 80s. When I was young, I didn't have a concrete floor; I played on the dirt ground, getting covered in dust while running around with my friends. I actually spent more time with the boys than with the girls. When I was little, I would follow the older boys in the neighborhood to catch fish.

I learned everything from those older brothers. So, I would catch fish with my hands and play basketball, often falling and scraping my knees. In many ways, I was a bit of a mess. I never came home in the evenings, which made my parents worry and search for me, calling out, Hey, Hyun-kyung! When they found me, they would say, Come home early. I grew up like that, leaning against the wall and all. 

Do you have a specific reason for defecting? At that time, our family was involved in smuggling, which was a difficult way to make a living. Our family had prospered a bit through smuggling, but when Kim Jong-un came to power, everything was shut down. My father felt that there was truly no future for us. He thought that we couldn't continue living like this, and for several years, he really struggled with this decision.

I did it, and my dad just knew everything, so he said, Let's go, and I just followed him. I completely blocked off the connection. Kim Jong-un now has no means to sustain his livelihood. We couldn't do anything for about three years before we left, around three to four years ago. So, we lived off the money we had earned during that time, but that couldn't last forever since the money is limited. So, we really felt that there was no future ahead, which is why we took everything with us. If it rains heavily, it seems like there will be flooding. If you look here, it’s currently raining, and everything is blocked off. In South Korea, the safety measures are really well established. In North Korea, even if there are regulations about flooding, people who want to get in will find a way, regardless of the barbed wire.

I don't think there’s anything particularly special about it. When there are flood damages, the government provides assistance and sends relief supplies, but there’s none of that here. It’s just that I wish it would all end, and that’s why I keep saying how good it is to live in Korea. Oh, there’s something interesting here. It’s nice to walk around now, and you can smell the flowers with the concrete lining. Even though Korea is right next door, you can’t smell the flowers there. I find that really strange. Why is that? They are the same types of flowers, but if you go inside the public office, there’s a flower garden. However, even when you go right in the middle of it, you can’t smell the flowers. In North Korea, they bloomed to that extent. You should be getting a headache from the flower scent, but the fruits and everything else lack that fragrance compared to here. The pears sold here are huge, and the apples are the same; they are not like those in North Korea.

It's not that I want to complain, but the scent there is just amazing. Anyway, the apples have a really strong fragrance, and the pears are incredibly delicious. I don't know why the taste here isn't the same. Maybe it's because of the chemicals used? Oh, it's so hot that we went into a café. It's really too hot. Wow, you like this, right? I like it too. They say this is Western-style, and I think I really enjoy things like this—rich and sweet. There are so many cafés in Korea, right? It's true that there's a culture of enjoying coffee. But does North Korea have a similar coffee culture? When I was there, the only coffee I had was coffee candy. I didn't even know there were different types like Americano.

At first, when I started drinking coffee, there were so many menu options. When you go to places like Starbucks, there are café espressos, Americanos, café lattes, café mochas, and I was just like, What are these? I didn't know anything. I lived like that, but maybe others enjoyed the café culture. However, in the area where I lived, there were no cafés. There was no cozy space to sit and chat about everyday life. Instead, in front of my house, the neighborhood ladies would gather outside with their little personal chairs to gossip. When they gathered, they would talk about their husbands, how things were going with the kids, and other topics while snacking on sunflower seeds or cracking open some nuts.

I think that's how it was while eating. We can't really hang out at the cafe, can we? Should we sit over there? Ah, let's sit there. That place is where, as soon as I became an adult, my friends and I would buy alcohol from the convenience store and snack on chips while chatting. It's perfect for talking. In the summer, you can also enjoy a cool drink here. Oh, it looks really pretty. So, what was the process of defection like for you? When we look at other people's stories, many of them mention crossing rivers, right? We didn't cross a river; we actually came during winter. However, we took the mountain paths. If you go up a bit from North Korea, there are places along the border with China where there are no rivers, just mountains. We climbed those mountains and walked all the way to the Chinese border.

