STORY ABOUT NORTH KOREA

AHEAD OF KOREA

Between 1995 and 1998, North Korea had a famine that resulted in the starvation deaths of an estimated 1 to 3 million people. Experts estimate that up to 10% of North Korea's population died as a result of this cause of death.

It is thought that the three-year famine's devastation and bloodshed marked the peak period from 1998 to 1999 for North Koreans fleeing their country. Approximately 100,000 to 300,000 North Korean defectors fled the country in search of safety and resources as the nation's infrastructure crumbled. The lives of the 200,000 or so North Korean exiles who are currently living in hiding in China bear witness to the ongoing impacts of the North Korean Famine.

North Koreans continue to be among the world's poorest and least economically liberated people. North Korean Christians have faced the worst persecution anywhere in the world for more than ten years. The North Korean regime routinely rejects the fundamental political, religious, and civil rights of its people.

Many North Koreans consider their country's circumstances to be intolerable. An estimated 1,000 or more North Koreans are thought to flee their country each year as of 2017. But leaving the nation is no simple feat.

The North Korean regime closely monitors its citizens. Our migrants claim that employees are monitored, particularly men, for attendance at work. Authorities closely monitor and regulate travel around the nation. It would be treasonous to quit the nation. A minimum term of seven years in a North Korean concentration camp is the punishment for such a crime. An attempt at escape may potentially be grounds for execution.

Prison camps in North Korea are notorious for their severe physical and psychological mistreatment. Up to 200,000 North Korean prisoners were reportedly held in these camps during its busiest, where they are often beaten, malnourished, and worked to death. It is currently thought that there are between 80,000 and 120,000 of these.

On the Korean Peninsula, where North Korea borders South Korea, it is nearly impossible for North Korean refugees to escape southward. The Demilitarised Zone (DMZ), which separates the two Koreas, is one of the world's most closely guarded frontiers since the Korean War's end. You may watch video of a North Korean soldier's spectacular 2017 escape across the border here.

North Koreans can escape most effectively north, into China.

South Korean officials observed the greatest number of North Korean refugees in a decade in 2007 when flooding and the ensuing damage to infrastructure devastated the people of North Korea. In 2008, South Korea welcomed about 2,800 North Korean defectors, and in 2009, over 2,900. Given that this only represented a small portion of all North Korean refugees who fled their country at this time, it is highly probable that even more defectors fled to China in the wake of the 2007 natural disasters.

It can’t be him, Kim Joo Kyung thought, as she took a seat on a crowded Seoul subway carriage. She stole glances through the swaying jungle of legs and bags and jackets at what looked like the same high cheekbones, cropped black hair, sharp shoulders, even the suit. The train screeched and jolted into a station that wasn’t her stop. Before she knew it, she was following the man off the train into the underground. He walked briskly, and Joo Kyung worried she might lose him. Then she snapped to. There was no way it could be Jang Hyeok.