Escape from North Korea: the untold story of Asia's underground railroad

372 Pages·2012·4.442 MB·English

by  Melanie Kirkpatrick

K POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Ideologies /
I Communism, Post-Communism & Socialism
R US $25.99 / CAN $29.00
“ With the perfect, hypnotic flow of a consummate journalist, Melanie Kirkpatrick
K
has created an encyclopedic, magnificently researched and reported portrait of the
I t is a crime to leave North Korea.
P
dramatic resistance to the slow-motion holocaust that is taking place in North Ko-
Yet increasing numbers of North Koreans
rea as you read this. Her account is as captivating as a thriller, but unlike a thriller, A
dare to flee. They go first to neighboring
it is morally compelling. What elevates it to the ranks of the finest books is the skill T
of its author and the selfless urgency of her appeal. Many a prize has been awarded R China, which rejects them as criminals, then
to books not half as deserving.” on to Southeast Asia or Mongolia, and finally
I
—MARK HELPRIN to South Korea, the United States, and other
C
author of Winter’s Tale, A Soldier of the Great War,
free countries. They travel along a secret route
K
and In Sunlight and in Shadow E S C A P E F R O M
known as the new underground railroad.
With a journalist’s grasp of events and a
“ Escape from North Korea should be assigned reading for anyone—policymaker,
N O R T H K O R E A novelist’s ear for narrative, Melanie Kirkpat-
academic, or journalist alike—who thinks he knows anything about the Kim
family dictatorship. Melanie Kirkpatrick shows how ‘the new Underground Rail- rick tells the harrowing story of the North
road’ is not only providing an escape route from the prison camp that is North Koreans’ quest for liberty. Travelers on the
MELANIE KIRKPATRICK is a
Korea, but something even more important as well. She shows how that escape T H E U N T O L D S T O R Y O F new underground railroad include women
journalist, writer, and Hudson Institute senior
route, aided and expanded, can bring down North Korea’s despotic regime and
bound to Chinese men who purchased them
fellow. She was deputy editor of the editorial ASIA’S
free its entire people. Kirkpatrick combines exhaustive reporting with insightful
page at the Wall Street Journal. She lives in as brides, defectors carrying state secrets, and
analysis in a powerful and compelling tale of repression and freedom.”
rural Connecticut with her husband, N UNDERGROUND POWs from the Korean War held captive in
—JOHN R. BOLTON
Jack David. the North for more than half a century. Their
former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations
O
RAILROAD conductors are brokers who are in it for the
www.MelanieKirkpatrick.com E
“ A riveting, meticulously researched account of the harrowing journey North Kore- R money as well as Christians who are in it to
S
ans must take to reach freedom. Kirkpatrick describes in detail the secret network serve God.
C
of safe houses, transit routes, and brokers that have emerged in China and other T
Just as escaped slaves from the American
A
countries to enable North Koreans to escape. Similar to the Underground Railroad
H South educated Americans about the evils of
in the United States that liberated slaves, the network achieves inspiring successes P
slavery, the North Korean fugitives are inform-
and tragic failures. The book will interest both the general public and serve as a E
ing the world about the secretive country they
powerful tool for policymakers, academics, and advocates interested in lending K
support to one of the world’s most persecuted people.” F fled. Escape from North Korea describes how
—ROBERTA COHEN O R they also are sowing the seeds for change
Jacket design by Kathleen Lynch/Black Kat Design co-chair of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea O within North Korea itself. Once they reach
Jacket image © iStockphoto.com/zennie R
M sanctuary, the escapees channel news back to
E those they left behind. In doing so, they are
helping to open their information-starved
A
M E L A N I E K I R K P A T R I C K homeland, exposing their countrymen to
liberal ideas, and laying the intellectual
ENCOUNTER BOOKS
groundwork for the transformation of the
900 Broadway, Suite 601
totalitarian regime that keeps their fellow
New York, New York 10003-1239
www.encounterbooks.com citizens in chains.
Praise for Escape from North Korea
“Melanie Kirkpatrick is one of the finest newspaperwomen of
her generation, and she has, in Escape from North Korea, brought
in an astonishing scoop—a story that illuminates how America’s
own abolitionists, across the centuries and oceans, are inspiring a
new underground railroad. Her account reminds us all of why
Communist regimes so fear religion.”
—Seth Lipsky, editor of the New York Sun
“Escape from North Korea is a troubling and inspiring story of
both man’s inhumanity to his fellow man and a testimony to the
indomitable human spirit in the midst of horrific torture and
privation. Melanie Kirkpatrick has done us all a great service by
telling this compelling story.”
—Richard Land, president of the
Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission
“Kirkpatrick puts the spotlight on one of the greatest tragedies of
the postwar world: the transformation of an entire nation into a
gulag. But despite the many horrors of North Korea, courage and
the human spirit endure. Kirkpatrick’s timely book should convince
Koreans and Americans of the immediate need to end North Korea’s
totalitarian dictatorship and unify the peninsula under a free and
democratic government.”
—John Yoo, professor of law at the
University of California at Berkeley
NorthKorea.indb 1 7/20/12 5:36 PM
ESCAPE FROM NORTH KOREA
THE UNTOLD STORY OF ASIA’S
UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
Melanie Kirkpatrick
Encounter Books New York London
•
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© 2012 by Melanie Kirkpatrick
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by
any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,
or otherwise, without the prior written permission of
Encounter Books, 900 Broadway, Suite 601,
New York, New York, 10003.
First American edition published in 2012 by Encounter Books,
an activity of Encounter for Culture and Education, Inc.,
a nonprofit, tax-exempt corporation.
Encounter Books website address: www.encounterbooks.com
Manufactured in the United States and printed on
acid-free paper. The paper used in this publication meets
the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48 1992
(R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).
‒
FIRST AMERICAN EDITION
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Kirkpatrick, Melanie.
Escape from North Korea: The untold story of Asia’s underground railroad/
by Melanie Kirkpatrick.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59403-633-0 (hardcover: alk. paper)—ISBN 978-1-59403-646-0
(ebook) 1. Korea (North)—Emigration and immigration. 2. Refugees—Korea
(North) 3. Refugees—Government policy—China. 4. Missionaries—Korea
(North) 5. Missionaries—China. 6. Church work with refugees—Korea (North)
7. Church work with refugees—China. 8. Illegal aliens—China.
9. Repatriation—Korea (North) 10. Repatriation—China. I. Title.
HV640.5.K67K63 2012
305.9’0691409513—dc23
2012007386
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FOR JACK
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CONTENTS

