North Korean defector tells of hell under brutal regime
When he buys bread at his local corner shop, North Korean defector Joo-il Kim savours a simple freedom.
The exchange of a pound coin for a small sliced loaf is a world away from the desperation he endured as a starving soldier during the rogue state’s worst famine.
Joo-il, 40, swam to China to flee and made a treacherous journey through Asia on foot, before finally heading to Britain.
He was one of the lucky few to have escaped the country. And last week for the first time, fellow survivors revealed the full horror of life under the regime to the United Nations.
Defectors recounted their experiences, including watching as a woman was forced to drown her own baby, a pupil who saw a girl of seven beaten to death for stealing a few grains of wheat and a factory worker who had a finger cut off for accidentally dropping something.
Joo-il knows all too well the fear and desperation of everyday life in North Korea and it was only after watching his niece die of hunger at three that he made his escape six years ago today.
It was a decision he knew would cause his own family to be persecuted by the regime But for Joo-il – now of New Malden, Surrey – it had become the only option.
“I remember when I was in the North Korean army that we would be sent out to steal rice from normal civilians,” he says.
“There was no rice at all the time. It was impossible to get just a bowl of white rice. If a soldier came back from his mission into the town with nothing, he would be punished. They would be beaten up until their faces turned blue and then sent back.
“Sometimes the punishment was he had to hang from a raised wooden bar for an hour by his hands. This was in the middle of winter when the temperatures were below freezing.
“If the soldier did fall off, he would land in a bath of icy cold water. No one was allowed to help him get out.
“After a few years in the army I was given responsibility for a small group of men and it was me who had to carry out the punishments. I was under orders to instruct everyone to beat the soldier who came back without rice.
“Another punishment we all suffered was being sent over the mountains for firewood.
“The hills were bare of trees because everything had been chopped down for fuel by the people to get through the winter.
“We had to walk for about a week carrying a tree trunk back to our base over snow-covered mountains.
“Arriving back there without wood would mean ending up in a forced labour camp.”
Such punishments are typical of the cruel treatment of North Koreans at the hands of the sadistic authority figures in charge.
In April, we published horrific video images leaked out of North Korea.
And now the UN Commission of Inquiry, which is seeking evidence of crimes against humanity, is hearing from 30 defectors, detailing the torture, mutilation, punishments, executions and starvation they endured.
Starving people are forced to eat rats, worms and salamanders to survive.
And statements revealed prisoners were regularly executed and their fellow inmates forced to throw stones at the slumped bodies to skin the corpses.
Whole fields were discovered filled with masses of body parts from previous killings. But Joo-il has swapped the terrible conditions for a new life in a modern two-bedroom flat, which he shares with his wife and family.
He met partner Gukhwa in China. She too had fled North Korea in fear for her life. They have two children – Yoo-ri, 13, from Gukhwa’s past relationship, and Soo-jung, one.
As well as being able to shop in stores with a wide choice of food instead of empty shelves, Joo-il also appreciates being able to buy newspapers.
In North Korea, state media is strictly censored, so no one ever knows what is really going on in the outside world.
Watching neighbours going to their polling station to vote in local elections was also a revelation. “The most precious thing in the world is freedom of expression,” he says.
“You don’t appreciate freedom of movement and the rights to vote unless they are denied to you as in North Korea.” Joo-il and his family are fully absorbed into their local community; Yoo-Ri, who is disabled, attends a local special school.
But both parents live in hope of one day being able to take them all to their real home. For now, it is a distant dream.
“Even if North Korea is a dictatorship, it is my homeland and my parents, family and friends are still there,” he explains.
“I miss the time when I was with them. We hope to raise our children well here in Britain. We are so anxious that they do not have a life like us.
“It would be wonderful if we could return with them one day to a free nation. We could do so much to help our own people.”
Neither Joo-il nor Gukhwa have heard news of their families for years. Their country’s eccentric leader Kim Jong-un and father Kim Jong-il have a history of exacting retribution on relatives of those who dare to rebel by going into exile. “Although my body is in England, I still have nightmares about North Korea,” Joo-il adds. “I have nightmares about being arrested while crossing the Tumen River or being publicly executed in front of many soldiers and people. I also worry about my family being put in political prison camps.
“All North Koreans suffer from nightmares. I have spoken to others who live here and they have nightmares about being repatriated from their hiding places.”
When Joo-il tells of his bleakest memories, such nightmares are not surprising.
“In 1997 you would see lots of dead bodies in train stations and public places,” he says.
“The smell would hit you as you walked in. It was absolutely terrible.
“They had left the corpses in the waiting room of one station for a week because there were too many to move. That kind of memory constantly troubles me.”
Joo-il remembers his niece’s death as if it was yesterday. On a visit home to his family in Hamgyong province following his military graduation, he found out for the first time she had acute malnutrition.
“My sister wanted to give me something special, or at least something to eat,” he recalls.
“So she brought the rice from her house that was supposed to be porridge for her daughter. It meant she had to go and beg for other food for her daughter, who was almost dying.
“Hunger was something I had known all my life, but it kept getting worse. My earliest memory is of the ration packs my family received dwindling, so food for just a couple of days had to be stretched over 15 days.”
Four days after he was given the rice, Joo-il’s niece was dead. “This was the incident that triggered my decision,” he continues. “It was about a year before I finally escaped.
“I went near to the river on the border on August 26, 2005. I arrived on August 23 but it was almost a full moon and too bright, so I waited until there were some clouds. Using the darkness, I swam for four hours.
“I went to China, then Vietnam, then Cambodia, but they don’t accept North Korean refugees and I could not claim asylum so I could not settle there.”
Making the most of his freedom, Joo-il plays a leading role in a website run by North Korean exiles, which aims to expose the truth about the closed country. But an internet block in Pyongyang means this information will not be seen by most.
He has also set up a printed newspaper, called Free NK, to be smuggled back across the border through China.
One day he too hopes to retrace the same journey, beginning on the double-decker bus which stops just outside his front door.
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