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PASSAGE TO FREEDOM

The New Underground Railroad

"A North Korean like you is easier to kill than a chicken."

BY MELANIE KIRKPATRICK

Friday, May 12, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

    
        
    

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Old
habits die hard--especially those whose disregard could mean death. So it is
understandable that the North Korean refugees with whom I met this week set
strict ground rules for our interview: no names, no photographs, no indication
of their location in the U.S., and no identifying details of the Southeast Asian
nation whose government risked the ire of China to permit them to depart for
asylum in this country after they sought refuge in the U.S. Embassy there.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">“ color="navy">Hannah color="navy">” color="navy"> and
color="navy">“ color="navy">Naomi color="navy">” color="navy"> are
the noms de liberte of the women who were willing to savor a taste of their
new freedom by meeting an American journalist. Even so, they remain fearful
for the safety of the families they have left behind in North Korea. The relatives
of defectors can simply disappear--sent to the gulag or worse. style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy"> color="navy">“ color="navy">North Korea has many spies, color="navy">” color="navy"> says
Naomi, through an interpreter. Even, it went unstated, in this country.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;">The
women's new names were bestowed on them by Chun Ki-won, the South Korean pastor
whose underground railroad led them, and four others, thousands of miles across
China to sanctuary in Southeast Asia this spring. No one knows how many North
Korean refugees are hiding in northeast China. Tens of thousands for sure, and
estimates range as high as several hundred thousand. Beijing, in violation of
its treaty obligations, refuses to allow the United Nations High Commission
on Refugees to help--or even to interview them.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;">Pastor
Chun is a man of “ lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;">miracles, lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;">” lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;">
the women say. Their own particular miracle is to have stepped off a plane in
this country late last Friday, the first refugees to enter the U.S. under asylum
rules set up under the 2004 North Korean Human Rights Act.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;">Naomi,
Hannah and the four compatriots who traveled with them had spent years in virtual
servitude in northeast China, along the North Korean border.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;">Hannah
and Naomi are willing to share their stories, but first they wish to make a
statement. Hannah settles herself in her chair, opens a small notebook, and
reads in Korean the words she has prepared: color="navy"> color="navy">“ color="navy">Before we begin this interview, I want to thank God for bringing
us to this land of dreams. We sincerely thank President George Bush and the
American government for letting us enter as refugees. style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">” color="navy"> She
bows slightly, closes her notebook, and prepares to relive her ordeal.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">“ color="navy">My husband was an officer in the army, style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">” color="navy"> she
begins, and color="navy"> color="navy">“ color="navy">I was a teacher. color="navy">” color="navy"> (Hannah, like Naomi, needs an interpreter.) lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;">They
had a daughter together, who is now 14. In 2003--she is careful not to give
a more precise date--her husband was seriously injured in a military exercise
that left him unable to work. Without his salary, the family had difficulty
making ends meet, so when the mother of one of Hannah's students offered her
300 won (about $136) to travel with her to a town along the Chinese border to
pick up the fabric she used in her clothing business, Hannah accepted the job.

    
        
    

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lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;">At
the North Korean border town, the women were invited to dinner at the home of
the middleman who was selling them the fabric. Halfway through the meal, Hannah
fell asleep--there was a narcotic in the food--and she woke up later in a dark
basement. color="navy">“I was tied up,”
she says, color="navy">“but I could hear my friend say, 'Teacher, I think we've been
sold.'”
They were no longer in North Korea, but in China.

lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">“I was from Pyongyang,”
Hannah says. color="navy"> “I had absolutely no idea of the things that happen around the
border.... How can this happen? How can such an event occur in this world?...
What would happen to my family, my child?... I felt like I was living in hell.” lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;">
She was soon sold to a farmer for 20,000 Chinese yuan, or $2,500.



North
Korean color="navy">“brides”
are prized in China, where there is a shortage of young women thanks to Beijing's
one-child policy, Chinese families' preference for sons, and the government's
blind eye toward rampant female infanticide. In northeast China, where many
ethnic Koreans live, North Korean women are color="navy"> “known to be polite and clean,” style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;">
says Hannah. color="navy">“Young Chinese women from rural areas marry into the cities,” lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;">
adds Naomi. color="navy">“It's difficult to find young women in the countryside.” lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;">



A
North Korean in China--even one who is there against her own volition--quickly
learns that there is a worse fate than being sold into sexual slavery: being
captured by the Chinese authorities and repatriated. It is a crime to leave
the North, and Koreans who are sent back end up in prison camps or worse. lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">“I had no choice but to depend on the man” lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;">
who bought her, Hannah says. But color="navy">“for the first time in my life, I felt like a sinner, because
I had a family in North Korea and I was living with this man.” lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;">



Hannah's
new "husband" beat her--once breaking her breastbone. He would threaten
to kill her or turn her over to the police. “ color="navy">North Koreans like you are easier to kill than a chicken,” lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;">
he once told her. Hannah soon found herself pregnant, praying that her husband's
abuse would cease once she gave him a child.