Author’s Note ........................................................................vii
Introduction: “I Am a Man Among Men” .....................................1
PART I: ESCAPE
1. Crossing the River .................................................................21
2. Look for a Building with a Cross on It ..................................39
3. Defectors ..............................................................................55
PART II: IN HIDING
4. Brides for Sale .......................................................................75
5. Half-and-Half Children ........................................................91
6. Siberia’s Last Gulag .............................................................105
7. Old Soldiers ........................................................................117
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Contents
PART III: HUNTED
8. Hunted ...............................................................................137
9. Jesus on the Border .............................................................155
10. The Journey out of China....................................................173
PART IV: STOCKHOLDERS
11. Let My People Go ...............................................................191
12. Be the Voice ........................................................................209
PART V: LEARNING TO BE FREE
13. Almost Safe .........................................................................221
14. Unification Dumplings .......................................................239
15. Left Behind .........................................................................253
PART VI: THE FUTURE
16. Invading North Korea .........................................................275
17. Conclusion: One Free Korea ...............................................295
Acknowledgments ...............................................................309
How to Help .......................................................................315
Notes ..................................................................................317
Index...................................................................................337
vi
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AUTHOR’S NOTE
This is a book about personal courage and the quest for lib-
erty. These qualities are embodied in the North Koreans who
dare to escape from their slave-state of a nation to the neighboring,
but unwelcoming, country of China. They are embodied, too, in
Christian missionaries and other humanitarian workers who help
the North Korean runaways flee China and reach sanctuary in free
countries. They travel along a secret route known as the new under-
ground railroad.
This is also a book about North Korea’s future. Through the sto-
ries recounted in these pages, the reader will catch a glimpse of the
potential of the North Korean people, what they and their country
could become if they were liberated. The twenty-four thousand North
Koreans who have fled to safety in South Korea (or, in a few cases,
North America or Europe) constitute a tiny minority of the country’s
twenty-four million people. Yet they are the change-makers. They are
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Author’s Note
a bridge to a free and unified Korea. Through their efforts to reach
family and friends they have left behind, the fugitives are opening up
their information-starved homeland, exposing their countrymen to
liberal ideas, and helping to lay the intellectual groundwork for dis-
sent. The escapees already are beginning to transform their country,
and they may eventually replace the totalitarian regime that keeps
their fellow citizens in chains.
Supreme Leader Kim Jong Eun, North Korea’s young new dicta-
tor, understands the threat that the escapees pose to his rule. One of
his first acts after succeeding his late father, Kim Jong Il, in Decem-
ber 2011, was to issue a shoot-to-kill order to guards along the Sino-
Korean border. Anyone observed fleeing across the Tumen or Yalu
River to China was to be stopped, he commanded. Kim Jong Eun
reportedly also issued orders for the on-the-spot execution of any
North Korean arrested in flight.
Through the North Korean escape stories, I also illustrate the
effects that policy decisions made in Beijing, Washington, Seoul, and
other world capitals have on the men, women, and children who flee
North Korea. I pay particular attention to China, whose forced repa-
triation of the North Koreans living in China is both morally wrong
and illegal under international agreements to which China is a party.
Beijing deems the North Koreans “economic migrants,” a status that
conveniently ignores Pyongyang’s savagery against its own people,
including the use of economic repression, especially the withholding
of essential food supplies, as a tool of political control. China’s inhu-
mane repatriation policy also ignores the harsh punishment inflicted
upon the North Koreans it sends back against their will.
The principal characters of this narrative are the passengers and
conductors on the new underground railroad—the secret network of
safe houses and transit routes that crisscrosses China and transports
North Koreans to refuge in bordering countries. The new under-
ground railroad is operated by humanitarian workers, largely Chris-
tian, from the United States and South Korea, and it is supported by
viii
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