Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans are detained in penal facilities. Thousands are exploited in forced labour. Millions have their rights to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, movement, and opinion violated.
I knew I had to survive on my own. So I would eat anything — lizards, snakes, rats. In the springtime I would eat grass, but if you eat the wrong grass you would get poisoned, swollen and bloated.
You are brainwashed from the time you know how to talk — from nursery school onwards. North Korea is a fenced world. They want the people to be blind and deaf to the outside world, so they won’t know what is happening.
Testimonies recorded by the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
To reach safety, escapees must avoid detection at the Chinese border, sex traffickers, the Chinese authorities, and North Korean agents. Even then, freedom brings new barriers — language, qualifications, and everyday tasks like using an ATM.
The combination is often too much to overcome alone. Many find themselves trapped in low-paid work, unable to build the lives they dreamed of.
Without support, North Koreans escape oppression only to find they are unable to make use of their new-found freedoms.
Connect: North Korea empowers North Korean escapees through four core areas of support.
Transforming lives means creating pathways to careers, financial security and wellbeing. With those in place comes something escapees have never had: the freedom to choose.
The choice to take a job. The choice to travel. The choice to make a new friend. Rights everyone deserves — and all the more precious to people who have known such oppression.
Your support helps raise awareness of this under-reported crisis — and funds the work that helps escapees build new lives in freedom.
Connect: North Korea
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