On a day in mid-November eight North Korean defectors, including five children arrived at a bus terminal in Yenji, China in sub zero temperatures. The forty-year old woman who led the group said that she had graduated from the Kim Hyong-jik Teachers College and had worked as a writer. Her husband had defected to China in January and she followed him later only to find that without her knowledge that she had been sold to a Chinese man for 65,000 yuan (W800,000). She was able to escape after three months, but was tricked by an ethnic Korean and sold again. Two months later she managed a second escape and found refuge with a religious group. There she made up her mind to get to South Korea and so wound up at the bus station, where she plans to set out for another country.
People in Foonchun, which is only ten minutes by car from the North Korean border, are subject to frequent checks by police and border guards. According to a reverend Pak in Yenji, a total of 285 defectors had passed through his church up to October. He said that there are more than 100 churches like his own that accept defectors.
The traditional method of defection for North Koreans is to get to China, work to save some money and learn Chinese, and then make their way to the coast to get aboard a South Korean vessel. However, according to a defector named "Cho," few are doing this now as it is difficult to raise the 35,000 yuan, the crew charge defectors and often they are defrauded. So more and more are heading to Mongolia and Russia.
A defector named Chang is in hiding in Shenyen with a group of five other North Koreans as they do not have the money to travel to Mongolia. Another church in Yenji gives 500 yuan to people who return to North Korea and 100 to those who do not. A volunteer there said that 500 yuan allows five months survival in the North, and that lack of resources was the reason for the allocation of funds. At the moment many North Korea defectors are wandering around in the frozen Manchu region with only the equivalent of W10,000.
(December 10, 1999)
