Word: kim
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...Kim Myong Suk was one of them. In February 1998, she fled North Korea for China. In October of that year, however, Chinese police conducted one of their periodic raids in search of refugees from the North. She tried to hide, but two policemen discovered her. She was arrested and sent back to North Korea, where she was sentenced to three years in a labor camp. "We were so hungry in the camps that we used to pick up and eat the remains of apples that the guards had thrown away." After a year and a half, during which...
...flee again. Her mother and an older sister had followed her out of North Korea and were living in Heilongjiang, a province in northeastern China. Refugees say the most common way to cross the 900-mile North Korea-- China border is to bribe a guard on the Korean side. Kim, however, relied on a friend who lived near the border and each night watched the routes patrolled by the guards. "You knew where they were going to be and where they weren't going to be and when," Kim says. "My friend guided me." On a bitterly cold night...
...time, Kim says, she had no thoughts of going beyond China. While she was in the labor camp, her mother had begun attending a church for ethnic Koreans. "I started to pray for her all the time there," her mother says. In February 2004, after Chinese police raided the church, Kim's mother and sister fled to Seoul, but Kim didn't follow. "I was frightened by what had happened to me the first time," she says. "I didn't want to try to get out and risk getting caught." For the next year, Kim lived a quiet life with...
...successful operation needs money, a meticulous plan and reliable people. The operatives working in China are critical. Peters and Kim Sang Hun prefer to depend on fellow Christian activists but will work with trustworthy brokers. There's no magic formula for knowing how many people or how much money is needed. Nor can the route be specified in advance, although right now there are two hot roads out of China--one through Mongolia, another through Laos...
...Kim Myong Suk told her mother she was ready to go. Peters had raised $1,500 for the operation, and he and Kim Sang Hun had recruited four people to help. Kim Myong Suk's husband did not intend to leave China but accompanied her to the Laotian border. That was critical; it meant there was no need for safe houses, since the authorities would see just an ordinary couple traveling through the country. On Dec. 9, they boarded a train headed for the city of Kunming in southern China. Several days later, with the help of two fixers hired...