On August 13, 2005, I followed the lady and crossed over into China. We went through Musan and we bribed the guards there. The broker and the guards were collaborating. The guards told me that they would send me over to some ethnic Koreans in China. I'm sure they received some money from those ethnic Chinese, and the security guards, of course, went back into North Korea afterwards.
I changed my clothes completely, once I went into China. I was loaded into a car and was taken somewhere. It was a restaurant in between Zhongping and Houdidong. When I went into the restaurant, I found two young ladies, one was 27 years of age and the other was 24. They also crossed over from North Korea into China on the same night as me.
The next day the ethnic Han of China came to buy these defectors and the two ladies were bought immediately. I was told to say that I was 37 years of age by the ethnic Chinese I was with, but the Han people who came to buy me told the people that I looked over 50 and that they wouldn't buy me. So the next day we kept on seeing people who came to buy North Korean defectors, but they would not buy me.
The ethnic Koreans just put me to work in the restaurant that I was in then and I started working at that restaurant. I was afraid I would get caught by the Chinese police, so I tried to change my accent and pronunciation into the accent of the ethnic Chinese. I worked very well in that Chinese restaurant, so I think they liked me.
They wanted to breed pigs using leftover food scraps. At that time pigs for breeding cost about 15,000 to 18,000 North Korean currency units, but there was a big difference in the price in China. It was much cheaper to get pigs from North Korea than in China, so they sent me back to North Korea to get pigs, so they could breed them at their Chinese restaurant. The restaurant people talked with the security guards and I was sent back into North Korea to go to a market and buy ten pigs to bring back into China.
They sent me over again to buy five more pigs to bring into China. I was about to cross over into China when they sent me back to get five more pigs. There were no more pigs at the market, so I had to wait in the North Korean market. I was caught there by the North Korean security police. There was nothing on my body that could prove my identity at that time because I had everything taken from me once I arrived in China, so there was no way to prove who I was.
I was taken to one of their offices and for one week I was detained for investigation. After that week, I was sent to the safety department of the Musan town. When I went into that safety department, I saw that there were other defectors, two more people who were brought into the detention centre with me. One was 24 and one was 53, and I was there with them.
They knew that I was in another area for a week and they asked us if we had any money. They tried to take any money we had from us. Sometimes they would hide money in the uterus of a woman and they'd take it out by force. In North Korea, the only way you can survive is to have money. I had about ten Chinese bills, and if you roll them up really tight it's about the diameter of your finger. And if you wrap it in plastic, you can swallow it if you can suppress the gagging. I swallowed that money. I swallowed four packets of Chinese money and then I also put four packets through my vagina because I wanted to live.
At the detention centre they tried to stand us up and down so that any money hidden would slide out. But because I had been in the detention centre for about a week before I came to the safety department, they didn't do that to me. The others, the 53-year-old and the 24-year-old who were taken with me to the safety department of Musan, were caught with the money they had on their bodies. All the security officers took that money.
The 24-year-old had her period at that time. In advanced countries when you have your period, you may use disposable pads, but in North Korea you just use cloth because that's the only thing you have. But the guards there were searching for money, of course. I saw at that time when they were inspecting that girl that it really hurt when they were trying to take the money out from the uterus.
Especially when you have something to eat with all that money hidden inside of you, it hurts. So people didn't want to eat, of course. They would beat you so that you would be forced to eat, but you really had to not eat in order to keep the money you had hidden inside your body.
In that detention centre I remember that four times I had to pass stools. In the detention centre you have this partition where you can see the person's head but not the rest of the body. If any money comes out through your stools, the guards of course take it. The smell lasts on the money, of course. But what you do is if you are able to hide the money coming out through your stools, you swallow it again so that at a later point you can still keep it on your body.
On November 3 I was sent to the provincial detention centre. I took the money I had managed to conceal within my body. It amounted to about 47,000 North Korean won. The people at the provincial detention centre took half of that money and I was able to keep half to buy some things to eat while in the detention centre.
I spent three months in the provincial detention centre before I was sent to the number 18 camp once again.
