10/04/2004

“My husband and I decided to come to China because our background was considered suspect by the North Korean authorities.  My parents were treated like political prisoners.  My father was a businessman who defected to South Korea and my mother had studied abroad.  We did not want to pass this on to our children.”  As she talked, this 44-year-old mother of three nervously stared at her hands, anxiously looking up only to look behind her shoulder to make sure no one was listening.

Because her parents were considered enemies of the Party in North Korea, she and her husband were unable to become Party members and were thus condemned to live their lives as third class citizens in a country where survival is guaranteed by Party loyalty.  Party members receive the best food and the best jobs, and in most cases, non-Party members barely survive.  Her husband was a farmer.  He was forced to give most of what he grew to government officials, so they did not have enough to eat.  Survival and a better future for her children were the reasons she and her husband decided to go to China in 2000.

She, her husband and her children crossed into China in the winter when the river was frozen.  When she arrived in China, their lives were incredibly difficult.  She had a six-month-old baby, and it soon became clear that she was unable to take care of her.  She met a Christian woman who introduced her to a “foster family.”  With tears running down her face, she explained how she gave away her baby in the hope that her daughter would have a better life.  She said, “They offered to pay me for my daughter but I could not accept it.  Even if I die of starvation, I can’t sell my baby.  I hope she will grow up like Moses.”

After she gave up her baby, she and her family wandered from place to place.  She and her husband did menial jobs for Chinese, and they received some assistance here and there from Korean-Chinese people who took pity on them.

Soon after she arrived in China, she converted to Christianity.  Her daughter and son also converted.  The same year they arrived in China, Chinese authorities caught her 20-year-old daughter during a Bible study.  The Chinese deported her daughter and because studying the Bible is a political crime in North Korea, she was put in a prison for political criminals for one and a half years.  The mother’s eyes again filled with tears as she described how she is trying to bring her daughter back to China so they can be together.  She said, “I have asked a broker (trafficker) to arrange to bring my daughter to me.  I will pay as much as he asks.  It usually costs $150-$200.  My son is in hiding because he is studying the Bible.  I want my daughter here with me.”  

In 2002, her husband was deported back to North Korea.  She has not seen him again, although she has heard that he remarried.  One of the women in her church introduced her to a Chinese man who is now her husband.  

Family separation is the norm for North Koreans living in China.  Every North Korean that Refugees International interviewed on our last trip to China had been separated from their family—husbands from wives, parents from children.  Maintaining “family units” in China is an almost impossible task for North Koreans, especially given that deportations are so common.  Out of sheer necessity, families separate to improve their chances for survival.  When asked what her greatest wish for the future was, she began to cry again.  “I want my family to be together again.  I don’t know where any of my children are.  Even though we are all separated, I hope God will bring us together again.”