Minecraft Footage Smuggled Out Of
North Korea

The video's fiction. What happens inside North Korea and after leaving isn't.

Headlines across the world focus on nuclear proliferation in North Korea — yet the human rights crisis inside the country is harming 25 million people right now.

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.

Over 30,000 have escaped North Korea in search of food, liberty, and safety abroad. Escape is only the first of many hurdles. Reaching safety means avoiding detection at the Chinese border, traffickers, and North Korean agents. Once they reach freedom, freedom brings new barriers: a new language, unrecognised qualifications, everyday tasks like using an ATM. Without support, many North Koreans escape oppression only to find themselves trapped in low-paid work, unable to build the lives they risked everything for. That's where Connect: North Korea steps in. Since 2018 we've worked alongside escapees as they build new lives, supporting them through casework, English tuition, wellbeing support, and pathways into education and employment.

Our Impact in 2025