North Korean refugees in China
Gyu-Hyeon Jeong
Editing
Three years on and a famine dictated by politics still engulfs North Korea . Kim Jong-II made no secret of his willingness to sacrifice 70% of his country’s population, dragging it down in the war effort against North Korea. According to refugees’ reports, 7m people (over an estimated 22m) have already died as a result of famine, sheer exhaustion or simply after having been submitted to summary execution. North Korean men, women and children flee the country in a general exodus, heading towards the Yanji region of China.
Preview
Their real-life accounts give us a taste, for the first time ever, of the sinister flow of events gripping this country, the most unfathomable one in the world. A failed coup d'état (150 soldiers, of which 15 generals, have been publicly executed), incidents of cannibalism, massive opium and arms' production, dozens of exclusive accounts provide undeniable proof that this is, undoubtedly, the greatest humanitarian catastrophe befalling mankind as this century is drawing to a close.
For a handful of corn, North Koreans are prepared to cross the river Tumen, (at the border between China and Korea), risking their own lives : according to the Chief of Police of the Chinese community in Tumen, over 60% of them die, either they get killed under fire by the ambushed soldiers' bullets, or they drown.
Those who manage to make it to Yanji have to hide from the North Korean commandos who have escaped through the net and come across to China, illegally. If these refugees get caught, they are systematically shot in the head by three bullets. As for the children, adults in miniature, whose growth has been stunted by malnutrition, they are tortured before being sent back to their villages.
Despite the danger surrounding them, these people manage to carve out for themselves some sort of life in China. Forced to hide like thieves, they toil just enough to scrimp and save the amount of yuans it takes to return home and hand out their earnings to relatives.
It is the first time that a journalist has ever been allowed to follow them in their daily life.
Bertrand Houard
