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How to Escape from North Korea (The Only 9 Ways) · Be Amazed

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do you have any idea what it's like to live in North Korea?
• 0:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let me give you a taste.
• 0:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: You wake up early in the poor rural area you call home.
• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's mid-winter barely 20 degrees Fahrenheit outside, and your only source of heat, a tiny wood burning stove isn't nearly enough to keep you warm.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: You get breakfast and realize that you have one meal's worth of food that needs to last you for the next three days when the rations are handed out.
• 0:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thursday you gather ice from the local river to melt because there's no infrastructure to provide running water here.
• 0:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: You drink from and wash in the dirty water before spending all day tending a local farm.
• 0:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's 12 to 16 hours of back-breaking labor, because the farming industry here hasn't been mechanized, so everything is done by hand or with animals.
• 0:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: As you walk several miles home because there's no public transport here in your two-port own a bicycle, let alone a car, you'll find a dead rat in a ditch.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: You take it home to eat because you're that hungry.
• 1:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: As you're cooking, your front door bursts open in a group of soldiers swarm in.
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: They ransack your home, help themselves to what little food you have and leave.
• 1:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: You feel lucky?
• 1:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Lucky?
• 1:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes?
• 1:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: because they have the unchallenged authority to sentence you to years of hard labor in a work camp at any moment, with even less food, more work, corporate punishment from the guards and worse.
• 1:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: You consider doing what you have before, making a soup from grass and weeds digging out the grain from animal manure.
• 1:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: or even eating the manure itself just to quell your hunger, but you're too exhausted.
• 1:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: So cold and starving you try to sleep on top of a rotten straw mattress knowing you'll wake up and do this all again and again and again until there is no again.
• 1:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: If this was your country you'd want to leave wouldn't you, but what if you couldn't?
• 2:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the stark reality that a staggering 60% of North Korea's poverty-stricken population face currently as the entire country struggles with major food insecurity issues stemming from severe economic mismanagement, but why can't they leave?
• 2:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if you were in their shoes, how would you?
• 2:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, stick with me as we explore why it's so difficult to escape North Korea and the only nine escape routes available.
• 2:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: There was no doorless names.
• 2:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: So how did things get so bad?
• 2:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well the Democratic People's Republic of Korea more commonly known as the DPRK or North Korea was founded by Kim Il Sung back in 1948.
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: This was after the Second World War divided the Korean Peninsula and put the two countries against one another, a fight that continued into the Cold War era.
• 3:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: South Korea backed the US, but North Korea backed the ill-fated Soviet Union.
• 3:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Throughout this time, the North prioritized government spending on military assets ruling the populace with an iron fist.
• 3:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: They bombarded its citizens with propaganda and ideology demanding loyalty to the Kim Dynasty banning independent media and isolating them from the rest of the world.
• 3:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, North Korea's economy tanked and their allies were few and far between.
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: food production and imports dropped off rapidly, and when a series of floods, droughts and failed agricultural reforms hit in 1994, famine gripped their hermit kingdom.
• 3:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: The government initially claimed there was no famine, then they backtracked and admitted there was, but it had only affected some 235,000 people.
• 3:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: In reality, it's believed some 3.5 million North Korean starved in the four years that followed, more than 10% of the population.
• 4:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even then North Korea didn't give up their war against South Korea, continuing to funnel money into their military as the country starved.
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: But even words like famine and starvation were banned from discussion because it implied a government failing.
• 4:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Those who spoke out would be silenced by the authorities, usually thrown into political prison camps.
• 4:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: But this didn't improve the situation.
• 4:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: During the COVID-19 epidemic when North Korea closed its borders entirely, including to trade, its government failings and infrastructure issues led to 10 million North Koreans suffering from hunger.
• 4:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: That meant a staggering 41 percent of the country's entire population was undernourished between 2019 and 2021.
• 4:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay then, why not just leave?
• 4:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, for a start, North Korea's government has made it illegal for its citizens to leave the country without explicit permission from the government.
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: This kind of control is designed to prevent its citizens from learning anything about the outside world, allowing the government to continue feeding them propaganda that North Korea is paradise, that the Kim Dynasty is supreme, and that life doesn't get any better than this.
• 5:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: So attempting to leave on an official plane, train, boat or even in a car over the border without the right documentation is, in a word, impossible.
• 5:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now anyone who is permitted a special exit visa like athletes competing in an international tournament or government officials are issued passports which they have to hand back to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs when they return.
• 5:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: But once they're out, why do they return?
