The North Korean family who risked execution to escape by boat

[CharlieH]

 

Earlier this year, Mr Kim pulled off a seemingly impossible escape from North Korea. He fled by sea with his entire family - his pregnant wife, his mother, his brother's family, and an urn containing his father's ashes.

They are the first people to have fled the country this year and make it to the South. When Covid struck, North Korea's government panicked and sealed the country off from the rest of the world, closing its borders and cutting off trade. Defections, once fairly common, virtually ceased.

Mr Kim told the BBC how he masterminded such a remarkable escape, in the first interview with a defector to have got out since the pandemic. He revealed new details about life in the country, including cases of people starving to death and increasing repression. He asked us not to use his full name, to help protect his family here and back in the North.

The BBC cannot independently verify all of Mr Kim's account, but much of the detail tallies with what we have been told by other sources. 

 The night of the escape was a turbulent one. Fierce winds swept up from the south, bringing a storm in their wake. This was all part of Mr Kim's plan. The rough seas would force any surveillance ships to retreat, he hoped.  

He had been dreaming of this night for years, planning it meticulously for months, but this did little to temper his fear. 

 

His brother's children were asleep, knocked out by sleeping pills he had fed them. He and his brother now had to carry them through a minefield in the dark, to where their getaway boat was secretly moored. They inched along, careful to avoid the beams from the guards' searchlights.

 

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