Image: After the death of his wife, father and daughter took a big risk by fleeing to China as the country forcibly returns refugees to prison and torture.
Thanks to support from donors of the Danish European Mission, 50 North Korean refugees were helped to a safe third country in 2018. Two of them are 40-year-old Kim Dong-chul and his 11-year-old daughter Kim Eun-hye. Dong-chul tells Danish European Mission's local partner: "My wife was arrested because she was involved in illegal border trade. North Korean authorities sentenced her to stay in one of the dreaded concentration camps in 2014. Two years later, she died of malnutrition in the camp. The news of my wife's death in these terrible conditions made me very unhappy and deeply skeptical of the North Korean system. I decided to cross the border into China and came to the city xxxx" (anonymized for security reasons, ed.).
Due to the widespread poverty in North Korea, Dong-chul's wife, like other North Koreans, felt compelled to risk imprisonment for illegal border trade. For example, North Koreans sell nutritious herbs and roots to Chinese businessmen in exchange for food and electronics to sell at markets in North Korea.
Due to widespread poverty in North Korea, Dong-chul's wife, like other North Koreans, felt compelled to risk imprisonment for illegal border trade
China forcibly returns North Koreans to concentration camps
After the death of his wife, Dong-chul took a big risk by fleeing to China with his daughter. China does not grant refugee status to North Koreans fleeing oppression in their homeland. Instead, China forcibly returns North Koreans to prisons comparable to concentration camps, torture and in some cases execution.
Image: Kim Jong-a, here hosted by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, tries to give the outside world the impression of openness, but the repression of the North Korean people remains unchanged (Image: Public Domain).
Daughter could not attend school legally in China
Father and daughter came to a Chinese city known for its rice production. "Here I managed to get a job in the rice fields because I had experience in agricultural work from North Korea. I tried to find schooling for my daughter, but she was not allowed to go to school because she was an illegal defector from North Korea without papers."
"I was told that she could only go to school if I paid bribes to the teachers. My salary from working in the rice fields was around 1000 Chinese yuan (950 kroner, ed) a month, but I couldn't send my daughter to school because the teachers demanded that I pay the outrageous sum of 5000 yuan to let her go there".
"Through other defectors on a nearby farm, I then heard that children could go to school for free at a place run by a Christian missionary. My daughter benefited from this missionary's kindness and teaching. But he went back to his home country because of a life-threatening cancer", says Kim Dong-Chul.
Now there was nowhere for Eun-hye to go to school. Dong-chul didn't want her to fall behind her peers. So he decided to flee China.
With the support of the Danish European Mission's local Christian partner, father and daughter made it to a safe third country in Asia, where the daughter can now go to school. Thank you to everyone who, through prayer and/or financial support, made it possible for local Christians to help these people in the deepest need so that they can now have a good future.
