SEOUL — Hardly anyone has escaped from North Korea these past four years, since leader Kim Jong Un shuttered his country’s border with China in the earliest days of the pandemic.
North Korea, run by the totalitarian Kim regime for almost eight decades, has long been one of the world’s most reclusive and repressive countries, a dire place in which to live but an extremely difficult place from which to escape. Julie Turner, U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights issues, has also met with Kang and was struck by the lengths to which she went to escape.noting that North Koreans are having to resort to boats. “People are still so hungry for opportunities that they’re looking at these much more treacherous routes.”The land route through China carried immense risks, including repatriation to North Korea — and extreme punishment — if caught.
Kang and Kim lived a middle-class life in South Hamgyong province on the east coast, although they were far from the border with China, where almost all trade happened. That didn’t matter much before the pandemic because the market economy had well and truly taken hold across North Korea.border closures. Then crackdowns on food vendors and the markets that sustain the North Korean economy, they said. Their quality of life deteriorated sharply.
“Now, it feels unsustainable even for the savviest,” Kim said. “The government is taking over , but they’re not giving us anything else in return.”. North Korea then claimed it eradicated the “fever” virus in just three months, and that just 74 “fever” patients — about 0.0003 percent of its population — died, which would make North Korea’s covid fatality rate the lowest in the world.
“Different escapees are telling us independently that North Korean people’s sentiment and mentality evolved significantly during the pandemic in a more disaffected and skeptical direction,” Park said.After Kang dropped out of college during the pandemic to make money, she bought the boat with her mom’s help — her mother had $4,000 in savings, a fortune in North Korea — to start a small fishing operation.
The waves that night were unexpectedly high, lifting their boat off the water at each crest and crashing it down at each trough, Kang and Kim said.
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