I met a broker in China and stayed there for a while. My mother from Korea had already arrived there, so I called her and said, Mom, we're in China now, which surprised her. She had left without any notice. Getting to China was really difficult, and once you make it there, the success rate is about 80%. At that time, crossing from North Korea to China was extremely challenging, but after that, it becomes a bit easier. This is just my opinion; there isn't any objective statistical data to support it. Currently, it's almost impossible, and it really is nearly impossible now. Moreover, with the collaboration between China and the parks, it’s likely to be even tougher. Just because you made it there doesn’t mean it’s safe either. However, the chances of getting out are better than when you were in North Korea.

It was high, so at that time, my mom received a call from the Korean embassy saying that our children had arrived in China. We were with a broker, and since China is quite large, we had initially contacted a place in the Changbai area. From there, we took a taxi and went down to a place called Shenzhou, where we ate. The broker helped us book a hotel, and it was a really nice hotel. It was there that I first experienced a big bathroom and took a shower. It was really nice. I stayed there for a few days, and there were older sisters who lived locally. They had escaped from North Korea but couldn't go to South Korea, so they were there.

I joined my older sisters who had been sold, and we took a train to a place called Kunming in China, which is in Laos. We took the train from Shenyang to Kunming. It was a bit nerve-wracking there because they checked our tickets and also our identification. The sisters who lived in China managed to handle it well, but my younger sister and I were really scared, holding hands tightly, thinking, What if we get caught? We were trembling. There was also one Chinese person besides us on the train, and since we were speaking in North Korean dialect, they must have realized we weren't Chinese. Fortunately, during the ticket inspection, they didn't say anything.

They seemed a bit suspicious, so we were taken down and couldn't come back. Anyway, after going through that process, we arrived in Kunming, took off all our clothes, changed into new ones, and then crossed the mountain to the Laos border. Laos is located next to China and Thailand, so we crossed the mountain from China to Laos. After that, we took a boat from Laos to Thailand. Once we arrived in Thailand, we felt safe. I knew that Thailand has a good relationship with South Korea, so I believed we could definitely get back to Korea from there. I went to any police station in Thailand, and the broker told me to say that I came from North Korea. Then those people would guide me to where I could go to Korea.

So, what can we do? We have no choice but to believe it. What can we do now? So, we checked in there, and the language was completely different. They spoke a bit of English, but it was not sufficient. So, we said police, police, and went to the police station, asking them to take us to North Korea. The place we first set foot in Thailand was somewhat remote, a bit rural. So, when we went to a police substation and explained our situation, they said, Okay, and contacted everyone for us. The system works like this: once we reported to the police station that we were people from North Korea, they informed us that there is an international detention center in Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, where people from various regions are gathered.

The system is such that those going to the United States are sent to the U.S., and those going to Korea are sent to Korea. So, we stayed at a small police station for about seven days, going through the procedures, which I think took around seven times. While we were there, if we paid, the police officers would bring us food. Sometimes they would say, You can keep this, and they would even give us a bit of a tip. We were there for almost a month, 28 days in a large detention center. During our time there, they even sent the children to school; there was a school inside the facility. I remember thinking, Wow, anywhere that isn't North Korea is great. After spending 28 days there, representatives from the South Korean consulate and the National Intelligence Service came to see us. They had a list of names and called us out, saying, Okay, let's go, which felt like a significant moment.

So, I arrived in Korea by plane. When I was about to cross the border from North Korea, it was a really nerve-wracking experience. I mentioned that I recently watched a movie about escaping, and it was very similar to that film. We also had to part the barbed wire and crossed over. Before crossing the barbed wire on the North Korean side, there was a hole dug, and a guard was sleeping there. We were sneaking up, and at one point, I was about 10 meters away from that spot, right by a pillar. It was around 2 AM, the time when people are usually in the deepest sleep. The full moon was shining brightly in the night sky.

Because it was a full moon, we could see everything even without turning on the lights. So, I think we were really lucky. If the moon hadn't been visible and it had been dark, the chances of that person being spotted while we were moving in that direction would have been high. My dad was at the front, and I was behind him. He suddenly got startled and said to stop. I asked him why, and he whispered that there was someone ahead. When I looked closely, I could see a figure in the distance. I was shocked and didn't know what to do; it felt like my brain had frozen. There were indeed people here, and although there were quite a few trees over there, there was a large guard post nearby, like a main base, with a big barracks where people were changing shifts and there were lights.

