Word: changbai
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...first glimpse of hell appears around a forested bend in China's northeastern Jilin province. Up ahead, the Yalu River narrows to a weed-choked span just 20 meters across. On one side is gaudy Changbai, a Chinese city with neon-tinted karaoke lounges and rowdy bars. The other side looks like a sprawling concentration camp, with barrackslike buildings and barbed wire strewn about. This is the North Korean town of Hyesan. A giant sign on a hill above the riverbank proclaims: "Long live General Kim Jong Il, Sun of the 21st Century!" But the 21st century doesn't appear...
...euphemistically named "beauty salons." But thousands more are sold by human traffickers as wives to Chinese men who are either too poor to afford a dowry or are considered undesirable to Chinese women because they are old, divorced or disabled. An ethnic-Korean aid worker who lives in the Changbai area estimates that about half of all North Korean women in China?some 95,000 women?arrived as bought brides. Here are the stories of how two such women?we've concealed their full identities for their protection?braved danger and hardship for a fresh start in China...
...later, the pair were ensconced in a safe house and gulped down an entire washbasin filled with rice and chives. It was the most satisfying meal Ryu remembers ever eating. Soon after, she was sold by the North Korean middleman to a Chinese smuggler for $36. In turn, the Changbai dealer sold her to a Chinese farmer in a village near the Jilin town of Baishan for $600. They now have a four-year-old daughter, and the farmer treats Ryu well. His family trusts her so much that she's even in charge of the family finances...
...Korean bride, whose tale has less of a storybook ending. Kim was a nurse back in North Korea and first tried to come to China seven years ago. Instead of crossing into a city, where she could melt into the crowds, Kim hiked up into the rugged mountains surrounding Changbai. Up in the alpine tundra, there were no border markings, and Kim wandered for days, unsure at first if she had reached China or was still in North Korea. To protect her chapped feet from the snow, she wrapped grass around her legs and hid in piles of leaves...
...province is no easy task. From Beijing it means an overnight train to the Manchurian sprawl of Shenyang, then another eastward to the industrial city of Tonghua, followed by a gut-churning hour in a taxi via the hairpin turns and dense forests of the precipitous peaks of the Changbai range. Simply reaching Ji'an's narrow valley sanctuary along the Yalu River in one piece feels like a miracle...
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