Songmi Park dug her toes into the edge of the riverbank as she prepared to cross.
Songmi Park dug her toes into the edge of the riverbank as she prepared to cross.
She knew she was supposed to be afraid. The river was deep, and the current looked strong. If she was caught she would certainly be punished, perhaps even shot. But she felt a pull far stronger than her fear. She was leaving North Korea to find her mother, who had left her behind as a child.
As Songmi waded through the icy water at dusk, she felt as if she was flying.
It was 31 May 2019. "How can I forget the best and worst day of my life?" she says.
Escaping North Korea is a dangerous and difficult feat. In recent years Kim Jong Un has clamped down harder on those trying to flee. Then, at the outset of the pandemic, he sealed the country's borders, making Songmi, then 17, one of the last known people to make it out.
This was the second time Songmi had crossed the Yalu River, which separates North Korea from China, providing escapees with their easiest route out.
The first time she left she was strapped to her mother's back as a child. Those memories are still as piercing as if they were yesterday .
She remembers hiding at a relative's pig farm in China, when the state police came looking for them. She remembers her mother and father pleading not to be sent back. "Send me instead," the relative had cried. The police beat him until his face bled.
Back in North Korea, she remembers her father with his hands cuffed behind his back. And she remembers standing on the train station platform, watching both her parents be transported to one of North Korea's infamous prison camps. She was four years old.
Songmi was sent to live with her father's parents on their farm in Musan, a North Korean town half-an-hour from the Chinese border. Going to school was not an option, they told her. Education is free in Communist North Korea, but families are often expected to bribe teachers, and Songmi's grandparents could not afford to.
Instead she spent her childhood roaming the countryside, hunting for clovers to feed the rabbits on the farm. She was often sick, even during summer. "I didn't eat much and so my immunity was low," she says. "But when I woke up from my sickness my grandmother would always have left me a snack on the windowsill."
One evening, five years after the train rolled out of the station bound for the prison camp, her father slipped softly into bed behind her, wrapping her in his arms. She buzzed with excitement. Life could begin again. But three days later, he died. His time in prison had chipped away at his health.
When Songmi's mother, Myung-hui, arrived home the following week to find her husband dead, she was distraught. She made an unthinkable decision. She would try to escape North Korea again. Alone.
On the morning her mother left, Songmi says she could sense something was different. Her mother had dressed strangely, in her grandmother's clothes. "I didn't know what she was planning but I knew that if she left, I wouldn't see her for a long time," she says. As her mother walked out of the house, Songmi curled under her bedsheet and cried.
The next 10 years were to be her toughest.
Within two years her grandfather had died. Now she was alone at the age of 10, caring for her bed-ridden grandmother, with no source of income: "One by one my family were disappearing. It was so scary."
In times of desperation, if you know what to look for, the dense mountains of North Korea can provide meagre sustenance. Every morning Songmi began the two-hour walk up into the mountains, hunting for plants to eat and sell. Certain herbs could be sold as medicine at her local market, but first they needed to be washed, trimmed, and dried by hand, meaning she worked late into the night.
"I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow. Every day I was trying not to starve, to survive the day."
Just 300 miles away, as the crow flies, Myung-hui had arrived in South Korea.
Having journeyed for a year through China and then into neighbouring Laos, then Thailand, she reached a South Korean embassy.
The South Korean government, which has an agreement to resettle North Korean escapees, flew her to Seoul. She settled in the industrial town of Ulsan on the south coast. Desperate to earn money that could pay for her daughter's escape, she cleaned the inside of ships at a ship-building factory every day without rest. Escaping from North Korea is expensive. It requires a middleman who can help to navigate the hurdles, and money to bribe anyone who gets in the way.
At night Myung-hui would sit alone in the dark and think about her daughter, about what she was doing, and what she looked like. Songmi's birthdays were the hardest. She would take a doll from the cupboard and talk to it, pretending it was her daughter, looking for some way to keep their connection alive.
As Songmi's mother recounts their time apart, from the safety of her kitchen table, she starts to cry. Her daughter strokes her arm. "Stop crying, all your pretty make-up is getting ruined," she says.
After paying a broker £17,000 ($20,400), Myung-hui was finally able to arrange her daughter's escape. Suddenly, Songmi's decade of waiting, with dwindling hope, was over.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
I couldn't work or plan for tomorrow.
After crossing the Yalu River into China, she kept herself hidden, stealthily moving between locations at night, afraid of being caught once more. She rode a bus over the mountains and into Laos, where she took shelter in a church, before making it to the South Korean embassy. She slept at the embassy for another three months, before being flown to South Korea. When she arrived, she spent months in a resettlement facility, which is typical for North Korean escapees. The whole journey took one year but, to Songmi, it felt like 10.
Post a Comment