• 5:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, North Koreans who do attempt to leave illegally and our caught can face severe consequences, including forced labor, corporate punishment, and life imprisonment in a political prison camp.
• 6:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Testimonies from defectors revealed that up to three generations of an offender's family can be imprisoned, punished, and even executed alongside them for their crimes, regardless of if they're successful or not.
• 6:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: That could be their parents, children, and grandparents, all paying the price for one family member daring to escape.
• 6:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: For many citizens, this threat is enough of an incentive to return home or stay put.
• 6:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: For all that, though, people have managed to escape.
• 6:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: defectors have told their stories to the press and humanitarian agencies so we know it is possible.
• 6:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: But how?
• 6:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well given the country's position, there are only nine ways that defectors have managed to escape that we currently know of.
• 6:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now the first may seem the most obvious, and that's to cross over the border from North to South Korea.
• 6:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: While the two countries are still technically at war, South Korea is pushing towards plans of reunification in the future.
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Part of that plan includes a special law allowing the protection of defectors from the North, unconditionally providing them with aid, language lessons, and the resources they need to resettle.
• 7:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's just one problem, a 160-mile-long problem, the demilitarized zone, also known as the DMZ.
• 7:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the most heavily fortified and dangerous border in the world.
• 7:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Marked by electric fences, lookout posts, artillery, tanks, and some 2 million active and armed troops on each side at any given time.
• 7:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Remember, these two countries are still technically at war.
• 7:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: and neither is willing to risk an invasion from the other until a peace treaty is signed.
• 7:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: As such, this 2.5 mile wide buffer zone is constantly patrolled, and even when the guards aren't looking, anyone brave enough to make a mad dash across would need an incredible amount of luck to avoid the 3 million anti-personnel and anti-tank landmines buried along it.
• 8:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: While very few tries, some, like O-Chong-Song, succeed.
• 8:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Back in 2017, this soldier, the son of a high-ranking military official, committed a serious crime.
• 8:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Terrified of punishment, he made the snap decision to rush across the demilitarized zone in a car.
• 8:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: He was chased and shot at more than 40 times before he exited the vehicle, made it over the border, and collapsed behind a low wall on the South Korean side.
• 8:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: undercover of darkness, South Korean operatives pulled him to safety, and luckily, he survived.
• 8:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just with more bullet holes in his body than the average person needs.
• 8:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: While a soldier in a car might be able to defect this way, a civilian on foot wouldn't stand a chance.
• 8:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: So crossing over the border is generally a no-go.
• 8:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: which leads us to root number two, going under the border.
• 8:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Back in the 1970s, two tiny tunnels, one, three foot by four foot, and another seven by seven foot, were discovered leading from North Korea into South Korea under the DMZ.
• 9:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: They'd been booby-trapped apparently designed to allow North Korean soldiers to pass through without being detected.
• 9:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, in 1978, a defector revealed that there was a third tunnel which came out just 27 miles from Seoul, the capital city of the South.
• 9:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in 1990, a fourth was discovered too.
• 9:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: The method of their construction is almost identical, indicating these were professionally dug tunnels originating from the North Korean side, with intentions to use them for subterfuge.
• 9:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Though they initially claimed it was part of a coal mine, it's believed that there are up to 20 more tunnels dug beneath the border, though where they are as anyone's guess.
• 9:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Have defectors use them to cross over though?
• 9:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's possible seeing how defectors know about them.
• 9:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: These tunnels are over a mile long and run through the bedrock, occasionally made of granite, up to 240 feet below ground.
• 10:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: It would take a coordinated working team years to dig through that, which sounds tough, but not impossible.
• 10:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: The known tunnels are now heavily guarded on both sides, but that's not to say secret tunnels haven't been discovered yet, and are being kept quiet so as not to endanger any defectors planning to use them.
• 10:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Currently no successful defector has claimed to have survived passing through these tunnels yet, so that's going over and under the border, what about going around
• 10:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: That brings us to root number 3, the C, with an east and a west coast sailing over the yellow sea or the sea of Japan to South Korea, should be an easy option, right?
• 10:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, not exactly.
• 10:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: First start many sections of coastline are reinforced with electric fences, and remember the majority of defectors are poor.
• 10:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: They don't have the money for an engine powered boat, meaning paddle boats are often all that's available.
• 11:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even so, setting out from the westernmost point of North Korea is still a 60-mile journey over the waves to the shores of South Korea.
• 11:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And even if you did somehow have the money to buy a boat and the ability to row it that far, North Korea's naval patrols are well aware of this route and actively prowl the waters hunting for escapees.
