After fleeing famine in North Korea, Kim Cheol Ok kept a low profile in China for decades, until an attempted escape in which she fell into the hands of Chinese authorities who sent her back to her reclusive country .
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Like her, hundreds of North Koreans have been repatriated by China in recent months to their country of origin, where according to human rights organizations, they risk imprisonment, torture and even death. be executed.
Despite the risks, Kim Cheol Ok’s family made the decision to make her case public after her disappearance.
The woman in her forties made an emergency call to say goodbye, and announce “that she was going to be sent back to (…) North Korea within two hours, and hung up,” explains her sister Kim Kyu-li, who lives in London, to AFP.
AFP
Neither she nor any other member of her family has been able to contact her since.
Thousands of North Koreans are believed to be living illegally in China’s northeastern border regions.
Beijing raids sporadically, but expulsions stopped while the border was closed due to the pandemic. Pyongyang considers unauthorized border crossing to be a serious crime, which is severely punished.
“In North Korea, prison is a dangerous place,” observes Kim Kyu-li. “A lot of people are dying.”
Neither China nor North Korea has officially recognized Kim Cheol Ok’s case.
But AFP corroborated its story with an interview with Kim Kyu-li, a lawyer who campaigns for the deportees, and a Source in China with knowledge of the case but speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
“Severe punishments”
Following the reopening of the border between China and North Korea, an AFP team visited the site.
Chinese border police prohibit journalists from going to four official crossing points.
It was through one of them, in Nanping, opposite the North Korean city of Musan, that Kim Cheol Ok was repatriated.
AFP
Journalists visited other sites on the border, where North Korean soldiers stood guard in watchtowers and behind rows of stakes.
They saw North Koreans cultivating the land or transporting wood. In a strangely empty city, sad music could be heard echoing among the decrepit residential buildings.
On the Chinese side, signs recommend not communicating with North Koreans and promise “severe punishments” for harboring illegal migrants or smuggling.
On the other side of the border, a gigantic North Korean propaganda billboard proclaims: “My country is the best!”
“No news”
Kim Cheol Ok moved to China in the 1990s, when North Korea was experiencing devastating shortages, explains Kim Kyu-li.
AFP
She was sold into marriage to a Chinese man much older than her, with whom she had a daughter and spent decades without a legal existence.
Last year, infected with Covid-19, she sought legal status and health care, and decided to flee China.
“She was so sick that she couldn’t even recognize me,” says Kim Kyu-li.
“She suddenly asked me to take her out” of China. “I told him to wait and that I would do anything” to help him.
In April 2023, Kim Kyu-li hired an intermediary to help her sister cross 4,000 kilometers to Vietnam.
She hoped she would then reach South Korea, which grants citizenship to North Koreans.
From there, Kim Cheol Ok could join her in Britain. But the reunion never happened.
“Usually, when they enter (Vietnam), we receive a call from the intermediary within a week, informing us that they have arrived safely,” explains Kim Kyu-li.
“But after ten days, we had no news.”
Kicked out two hours later
Chinese police intercepted Kim Cheol Ok and two other North Koreans within hours of their departure, Kim Kyu-li and the unnamed Source in China said.
She spent several months in a high-security detention center outside a village near the town of Baishan in the eastern province of Jilin.
Her family says they were unable to find out whether she had been charged, tried or convicted.
They were allowed to bring clothes and money to the center, but were not allowed to see Kim Cheol Ok.
Suddenly, in October, she asked to make one last phone call, says Kim Kyu-li.
AFP
Two hours later, she told her family that she was being sent back to North Korea, and was never heard from again.
Kim Cheol Ok was among around 600 North Koreans expelled from China that month, according to the Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG), a South Korean NGO.
The group estimates that 1,100 were detained for repatriation in December.
AFP was unable to independently verify these figures.
Calls to the facility identified by Kim Cheol Ok’s family went unanswered and officials ordered journalists to leave the area.
“Shooting on sight”
Tens of thousands of North Koreans have crossed into China in recent decades, seeking a better life.
Beijing considers them illegal economic migrants, forcing many of them to turn to third countries in order to then travel to South Korea.
But arrivals have declined since Kim Jong Un came to power more than a decade ago.
AFP
During the pandemic, Pyongyang has strengthened border security and imposed a “shoot on sight” policy, according to the specialist media NK News, based in Seoul.
According to South Korea’s Unification Ministry, only 196 North Koreans managed to travel to the South last year, down from nearly 3,000 in 2009.
Escapes from North Korea fell to “almost zero” after the imposition of Covid-related control measures in 2020, according to Sokeel Park, South Korea director of the Freedom in North Korea association.
Those who managed to leave China were probably already there before the pandemic, he thinks, expecting further expulsions.
“The hope that she is still alive”
Longtime allies China and North Korea have stepped up diplomatic ties in recent months.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared that it would “appropriately treat people who emigrate illegally to China for economic reasons” while the North Korean embassy in China did not respond to requests from AFP.
In London, Kim Kyu-li worries about the fate of her sister. “I am fighting with the hope that she is still alive.” “Just as she survived in China at a young age, I hope she will also survive” in North Korea.
