User:Gblack504/sandbox

Escape from North Korea
For many North Korean defectors, they must escape through China, which is allied with North Korea and sends back any defectors they find. China sees North Korea as a buffer between them and U.S. dominated South Korea. If the defectors are sent back, they will summarily be executed. North Korean defectors who escape successfully, still worry that their families will be executed by the government as traitors. Even if the defectors successfully escape from North Korea and then choose to go back, they will be killed because it would be seen as betraying their country. Because of this difficulty of going through China legally, they must go through by the black market and the human trafficking system. Many are mistreated and risk being sold into sexual slavery. For example, a North Korean defector named Kim was sold to a Chinese pimp. Also, six-months pregnant at the time, she was forced to terminate her pregnancy. It is reported by a pastor, also named Kim, willing to help many a North Korean escape in China, that 70-80% percent of North Korean defectors are mistreated like this. In situations like this North Korean defector, it costs Pastor Kim around $10,000 to save her because he would have to buy her from her owner. In order to escape China, Pastor Kim sends her along, with fellow defectors he is helping, on a bus line that will take them from Northern China to the Southern border. From there, Pastor Kim takes them along the Mekong river through Laos in order to get to them to Thailand. Anybody helping these defectors, risk getting sent to Laotian prison. After Pastor Kim smuggles them across the Laotian border into Thailand, he must leave them by themselves so he can go back across the Mekong to find the Thai patrol in order to enter the country legally. As he comes to find the girls where he left them, he finds that they have been caught. Luckily, they have been caught by the Thai police, who will not send them back. They remain with the Thai police until a South Korean embassy official comes to legally make Kim and the other girls South Koreans so they may go on with their journey to a safe country. As other defectors get to their safe country. It is clear how difficult it was for them to choose to escape from North Korea and survive. Hunger was one reason to escape from North Korea. Oh is a defector who defected in 2011, says that all the people in North Korea are tired of their life, many are starving and have no hope of getting out of their impoverished state. Many risk execution if they even speak up a little bit about the state that their in. However, Kim claims that many defectors lack the basic skills to live and work in a modern society - operating a cash machine, driving a car, using a phone or a computer. Mr. Kim says it is fortune to live in South Korea but at the same time, it is unfortunate.