• 11:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Setting sail from somewhere further north to avoid the patrols is another option, but that would mean rowing some 200 miles to safety, and without any navigational or weather equipment, the seas can be a very dangerous and unpredictable place.
• 11:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Several boats have been caught in strong currents and been pulled back to North Korea and China.
• 11:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Wait, China?
• 11:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's good, right?
• 11:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Surely that counts as escape.
• 11:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nope, not if you're North Korean.
• 11:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: While the Hermit Kingdom doesn't have many allies, China is one.
• 11:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: As such, China does not recognize North Korean defectors as refugees, but illegal economic migrants, and will return them to North Korea despite knowing the horrors they'll face.
• 12:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: So what about the East Coast?
• 12:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Sea of Japan is a semi-inclusive sea, like the Yellow Sea, but regularly experiences typhoons and storms which blow in from the Pacific Ocean.
• 12:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: This makes it more unpredictable and dangerous, but on the bright side, being blown off course will send you over to Japan, a country that is sympathetic to the plight of North Korean citizens and will facilitate travel for them to South Korea.
• 12:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: but getting there is a struggle.
• 12:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Being some 500 miles from the safest launch point, that's a long distance to survive at sea, assuming your flimsy little fishing boat stays upright.
• 12:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: As such, only three defectors are recorded to have made it across the sea to Japan alive.
• 12:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what about swimming around the border?
• 12:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, the average temperature of these seas is around 55 degrees Fahrenheit, so assuming you don't freeze to death, that the border patrols don't catch you and that you're a really, really strong swimmer, it's plausible.
• 13:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Make shift rafts have also been used successfully in some cases made from woodplanks, old tires, even fishing floats, showing just how desperate people are to escape the regime.
• 13:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so what if you're not a strong swimmer and can't afford a boat?
• 13:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: What then?
• 13:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well then, there's option number four, the Northern border.
• 13:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Unlike the DMZ, this 882 mile border with China is usually less defended and patrolled, making it easier to cross.
• 13:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: The border itself is laid along two rivers, the yalu, and the two men.
• 13:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: the two men is generally shallower and slower moving, making it an easier crossing point.
• 13:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: But most citizens don't know how to swim, so unless the river is low and walkable, it can sweep away unprepared defectors.
• 13:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's more since 2003, China has been installing and developing wire fencing along the two men river,
• 14:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: to block major defection routes.
• 14:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Areas with lower banks along the Ula River were also reinforced with concrete and barbed wire fences ranging from 8 to 15 feet high.
• 14:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, since 2011, it's been noticed that these sections are somewhat of an exception to the rule where the rest of the river has no fences and is guarded by no one.
• 14:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, providing they can make it across the water, often done by crossing it in winter, when the ice freezes the rivers over, then making it out of the country is possible.
• 14:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, in 2020 during the height of the pandemic, North Korea set up buffer zones extending roughly one mile out from the northern border, effectively turning it into a second DMZ.
• 14:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Soldiers were given orders to unconditionally shoot anyone seen approaching from the North Korean side on site.
• 14:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like this route wasn't dangerous enough already, but what if you were lucky and made it across?
• 15:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, as we established China will ship any defectors it discovers back to North Korea.
• 15:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is why the majority of defectors use a broker, a Chinese contact who illegally arranges jobs and housing for the defectors, keeping them hidden from the Chinese government.
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: But this costs defectors between $500 to $1,000 to a range.
• 15:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Considering a yearly wage for a North Korean can be as low as $650, this is often a defector's entire life savings.
• 15:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: That means when they reach China, they have absolutely nothing, putting them at huge risk of exploitation.
• 15:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Disturbingly, the database center for North Korean human rights and the transitional justice working group indicates up to 80% of female North Korean refugees fall into the hands of people traffickers, where they're sold off to become wives or into a much darker industry.
• 15:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Men are sold into slavery, facing a life of hard labor, the exact thing they try to escape from.
• 16:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Trusting these brokers is risky, but it's often the only option available.
• 16:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, China isn't usually the intended final destination.
• 16:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Most defectors still want to travel to South Korea, so many will head to Beijing where they can find the South Korean embassy.
• 16:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Foreign embassies like this act is sovereign ground, meaning any defectors within it are protected by South Korean law.
• 16:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: If they're unable to reach Beijing, they can try to make it to South Korean consulates in Shenyang, Hong Kong or Shanghai.
• 16:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: As Zhang Yul read it back in 2016, reused the fifth route of escape from the country, which is being part of the elite.
• 16:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Re was a top student from a high-ranking family under the North Korean regime, and so was granted permission to leave by the North Korean government to take part in an academic competition in Hong Kong.