I was going crazy trying to figure out what to do. I was turning around and around, and as I was doing that, I saw a person coming out from behind the barbed wire, which made me anxious. I tried to pull apart the barbed wire, but there was a bell attached to the post. You know those beer cans? I cut the bottom off and made a hole in the middle, so when I put something in it, it would make a clinking sound when it moved. I wrapped that in my clothes, and then my dad opened it up, put down all the luggage, and everyone left. It was really painful. After that, when I crossed the barbed wire, there was about a 10 to 20-meter gap between the North Korean barbed wire and the Chinese barbed wire. In that space, they had spread fine sand. It’s not easy to get that fine sand in North Korea, but they had laid it out so that if someone stepped on it, they could follow the footprints. That was the border.

So, I was wondering if there was such sand in the area. My dad told me not to look around and to hurry up, so I went straight to the Chinese barbed wire. The North Korean barbed wire was very dense, but the Chinese one was a bit looser, so I managed to get over without much trouble. However, when I was trying to get over the North Korean barbed wire, there was an older sister who had come with us from North Korea. She was dressed very warmly for the winter, and when she tried to slip under, her pants got caught, and she couldn't get through. In her rush, she just took off her pants and left them behind. It was so urgent, and people were coming out in front of us. When we were escaping, we had brought some luggage. It was a bag that was much bigger than this one; I think it was about this big. At that time, I was a bit smaller, so maybe that's why it felt that way. Anyway...

We packed light bags because we were young at the time. We included some blankets and high-calorie foods because we needed to eat during the journey; we couldn't just starve. So, we packed things like rice, butter, and some water, kimchi, and blankets. We brought quite a lot. Personally, I also packed my cellphone because I had just bought it not long before, and I felt it was too precious to leave behind. However, that was a North Korean phone, and the National Intelligence Service took it away, so I don't have it anymore. At that time, we had planned to use that phone when we defected.

While camping, I took pictures of the food and other things. I had a phone with those files. There were also text messages with other friends and some photos. Anyway, the National Intelligence Service took that phone. It wasn't a touchscreen; it had a button, you know? The screen was like this, and there was a button below. I saw some amazing people at Incheon Airport. Oh, yes, they were really cool, like in the movie Kingsman. They were dressed sharply, but at first, I think I was a bit scared. Suddenly, in a country where I didn't know anything, there were these rather intimidating people. I’m sorry, but they didn’t seem to have a friendly expression. They just told us not to stray and to stay in line.

Please take the bus to the designated area. When you said it like that, I was really scared at first. But later, after the physical examination was completed, we went to the Koba Ram Hospital to start with the physical check-up. After that was all done, I entered the National Intelligence Service and during the investigation period, I got a bit closer to the staff. I realized they were quite friendly. Initially, I thought they would be somewhat like the North Korean security agents, a bit intimidating. However, as long as we weren't lying, there was no reason to be scared of them, so I felt relieved at that time. 

In North Korea, people wear suits, and they don't use sunscreen, so their faces are all dark. But everyone here is quite tall and fair-skinned. Anyway, it was a bit surprising.

처음에는 무서웠어요. 아기니까, 게다가 그렇게 각잡은 옷은 약간 건이 있는 사람들만 입을 수 있으니까, 너 해코지 당하는 거 아닌가? 이런 생각을 했던 것 같아요. 공항에서 내려서 기분이 어땠어요? 처음에 일단은 그때가 11월이었어요. 겨울이었고, 제가 북한에 있을 때부터 한국은 따뜻하다는 말을 많이 들었어요. 그리고 태국 수용소에 있을 때도 같이 있던 아줌마들과 언니들이 한국은 따뜻하다고 계속 이야기했어요. 그래서 따뜻한 나라구나 하고, 저는 진짜 맨투맨 한 장 입고 나왔거든요. 그런데 너무 추운 거예요. 비행기에서 내리자마자, 그래서 따뜻하다는 게 첫 기억이었어요. 그리고 이제 활주로의 비행기가 쫙 늘어진 게 약간 웅장하게 느껴졌던 것 같아요.

