Escaping the most closed regime on the planet: This is how Jo Eun-Sil escaped from North Korea

His family in the south had arranged everything. He communicated with them by approaching the Chinese border and using a smuggled foreign mobile phone. They hired a “human smuggler” from Seoul. They paid him 23,000 euros because he was one of the top brokers and had very good connections in the government and was bribing him.

The woman prepared for a week. She left traps so that it would take time for the observer of the regime that controls her life to realize that she had escaped. She reached the Tumen River, the natural border separating North Korea from neighboring China. She put her clothes in a bag and He crossed the river at his head. “I got the water from here,” he says, pointing at the level of his stomach. Jo Eun-Sil is a petite young woman who stands just over 6 feet tall.

He managed to cross the street. He had to go from China to Laos. From Laos to Thailand to South Korea. It wasn’t fast. He had to wait in detention in Thailand for weeks.

This happened in 2019. Few people have managed to leave North Korea since then, according to Amnesty International, the humanitarian organization that brought him to Spain to tell his story and remember the repression in North Korea. Kim Jong-un decided that year Tighten the controls even further At the border to prevent covid from devastating the poor country. The hermit kingdom was further isolated from the world.

“You get rewarded for your efforts here”

Jo Eun-Sil (pseudonym, she does not want her name on record, although she allows her photos to be taken) is 26 years old today. studying accounting and Works at a Korean tapas restaurant in Seoul, where he lived with his uncles. His parents and two brothers are still in North Korea. They are the only thing he misses about his country.

A normal day in North Korea consists of following a strict schedule set by the government. One person, called the group leader, controls everything and prepares conduct reports for authorities. Those who engage in bad behavior (for opposing the government or doing illegal things, such as watching banned movies) may eventually be arrested.

So Jo Eun-Sil woke up, worked, worked, and slept in an endless cycle that was unrewarding at all. confess it Yes there was room for love and there was a partner too. During the holidays, people rested: the women of the house cooked, and free time consisted of eating. Every remaining home has a five-channel television, which brings in state propaganda and some controlled entertainment.

He considers himself lucky not to go hungry. His family belonged to him “middle or upper middle class”. He was born in Pyongsan County, northern Hwanghae Province. His father was a soldier and his mother was a doctor in oriental medicine. When he was a high school student, his father was discharged from the military due to illness. That’s when things started to go wrong. “There was a month when we didn’t eat rice.”, he says, downplaying the impact because he knew others who were in much worse situations. “One day, some of my acquaintances told me that they spent the winter days sleeping at home. I asked them why. They told me it was cold outside and there was no rice at home. “The best thing is to stay at home until you die.”

He studied Planning and Statistics at the Faculty of Economics. The government gave him an unpaid and compulsory job at a post office. This is what I hated the most: “Your efforts are not rewarded”. That and seeing how those who belong to the party and the Government prosper. There were rich people in North Korea and he knew some of them. What kind of rich? Their homes have large televisions, modern phones and many state-of-the-art gadgets. And of course, they are not deprived of food. These are high-level officials or people who have permission to do business with China and are devoted primarily to distribution.

“A higher and stronger wall outward”

Government on November 1 North Korea decided to close its embassy in SpainIt opened in 2014 and resulted in the withdrawal of ambassador Kim Hyok-chol. He did the same for delegations and various consulates in other countries such as Uganda or Angola. According to a South Korean official quoted by Yonha agency, the main reason for this seems to be the regime’s financial problems.

“They have economic problems, but this is also a political message,” Jae-hoon Choi, an expert on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea at Amnesty International Korea, told this newspaper. “Pyongyang [la capital] “After the coronavirus, it has built a higher and stronger wall outward,” he explains.

Donald Trump became the first US president to set foot on North Korean soil in 2019. Washington supported the Republic of Korea During the war of the 50s Against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, defended by China and the Soviet Union.

The image of Trump shaking the hand of North Korean religious leader Kim Jong-un at the famous Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) gave hope for a new peace gradual opening of communist dictatorship. It didn’t work. This year 2023 alone, North Korea launched a dozen long-range ballistic missiles in a gesture of confrontation against the West that served to strengthen Kim Jong-un’s iron hand within the country. If they are at war, everything is fine.

Repression and camps re-education, incarceration and forced labor, more specific to the cold war. Jae-hoon Choi knows a lot about this because he served as program director at NK Watch, a Korean human rights organization founded in 2003 by survivors of North Korean political prison camps.

He has conducted in-depth interviews with more than half a thousand North Korean defectors over the past decade. He says human rights violations in North Korea are systematic. Young Jo Eun-Sil will no longer have to live in fear of being detained and sent to one of these camps.