• 16:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: But he escaped the surveillance team he and the rest of his school were escorted by and sought asylum at the consulate.
• 17:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: He had to stay there for more than two months while Beijing's government processed his permission to leave and was eventually extradited to South Korea.
• 17:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: But if he was part of the privileged elite, why leave?
• 17:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: While North Korea offers a decent standard of living for those who work in the upper echelons of the government and military, it still clumps down on intellectual, religious and political freedoms.
• 17:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sure, you may have food on your table when the rest of the country is starving, but you're still living in constant fear that saying one wrong thing could land you in a political prison camp.
• 17:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: As such, many well-off North Koreans have sought to defect in recent years, using their privileged ability to obtain permission to leave to head straight to the nearest embassy or consulate.
• 17:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: For them, it almost sounds easy.
• 17:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, China's police will often have the South Korean and other foreign embassies and consulates under close watch, ready to arrest anyone they suspect of being a defector.
• 18:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: So trying to escape through China is dangerous.
• 18:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: That means the next best option is to travel across China to a bordering country and seek asylum in an embassy there.
• 18:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: The only problem is China's huge, literally, thousands of miles across an any given direction.
• 18:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: How do you traverse all that without any official travel documentation or money?
• 18:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Which brings us to the sixth escape route, the Underground Railroad.
• 18:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not an actual railroad but a secret network of activists that help North Koreans navigate their way across China.
• 18:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: They do this by reaching out to them through brokers and then by escorting them along secret routes south.
• 18:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: They move them from safe house to safe house, arranging transport and communicating with locals and officials to avert any suspicion from the defectors North Korean accents, all without a fee ever being expected.
• 18:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: But their work doesn't stop at the border.
• 18:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar, South Asia's Golden Triangle, are not sympathetic to the plight of North Korea's citizens, and are also under instruction to return defectors back to North Korea.
• 19:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thailand, however, is sympathetic.
• 19:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, to avoid detection at checkpoints along the borders of Laos, and Myanmar, the railroad helps defectors through the dense jungles of the Golden Triangle to reach Thailand.
• 19:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here, defectors will hand themselves over to Thai police and from there they'll be deported to South Korea.
• 19:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: In total, the journey can be as long as 3,000 miles, which is insane when you remember that the border separating the two countries is only 2.5 miles wide.
• 19:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: The charitable heroes working for the underground railroad risk their lives so that others stand a chance of living theirs.
• 19:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And having helped more than 700 defectors get to the south, this means the organization has become a major target for North Korea's current leader, Kim Jong-un, and China.
• 19:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: In 2001, there were barely 1,000 defector arrivals in Seoul.
• 20:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: By 2007, with the help of the railroad that number skyrocketed to nearly 2,500.
• 20:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: It prompted China to crack down on them hard with many missionaries going missing.
• 20:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: by 2020 that number was barely 230, so while using the railroad as possible, it's not as viable in option as it used to be.
• 20:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: This leaves many defectors facing the seventh option, crossing into Mongolia.
• 20:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like Thailand, Mongolia is also sympathetic to North Korean defectors and will deport them to South Korea.
• 20:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, getting there is one of the most physically demanding routes
• 20:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: This huge bear and region of cold desert spans northern China and southern Mongolia with dunes that are on average 660 feet high and extreme temperatures reaching as low as minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit by night.
• 20:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Surviving here is not easy, especially considering that poor defectors rarely have the equipment, food supply, or warm clothing that's essential for staying alive in these conditions.
• 21:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the track from border to border is still some 770 miles at least.
• 21:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Still, 770 miles is a lot less than 3000.
• 21:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, Titan border control from China has seen fewer and fewer defectors successfully making it over the goby, so the route is more dangerous than ever.
• 21:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now while South Korea offers a lucrative resettlement scheme, it's not the only country that offers sanctuary.
• 21:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: and that's the 8-way out which is looking west.
• 21:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Foreign embassies in China provide sovereign rule ground in most western nations like those in Europe, the UK, the US and Canada, recognized North Koreans as refugees.
• 21:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: In those respective embassies, they can apply for asylum.
• 21:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Alternatively, they can make the long trek across China into said countries, alert a border patrol agent, and ask for asylum.
• 22:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: The only issue is that Europe and the UK, especially, don't have a great track record of approving asylum applications.
• 22:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: The UK, for example, rejected 30 out of 40 asylum applications made by North Korean defectors in 2013.
• 22:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: That same year, Belgium rejected 99 out of the 126 claims it received, whereas the Netherlands and France rejected all of the 128 and 129 they received, respectively.
