6/1/2023 0 Comments Kim corea the inn between![]() And some are leaving because they want to be able to speak their minds. Some are leaving because their dreams of success and riches in the North Korean system are being thwarted. Some are leaving North Korea because they want their children to get a better education. And this leads many North Koreans to dream in a way they hadn’t before. Market activity is exploding, and with that comes a flow of information, whether as chitchat from traders who cross into China or as soap operas loaded on USB sticks. Now, they are leaving because they are disillusioned. Increasingly, North Koreans are not fleeing their totalitarian state because they are hungry, as they did during the 15 or so years following the outbreak of a devastating famine in the mid-1990s. There are only a few problems in North Korea these days that money can’t solve.Īs life inside North Korea is changing, so too are people’s reasons for escaping. Today, North Koreans are making their own way, earning money in an entrepreneurial and often illegal fashion. They paint a picture of a once-communist state that has all but broken down, its state-directed economy at a standstill. They were introduced to The Post by groups that help North Korean escapees, including No Chain for North Korea, Woorion and Liberty in North Korea.īut in talking about their personal experiences, including torture and the culture of surveillance, they recounted the hardships of daily life under Kim Jong Un’s regime. Some parts of their stories cannot be independently verified because of the secretive nature of the regime, and their names have been withheld to protect their family members still in North Korea. ![]() Many are from the northern parts of the country that border China - the part of North Korea where life is toughest, and where knowledge about the outside world just across the river is most widespread - and are from the relatively small segment of the population that is prepared to take the risks involved in trying to escape. ![]() In barbecue restaurants, cramped apartments and hotel rooms, these refugees provided the fullest account to date of daily life inside North Korea and how it has changed, and how it hasn’t, since Kim took over from his father, Kim Jong Il, at the end of 2011. In six months of interviews in South Korea and Thailand, The Washington Post talked with more than 25 North Koreans from different walks of life who lived in Kim Jong Un’s North Korea and managed to escape from it. And at home, freedom of speech, and of thought, is still a mirage. Even as he has allowed greater economic freedom, he has tried to seal the country off more than ever, tightening security along the border with China and stepping up the punishments for those who dare to try to cross it. Someone with experience of the outside world.īut the “Great Successor,” as he is called by the regime, has turned out to be every bit as brutal as his father and grandfather before him. He offered the hope of generational change in the world’s longest-running communist dynasty. When Kim Jong Un became the leader of North Korea almost six years ago, many North Koreans thought that their lives were going to improve. “In North Korea, life only gets better if the state helps you.
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