Young Korean Defectors Nightmare.

   


 Young Korean Defectors Nightmare. Edition.cnn.com

Seoul (CNN) -- "Pack your bags you're going to South Korea." These are the words nine young North Korean defectors had waited years to hear having traveled thousands of miles.

Unfortunately it was a lie.

The tragic story of this group of youngsters aged between 15 and 23 takes us back a few years when one by one they managed to cross the heavily-guarded border from North Korea into China to search for food. Most of them were orphans, while others had a parent unable or unwilling to look after them.

A South Korean missionary living in China, known only as M.J. to protect his identity, tried to help the youngsters and has broken his silence to CNN.

"This one child used to live with his father," he explained. "One day his father went into a North Korean military base trying to find food but was caught and beaten to death on the spot. The child witnessed this ... his mother then told him not to come home and threw rocks at him to keep him away."

 Rodents 'a luxury'

The youngsters survived by foraging for scraps in trashcans. Fish bones and discarded rice were mixed to make a porridge, while rodents were considered a luxury. When M.J. first met some of them in December 2009, they had frostbite on their hands and toes from living in an old abandoned building where temperatures plummeted to as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius. Some of them had injuries from beatings by security guards and merchants when they were caught stealing food.

One of the nine, a 20-year-old man, told M.J. he wanted to live in China as "even beggars in China do not go hungry."

"These kids were suffering from malnutrition and disease," recalled M.J. "They had been living in quarters with bad sanitation ... also they all seemed to have suffered in one form or another from tuberculosis. Because they were suffering from malnutrition, their growth was stunted."

M.J. and his wife offered to help the youngsters leave China for Laos -- a landlocked country in South-East Asia -- and then onto a third country, perhaps South Korea or the United States to claim asylum. It is a route that is well traveled by defectors, and the missionary couple had already helped other North Koreans escape to a better life that way.

Living in fear

The nine lived with the couple and several other North Korean defectors in China for almost two years in constant fear of being discovered by the authorities. They could never leave the house during this time. China doesn't treat North Koreans in its territory as refugees and usually sends them back across the border.

"The children had been fugitives for a long time so they were used to this situation," he said. "We had a bed which was buttressed with quite a few books on the bottom as legs. The kids would go under the bed and kick out the books, so the bed would sit low and it would not look like anyone was hiding under it."

The couple tried to organize adoptive parents for the youngsters in the United States but without success. And so the long trip to the Laos border began.

The youngsters experienced some firsts along the way: One defector celebrated his birthday for the very first time; they visited an amusement park, which was a new experience; and they played barefoot on a beach for the first time. Finally, they were able to enjoy simple pleasures many children across the world take for granted.