• 22:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: This huge rejection rate rests on defectors not having a reasonable fear of being persecuted in South Korea, where these governments know they're entitled to settle.
• 22:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, Canada is slightly more lenient and understanding of the discrimination often faced by North Koreans in South Korea due to the language barriers and negative perceptions of their country.
• 22:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: As of 2016, its estimated some 970 defectors now live in Canada.
• 22:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: And while the US has legally admitted some 150 refugees, it's believed there are around 200 who have entered the country illegally by traveling to South America and crossing over the Mexican border.
• 23:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what about if you're in part of North Korea that's heavily locked down?
• 23:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Without the privilege of the elite, the ability to get to the northern border or to even make a run for it over the DMZ.
• 23:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, all is not lost.
• 23:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: For there's an unexpected and even more dangerous ninth way out, which is labor outsourcing.
• 23:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, it's no secret that North Korea keeps its dissidents in political prison camps, or, as there's sometimes called labor training facilities, it's believed there are around 20 active sites in the country containing up to 250,000 people.
• 23:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Officials perceived to have performed poorly in their job, people who have criticized the regime and any one suspected of engaging in anti-government activities can be sent here.
• 23:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's worse, the three-generation rule applies, with entire family sent to the same camps, though they themselves may not have committed a crime.
• 24:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sentences are usually for full-life terms, but the reality is that they only last a few years.
• 24:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: The lack of food, clothing, and resources provided means roughly 40% of those that are perished from malnutrition.
• 24:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: illness, frostbite and accidents from the hard labor they're forced to perform, raise that mortality rate, even higher.
• 24:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Beatings and inhumane corporal punishment are common, with survivors and defectors detailing horrendous scenes and treatment that occurs day after day after day.
• 24:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: But this doesn't just happen in North Korea.
• 24:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Unbelievably, in at least 15 countries, including Algeria, Ethiopia, Malaysia, Poland, and Russia, more than 50,000 North Korean workers are being used for forced labor.
• 24:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is mainly in mining, logging, construction, and textile industries.
• 25:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: This injects some $2.3 billion straight into North Korea's pockets while forcing the laborers to work up to 20 hours a day and paying them only $150 a month, which itself is often
• 25:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Workers are also only allowed two rest days per month given insufficient food and watched over by North Korean security details.
• 25:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: But as horrific as it sounds, many North Koreans see this as a golden opportunity, not to provide for their family, but to escape.
• 25:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: If they can slip past the watchful eyes of their guards, there's no landmines, no barbed wire fences, and no DMZ blocking their route to freedom.
• 25:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, not just anyone gets to work here, candidates are thoroughly vetted and selected based on their loyalty to the DPRK, their physical condition, and they must have a family with children who can be held as collateral.
• 26:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yep, unless you can also find a way to smuggle them out of the country, they're basically hostages.
• 26:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: This forces many people to choose between family and freedom, a barbaric choice, but sometimes unnecessary one.
• 26:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Back in 1994, several hundred North Korean loggers at a mining camp in Siberia successfully managed to overrun the Gulag style camps they were being forced to work in.
• 26:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: The mass breakouts saw 150 loggers coordinate the escape in an attempt to make it to South Korea.
• 26:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Initially, North Korea denied the reports calling them rumor and fabrication.
• 26:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was only when one of the defectors contacted journalists in the Far East Siberian city of Lada Vostok and confirmed it to be true.
• 26:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: He revealed the workers had had their passport stripped from them, Russians are not allowed in the camps, and that North Korean security beat and underfed them habitually.
• 26:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: He himself had a wife and family back in North Korea, but he got news that his wife whose rations had been cut, had turned to the black market, a crime for which she was discovered and punished for.
• 27:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: She was deported to a mountain state along with their two children.
• 27:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: He had no hope of ever finding her again, and with nothing left to lose, decided to escape.
• 27:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: We don't know whether or not he made the 5,000 mile journey to the nearest South Korean diplomatic post in Moscow?
• 27:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: We likely never will.
• 27:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is the stark reality of attempting to escape the regime.
• 27:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: These are the kinds of sacrifices happening on the other side of the barbed wire in propaganda that their hermit kingdom hides behind.
• 27:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: the choice between freedom, family, and survival is impossible to balance, and more often than not anyone who dares to leave ends up paying with their life.
• 27:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: So knowing all the options if you were in this situation, would you try to escape from North Korea?
• 27:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if so, how?
• 27:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you like this terrifying topic, we have more episodes about North Korea.
• 28:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening, see you next time!
• 28:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for watching.