I was of course released before, but then I was sent to that camp again. I was sent there on January 25 of the next year. I was released in 2002, but went back in 2008. Things had changed a bit in the prisoner camp. There were more buildings there. Still, my brothers and sisters were outside of the camp and were able to bring me some food while I was in the camp. I couldn't see the faces of my sisters and brothers, but I did receive food from them. In the 20 days I was in the camp, my siblings kept on supporting me in that way.
Compared to when I was in the camp in 2002, I think the detention camp situation was even more dire. There was one lady I had known from when I was there before. She was about 43 years of age and her husband had died in a mining accident within the prisoner camp. She had been living with a 16-year-old son. Now, this lady, since her husband had died, had to go into the mines to work. She would get the ration of rice for her son and herself. She had gone out to work, but in the meantime her son had opened the rice to eat because he was starving. The mother was outraged and hit her son with an axe and he died. After he died, she took the flesh off the dead body and told other people that it was pork and sold it.
I didn't know at that time that she had killed her son, but later on I heard that this is what she had done. I had received a packet from her that the guards had taken and what I saw was eyeballs that were hanging from some flesh. The officials of the camp saw that. They told me about what had happened in that woman's family. Since that woman was a murderer, she was taken somewhere else. I don't know where.
There were various other incidents like this that happened within the camp. There was a 38-year-old farmer who had a nine-year-old girl who suffered from a high fever. This mother thought that she would maybe just eat her daughter and then kill herself. So she boiled her nine-year-old daughter in boiling water and ate some of the flesh from her body. She had just a bit of salt in her household and she was eating the flesh with some salt. One of the security guards saw that there was smoke coming from her chimney and he went in and saw what had happened. I'm pretty sure that the woman was executed afterwards.
That was the suffering that I saw in the camp. I was sent to a different area after about six months. My leg still was injured at that time so I was sent to help in one of the cafeterias there. I cleaned the restaurant and took care of a lot of things in the restaurant.
One of my jobs was cleaning the restaurant. I saw that early in the mornings and late in the evenings there was no one watching over me while I was doing the cleaning job in the restaurant. I still had some money concealed inside of me, so on March 2, when it was still freezing cold--I didn't have shoes, just socks--I ran away from the camp in my socks in that freezing weather. The socks started to freeze and my feet started to freeze with them.
I ran along any roads that I recognized and I recalled escape routes that people had told me about while I was in the prison camp. I found someone who could go with me back into China, and I went into China once again. Once in China, I was again sold, to an ethnic Korean in China.
I was sold this time to an ethnic Han in China, but I couldn't live there because I was so scared that I'd be caught again. Some brokers asked me if I wanted to go to South Korea. I thought that might be a good idea and first planned to go to South Korea.
I went to Laos to plan my escape to South Korea. We were in groups of six on boats and Laotian soldiers started to shoot at us. The boat that I was on, the people who were in the boat gathered money to bribe the soldiers.
On that boat there was a 43-year-old lady sitting next to me who was repatriated to North Korea seven times before. We had left North Korea in the wintertime, but it was a very warm summer in Laos. So this lady put her hand in the water because it looked so warm and a crocodile bit her hand and starting pulling at her hand. This huge crocodile would not let go of this lady's hand and the people in the boat decided that she needed to be sacrificed or the whole boat would capsize. We kept on riding that boat for about five hours and went to Thailand, and then we were able to escape.
With every breath I still remember my son and my daughter who I lost in the flood. I know that I only have a very short period of time allotted to me, but I'd just like to read to you a letter that I wrote to my son and my daughter who were swept away in that flood.
There has never been a single moment when I have forgotten you. I'm sure that you too think of your mother and probably are looking for me wherever you are. My life has been painful ever since I lost you. I searched all throughout the country for you, but I could hear no news of you, and because of that I left North Korea. I'm so sorry, my son and my daughter. I'm sorry that I could not find you. I left North Korea, leaving behind the pain, and I'm so sorry that I was never able to feed you a warm bowl of rice while we were living with you. Every day I cry and the tears flow as I think of you. Wherever you are, I hope that I will be able to join you.
Thank you very much.