I had never seen anything like this before. While I was on the plane, I was worried about what would happen if it crashed, and I was trembling. However, when we arrived safely, I felt a huge sense of relief, and I thought, Finally, I'm in Korea. Just before I could fully relax, I got on the bus and felt a bit tense again, but I think I had some sense of safety. After all, there was nothing to follow me from North Korea, which gave me a bit of comfort. The airport was brightly lit, and I noticed that there were no dark spots; everything was illuminated. I thought to myself, Is there enough electricity here? So, how are you doing now? I am currently attending university, and I have completed the first semester of my second year. Right now, I am on a leave of absence while also working.

I have been quite busy lately, as I am doing some personal internet broadcasting and studying a bit as well. I feel like I am busier now than when I was in school. I heard you have been on air a few times. When I first started broadcasting, I was really nervous. At first, I thought, Can I really see celebrities? I was so excited that I went there feeling a bit immature. I found out that I knew someone there. Well, it wasn't just one person, but I occasionally watched that channel because my grandmother and dad often watched it. So, I had seen it a lot. There was Kim Jong-min, who I had seen a lot on the team, and it was so amazing to see him. When I sat at the round table, I was just in awe and kept staring at him at first.

I didn't come out in the next edit, but wow, the real thing is definitely very different. It was so fascinating. In the past, I appeared on that channel, not on Mankam, but on Moranbong Club. At that time, during the filming, I could see all the staff in my line of sight in front of me, so I was really nervous. I could see all the filming equipment and the large number of people, which made me a bit anxious. But on the channel, they weren't visible, so I was able to film comfortably. Oh, it was the line of sight. Since I couldn't see the filming equipment or the staff, it felt a bit more relaxed. How was your experience at a university in Korea? It seems like a free atmosphere. In North Korea, I don't know if you've seen it, but people walk around in traditional hanbok. They have uniforms at the university too, but here, there’s none of that.

It's a very free atmosphere, and there are many clubs. If I want to, I can study while also working part-time. If I want to keep my grades up, I can manage that on my own; it has that kind of vibe, and I really like it. I hope you all enjoyed my story today. It was a precious time for me to share my experiences. Recently, I've been grateful that many people have shown interest. If you're interested, I'm active on a platform called Chijijik, and my channel name is Seogyeong. Please feel free to visit. Thank you!

탈북 여대생이 북한에서 가져왔다는 충격적인 물건 "저희 가족만 가져왔어요"

사이다 : 사실은 이렇습니다

Sohyun Kyung describes her challenging upbringing in North Korea, where she had a strong survival process and spent a lot of time with boys, engaging in activities like catching fish and playing basketball.

She defected to South Korea with her family due to the shut down of their smuggling business and a lack of future prospects in North Korea.

The Journey of Defection from North Korea to China

The defector and her family navigated challenging mountain paths to reach the Chinese border, where they met with a broker.

Crossing from North Korea to China was extremely difficult, with a success rate of about 80%, and collaboration between China and North Korea has made it even tougher.

After arriving in China, the defector's family stayed in the Changbai area before moving to Shenzhou with the help of a broker, where they stayed in a nice hotel for a few days.

A group of sisters escaped from North Korea to South Korea through China and Laos, facing fear and uncertainty during the journey.

They sought help at a police station in Thailand and were eventually assisted by the South Korean consulate and the National Intelligence Service.

The sisters spent about a month in a detention center in Thailand before being called out by representatives from the South Korean consulate.

A harrowing experience of crossing the border from North Korea to China is described, reminiscent of a movie scene.

The escapees used clever tactics to avoid detection, including creating a distraction with a makeshift noise-making device.

The desperate and urgent nature of the escape is highlighted, with one person even leaving their pants behind in the effort to flee.

The journey to defection involved packing essential items, including high-calorie foods and a precious cellphone, which was confiscated by the National Intelligence Service.

Upon arrival in South Korea, the defector was initially intimidated by the unfamiliar environment and the appearance of people, but later found reassurance and friendliness during the investigation process.

The defector's first impressions of South Korea were of the unexpected cold weather and the warm welcome from the staff, providing a stark contrast to life in North Korea.

A North Korean Defector's Journey to South Korea

A North Korean defector shares their experiences of traveling to and settling in South Korea, feeling a mix of tension and relief.

They are now attending university, on a leave of absence, and keeping busy with personal internet broadcasting and studies.

The transition to the free atmosphere of a South Korean university, with its lack of strict uniforms and abundance of clubs, has been a positive experience for the defector.