4 North Korean refugees, 3 women and 1 man, hiding in China were arranged for interview by a European journalist to testify during the first week of March, 2008, to the dreadful conditions of hiding in China. However, two women of the 4 were arrested at a restaurant in the Sitap district in Shenyang by the city Police at around 7:00 o’clock on the evening of Wednesday, 5 March while taking dinner with a South Korean sympathetic to their plight. The Chinese plainclothes police, some thirty strong, brazenly broke in on the women refugees and a South Korean citizen, upsetting the quiet dinner with surprisingly excessive use of force and hostility . The two women were seen forced into a police bus the next day, Thursday, 6 March, to an unknown location with the additional two refugees, one woman and a man. We have no information how woman and man were arrested. It is our understanding that the arrest by the Chinese police was due to a tip from a North Korean agent who was disguised as a North Korean refugee.
The following profile is of two of the arrested refugees, which were gathered the day before
or the very day they were arrested:
North Korean Romeo and Juliet
I am a North Korean and my name is Hahn Chang-kuk, 30 years old in 2007 (June 19976) My father was an artist and writer and my mother just ordinary housewife. I grew up in one of the provincial capitals of North Korea. I finished my High School education in 1994 and remained unemployed until July 1996 when, at 6 o’clcok in the morning one day, I was arrested with my father by state security officers one day. Three plainclothes service men arrived at our home and took us to the Provincial State Security Officers. My mother was forced to divorce my father to be spared from the arrest.
At the state security office I was separated from my father and told to write down my life story and all about my friends. This was really ridiculous and I was not able to satisfy them with my statement and was forced to repeat writing several times, amid kicking and beating with heavy key chains. I was without any knowledge of the charges against me, After a month or so in the state security office, my father and myself, hand-cuffed and fettered, were taken to an unknown location which we found later to be a the most dreaded Yodok Camp, No. 15. The camp was literally a living hell, the brutalities accompanying all processes in the camp. Food was very small while the work was so heavy. I was in the same house with my father and worked at a potato farm most of the time,
During the 4 years of my detention there, I have not seen any public execution but know of 3 cases of political prisoners missing. One day in April 1999, my father and I were collecting fire wood at a hillside when we were discovered by 3 fully armed guard who beat my face with rifle buts. I fell to the ground and almost unconscious but realized that my father was also being beaten and they continued to kick me for about 20 minutes. I do not know how I reached home and I could gather that my father carried me home. When I woke up the next day, my father was next to my bed but was seriously wounded. It was in the evening when I came back to myself and I found my father dead the following morning. There were some 30 prisoners in my village and I still remember that a mid-aged woman cautioned me to be careful because she saw a young man buried alive for insubordination. No one paid any attention to my injury and death of my father. I was surprised when I was released one day in November 2000.
I returned to my home to find my mother still waiting for us but we were soon banished to a remote farm in inhospitable mountainous terrain. About a year later, I managed to return to my hometown to see my friends and my girl friend and return to my farm without detection.
I managed to see my girl friend, Lee Jong-sun in my hometown occasionally, and eventually agreed to stay together and seek a new life and freedom in South Korea in early September, 2007. We spent some 7 days walking about 250 kilometers to the border and crossed the border at midnight on 29 September 2007. We reached Shenyang, the provincial capital of Liaonling Province of China, and tried to sneak in to the South Korean Consular office in vain. We found a hiding place in the Korean Town of the city. I tried hard to find job and I was not successful to this date to get any job. My girl friend found jobs as cleaners, laundry woman or maid at half the wage of the already low Chinese wage. She had to change jobs twice already for reason of security during the past several months.
In December, 2007, my girl friend found a job at a hostel as a maid. There were some 5 prostitutes including North Korean girls. The owner was speaking North Korean dialect, spoke some Chinese but my girl friend was not able to see how fluent his Chinese is as she does not speaking Chinese herself. But he went back and forth between China and North Korea rather frequently.
On 27 February 2008, The hostel operator confined my girl friend in one of their rooms and tried to convince her to abandon me and find a new Chinese husband. This was his effort to sell my girl friend. As she did not come home for 2 days, I went to the place and knock on the door to find out what happened to my wife. They shut the door before me saying my girl friend is not there. On March 1, 2008, my girl friend managed to break away from the house and returned to our hiding place. Then, we received a call from the operator that he was willing to pay us the outstanding wage. We went to his hostel as there were girls and no men. As we were inside, two young men followed and began to beat and kick us for about two hours, threatening to kill us if my girlfriend refuses to stay with them. We kept defying his demand and eventually were released. We were both seriously wounded now. I was so badly injured that my girl friend needed to support me as we came to our hiding place. Today, as of 3 March, 2008, as confirmed by the human rights activists helping North Koreans, we are in bad shape. We like to get out of China for South Korea as soon as possible. We need your help!
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