According to a BBC report, 26-year-old Jeon Gwang-jin was a prison guard in North Korea, while Kim Seon, a female inmate, was imprisoned for helping fellow North Koreans escape their desperate lives. Kim Seon dressed elegantly when incarcerated and carried herself gracefully, catching Jeon Gwang-jin’s attention. This was Kim Seon’s second time in prison.
On the surface, Kim Ji-seon and Jeon Gwang-jin had nothing in common. Kim Ji-seon was a prisoner with some understanding of life outside North Korea’s harsh communist rule. At the same time, Jeon Gwang-jin had spent the past decade in military service, steeped in North Korea’s authoritarian communist ideology. However, they shared a deep frustration with their lives and a sense of having no way out.
Kim Ji-seon’s story
Kim Ji-seon was a so-called intermediary. She helped North Korean defectors contact their families who remained in North Korea, primarily assisting with money transfers and phone calls. Since North Korean phones cannot make or receive international calls, Kim Ji-seon used smuggled phones from China and charged a fee for her services.
For ordinary North Koreans, this was a lucrative business. Kim Ji-seon charged about 30 percent commission. Research shows that the average remittance from defectors was around 2.8 million South Korean Won (US$2,142).
Kim Ji-seon was first arrested for a hazardous type of intermediary service — helping North Koreans cross the border into China. She said: “Without connections in the military, this business would be impossible.” She bribed soldiers to turn a blind eye. However, it was these same military connections that eventually betrayed her.
She was sentenced to five years at the Onsong Detention Center in the far north of North Korea. Due to the high risks, Kim Ji-seon planned to leave the intermediary business when she was released. However, new changes in her life forced her to reconsider this decision. While she was serving her sentence, her husband remarried and took their two daughters with him. She needed to find a new way to survive.
She dared not help people defect anymore, but she could still use her connections to run a lower-risk intermediary service — assisting defectors in South Korea to transfer money and make illegal phone calls to their families. North Korean phones cannot make or receive international calls, so Kim Ji-seon used smuggled phones from China and charged a fee. However, she was arrested again. She took a boy from her village up a mountain to receive a call from the boy’s mother, who had escaped to South Korea. Secret police followed them.
In North Korea, engaging in activities related to enemy countries (South Korea, Japan, and the United States) is a severe crime, and even mere suspicion can lead to harsher punishments than murder. After her second arrest, Kim Ji-seon knew her future would be bleak. To her, escaping was the only way to survive. Meeting Jeon Gwang-jin became a turning point in her fate.
Jeon Gwang-jin’s story
Although Jeon Gwang-jin did not fear for his life, he was deeply frustrated. His childhood dream was to become a police officer. He had already started his mandatory military service, performing daily tasks such as guarding statues of North Korean leaders or planting grass for livestock. One day, his father suddenly told him what the future would be like. “Be realistic; someone with my background can never succeed (in getting that position).”
Jeon Gwang-jin’s parents were farmers: “In North Korea, rising requires money… It’s getting worse… Even for university entrance exams, bribing professors for good grades has become the norm.” Even if one could get into a top university and achieve the highest grades without money, it was hard to secure a bright future. He said: “I know someone who graduated with top honors from Kim Il-sung University but ended up selling fake meat in the market.”
For most North Koreans, survival itself is already tough. Therefore, when Jeon Gwang-jin realized that his ambition to become a police officer was impossible, he began to think of another way to change his life. He was later stationed at a detention center in Wonsan County, near the Chinese border in Yanbian, Jilin.
A guard and a prisoner escape together: a first in North Korean history
Jeon Gwang-jin and Kim Ji-seon first met in May 2019 in the Onsong Detention Center. When he met Kim Ji-seon, escaping was just a seed. As they talked more, the seed began to sprout. After her trial, Kim Ji-seon was sentenced to four years and three months in the dreaded Chongori prison camp. She knew she might never leave Chongori prison alive. Former inmates revealed rampant abuse in this North Korean prison.
“I was desperate, thought about suicide dozens of times, and cried and cried,” she said. “Once you go to a prison camp, you lose your citizenship,” Jeon Gwang-jin said. “You are no longer a person; you’re no different from an animal. I want to help you, sister. You might die in the prison camp. The only way I can save you is to help you escape.” But like many North Koreans, Kim Ji-seon had learned not to trust others easily. She thought it might be a trick. “Are you a spy? What benefit do you get from monitoring and destroying me?”
One day, he whispered a few words to Kim Ji-seon that changed their lives. They decided to escape. “My heart was pounding like crazy,” Kim Ji-seon said. “There has never been a prisoner and a guard escaping together in North Korean history.” On July 12, Jeon Gwang-jin knew the time had come. Kim Ji-seon’s transfer day to Chongori prison was imminent, and his superiors had gone home for the night.
Ready to die, but winning a chance at life
Jeon Gwang-jin considered everything — cutting the surveillance lines and volunteering to extend his night shift. He even prepared a pair of shoes for her at the back door. At midnight, Jeon Gwang-jin woke Kim Ji-seon, ready to follow the planned route to escape. The night before, he had prepared two backpacks filled with food, spare clothes, a knife, and poison. After preparing everything, he also took a gun. Kim Ji-seon advised him not to bring the weapon, but Jeon Gwang-jin insisted.
“I understood that it was only that night. If we didn’t succeed that night, I would be caught and then killed. If they stopped me, I would shoot, then run. If I couldn’t escape, I would shoot myself.” If they failed, he would stab himself and take the poison. “Once I was ready to die, I feared nothing,” Jeon Gwang-jin said. They jumped out the window together and ran across the detention center’s playground. Under the darkness, they jumped out the window, climbed over the fence, crossed the rice fields, and successfully crossed the river.
“If I were alone, I could just swim across. But I had a backpack… and a gun. If the gun got wet, it would be useless, so I held it high with my hand. But the water kept getting deeper.” But Kim Ji-seon couldn’t swim. He held the gun in one hand and dragged her with the other. “When we reached the middle of the river, the water was over my head,” Kim Ji-seon said. “I started choking and couldn’t open my eyes.”
She begged Jeon Gwang-jin to go back. “I told her: ‘If we go back, we will die. If we die, let’s die here, not there.’ But I was already… exhausted, thinking: ‘Is this how I die? Is this the end of everything?'” Eventually, Jeon Gwang-jin’s feet touched the ground. They stumbled ashore, crossed the last piece of land, and reached the barbed wire at the China-North Korea border. Even then, they were not safe.
They hid in the mountains for three days until they met a local who lent them a phone. Kim called an intermediary she knew for help. The intermediary said North Korean authorities were on high alert and had dispatched a team to arrest them, working with Chinese police to search the area. After escaping North Korea, Jeon Gwang-jin changed his mind and wanted to go to the United States instead of South Korea.
“Come with me to the United States,” he pleaded with Kim Ji-seon. She shook her head. “I’m not confident. I don’t speak English. I’m scared.” Jeon Gwang-jin tried to persuade her, saying they could learn English together. “Wherever you go, don’t forget me,” Kim Ji-seon said quietly.
He felt sad that the woman who had been with him through so much would be going to a different destination. But they were both happy to leave North Korea’s oppressive regime. Kim Ji-seon said she had never been allowed to visit Pyongyang’s capital. “In hindsight, we all lived in a prison. We could never go where we wanted or do what we wanted; North Koreans have eyes, but cannot see; ears, but cannot hear; mouths, but cannot speak.”
The two successfully escaped through China and recounted their thrilling escape to a BBC Korean reporter at a safe location. For safety reasons, the BBC could not disclose the interview location.
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