His
behavior did not improve after the birth of their daughter, leading Hannah to
consider suicide. But color="navy"> “I have two children, one in North Korea, one in China.... How
sad my daughters would be to know that they didn't have a mother. I decided
I had to live for my daughters.”



That
led to the decision to run away from her Chinese husband. He “had no other
children, and he really did love the child, and he treated her well.” She spoke
to her mother-in-law and persuaded her to take care of her daughter until she
came back. color="navy">“So I left when my daughter was asleep.” style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;">
A missionary helped Hannah get to Beijing, where she connected with the underground
railroad. It was more difficult to blend in in Beijing, where there were few
ethnic Koreans, and Hannah was afraid she would be captured. style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">“It's unspeakable, the fear.” style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;">



Naomi
has sat quietly during Hannah's story, leaning from her seat only to touch Hannah
gently on the arm when she breaks down in talking about her daughters. Now she
starts to speak, in a voice so soft that I have to lean across the table to
hear her.



color="navy">“From 1994 there was a famine and it became very difficult to
eat,” she
begins. She lived with her parents and brother in a city near the Chinese border. lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy"> “Even though we all had jobs we did not get paid... and we had
to pay the government [a tax] for development projects.” lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;">



Naomi's
father had been born in China, and in 1998, with the family in debt and still
struggling for food, she decided to see if she could find her relatives there
and ask for help. She was befriended by a Chinese traveling salesman, who offered
to guide her to her relatives' address. She left in the middle of the night.
color="navy">“I didn't want my parents to know I was leaving,” she says.
“I thought I would go for a few days and come back.” style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;">



The
merchant led her across the Tumen River to an apartment in a city on the Chinese
side. It was then that she realized that the wares her salesman-friend sold
were human--and female. She was given to a farmer, exchanged for the Korean
color="navy">“wife”
he had purchased a month earlier, but who had turned out to be ill. “The day
after I arrived, a neighbor reported me so five or six security people came
to the house. I was so frightened and confused.” The family paid a 3,000-yuan
fine for the authorities to pretend she wasn't there.



Naomi
spent the next three years in hard farm labor, suffering a back injury so severe
that she couldn't walk for nearly a year. The family refused to get medical
treatment for her because they were afraid someone would find out they were
harboring an illegal refugee. After she did not become pregnant, the family
eventually allowed her to leave to search for her relatives. When she finally
found them, they ordered her to marry a man they picked out for her. Six months
later she became pregnant.



color="navy">“When I was eight months pregnant, I was captured by the Chinese,” lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;">
she says. color="navy"> “Somebody from my neighborhood reported me.... [The Chinese]
pay people to report North Koreans.”
Her relatives paid the fine, but seven months later, when her son was still
nursing, she was captured again. This time she was sent back to North Korea.
Her son was wrenched from her.



She
spent the next period of her life in a succession of prison camps. lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">“I went into the Musan Security Center. There if you even spoke
a word, they would make you hold out your hands and beat you with a large wooden
stick.” She
did farm work in another camp. It was harvest season. style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;"> color="navy">“You start at 4 o'clock in the morning and work until 10 or 11
at night.”
When the guards moved prisoners from camp to camp, color="navy"> “they would use shoelaces to tie our thumbs together to the
thumbs of the person next to us so tightly that our thumbs would swell up.” lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;">




Naomi
eventually was returned to a detention facility in her hometown, where she was
required to write a confession. color="navy"> “One day they took me to a big public event and we were forced
to read our confessions to the crowds,”
she recalls. color="navy">“There were several hundred people there. The authorities said,
'This is what happens to people who go to China.'” style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;">



After
she was released, she sneaked back in to China. “I had to go because of my
son,” she says. It was too dangerous to stay in the same town, so she tied
her son on her back and moved to another city with her husband. Fearing discovery--and
with a husband who kept threatening to report her--she switched jobs constantly.
She worked as a cook, as an Internet chat girl, and even danced nude for a Webcast.



In
2004, when listening to the Voice of America--Naomi confidently pronounces the
letters color="navy">“V-O-A”
in English--she learned about Pastor Chun's underground railroad. She used the
Internet to find his organization's fax number and sent him a plea for help.




Her
mother-in-law agreed to take care of her son, and Naomi decided to make a run
for it.



Hannah
is 36 and Naomi 34. Their eyebrows are plucked, their hair is stylishly straight,
and they are dressed in cropped pants and high-heeled slides--styles as popular
in East Asia as they are in this country. The only sign that they might not
be from here is their lack of jewelry--with the exception of the cross Hannah
wears on a chain around her neck.



Our
interview over, the women relax and begin to talk about their first few days
in America. color="navy"> “It's completely different from what we learned. It is difficult
to accept that there is a world like this,” style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;">
Hannah says. color="navy"> “They [the North Korean government] teach us that America is
a country that shouldn't be allowed to exist.” “When we were in China,” lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family:함초롬바탕;mso-font-width:100%;letter-spacing:0pt;mso-text-raise:0pt;">Naomi
says, color="navy">“we always had to hide. Now we don't feel that way anymore.”




color="navy">“We still do feel lonely,”
says Hannah, color="navy">“but my heart feels free.”



Ms.
Kirkpatrick is a deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page.