At 1:00pm this reporter took a forty minute walk into the mountains surrounding Yenji to a small camouflaged hut dug into the mountainside. Inside the hut was a woman named Hong and her son Young-chil, who had fled from North Korea in August 1997. Her husband had been gone for two days seeking work. The only possessions in the hut were three sheets, three pans, some bowls, a bible, a radio and some spare clothes. Hong, however was satisfied because as she said "at least we can eat." Rice and other food is purchased using her husbands wages, or from selling rabbits he catches in the mountains and from the help of ethnic Koreans in the area.
When they first left North Korea, Hong lived near the village in a makeshift hut built of vinyl with her two daughters as well as son and husband, but because it was two close to border guard patrols they moved to their present abode. In August 1999 they sent her six and eight year-old daughters to an orphanage run by an underground organization so that they would be safe and could study. The previous April they sold Hong's one month-old son for 500 yuan to a childless ethnic Korean couple. She bought a radio with some of the money and listens to South Korean radio broadcasts.
A man named Hwan who works as a trader in Tandeung said that there are an increasing number of North Korean refugees being maltreated by Chinese and ethnic Koreans, and so more and more of them go into the countryside to hide. "But farms aren't safe either. At the beginning of October five North Koreans were caught by border guards in the village of Sanhap," he added.
Fifteen year-old Kwang-soo is a prime suspect, every time there is a theft in the market at Yenji. Hong Jong-sam said that in early November, when a bicycle was stolen, Chinese police arrested three North Korean children, and whenever corn is missing the first suspects are children.
North Koreans are looked down on and often don't get paid despite working. A man named Jong-pil who came from Musan, Hambuk province in April last year said that he worked on a construction site for three months, but was not paid the 600 yuan he was owed. Kang Hong-won, who defected at the same time said that he had worked at eight places and was paid nothing, but could not do anything about it.
Women have a much harder time. A volunteer working for a defector assistance group said that professional criminals kidnap women in the border area and sell them in inner regions in main land China. Prices range from 200 yuan to 8,000 yuan depending on age and looks.
(December 11, 1999)
