Finally Free
I went to Southeast Asia to see where LiNK’s Field Team rescues North Korean refugees. Here’s what I found…
Refugees must cross terrain like this to reach safety in Southeast Asia
We’re on a dirt road weaving around potholes.
On one side, the rice reaches to the horizon. On the other, corn stretches higher than the van.It feels like rural Iowa, but hotter and with palm trees.
The van lurches along, swaying back and forth with the ruts in the road. We’ve been driving for five hours through dense jungle and villages so small that you’d miss them if you blinked. It’s starting to seem like we’re in the middle of nowhere.
We finally coast to a stop and LiNK’s Field Manager points to a steep ravine.
“We’re here,” she says.
“We’ve rescued North Korean refugees right here,” she continues.
For the next hour we stop every couple hundred yards. She points to a field or a patch of trees and recounts stories.Stories of screeching to a stop, sliding open the door, and pulling North Korean refugees into the van.Stories of refugees so dehydrated they barely have the words to ask for water.
Stories of people collapsing in exhaustion, caked in mud and peppered with bruises from the long trek through the jungle.“What do refugees do once they’re in the van?” I ask.“Some start crying, the tears stream down their cheeks. They’re so overwhelmed that they finally made it. Others flash smiles in triumph, soaking in every second.”
I realize we’re not on just any dirt road.
This road meanders along the border. You can’t see the line but throw a stone in a certain direction and it’s likely to land in another country.For North Korean refugees this border means everything. Cross it, and they’re safe. The North Korean regime cannot have them arrested and forcibly returned.The danger is finally gone — evaporated in the sweltering heat and suffocating humidity of Southeast Asia.
For the first time in their entire lives: they are free.
It’s a week later and I’m sitting in an air-conditioned coffee shop that sells overpriced lattes.
I’m back in South Korea to interview a North Korean woman who reached freedom through LiNK’s rescue network.It took her four tries to make it to South Korea.She was arrested twice at the North Korean border and once in China. Each time the punishments seemed unimaginable, but they’re terrifyingly common.She recounts the horrific torture she endured for trying to escape. The way they slammed her head into a nail on the wall. The torment of witnessing cellmates whither away from starvation. The heartbreak of watching her 5-year old daughter being beaten in front of her.I’m trying hard to collect the facts. But hers is one of those stories that hollows you out. Leaving you nauseous and numb.The conversation dwindles. I can see the toll that sharing these stories are having. Her shoulders start to slump. She barely looks up to make eye contact anymore.I pull out my phone and show her a video. Her eyes flash with life.
20 seconds pass and she’s still glued to the phone.
It’s a video of that dirt road. And the exact place where she finally reached freedom. There are corn stalks on the left and a small farmhouse hidden behind palms leaves on the right.“Do you remember this place?” I ask.“How could I ever forget it?” she says without looking up.She’s smiling for the first time all afternoon.
Returning Home to a Free North Korea | A Glimpse of Reunification in 2045
By: Eunsook Jang
Eunsook is a 2024 LiNK US Scholarship grantee, a Fulbright Scholar, and a North Korean defector pursuing a master’s degree in international development at Brandeis University, where she focuses on post-conflict, economic, and human development. She holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and international peace from Korea University.
In the spring of 2045, on a flight from Incheon to Pyongyang, Emma's hands tremble. Her husband Sam reaches over and, steadily, holds them without a word. She turns to the window and stares into the pale clouds below the wing.
“I’ve waited 30 years for this day,” she whispers. “But now that I’m here… it doesn’t feel real. I hope this isn’t a dream.”
“Maybe it’s both,” Sam replies. “The dream became real.”
She closes her eyes. In 2015, at just fifteen years old, she crossed the frozen Yalu River in a dark March morning, leaving without saying a proper goodbye to her mother. That guilt, its intensity, has never faded, not even after thirty years. It simply learns to live quietly beside her.
“Will Mom recognize me?” she asks. “We parted when I was fifteen. I’m forty-five now.”
“She will,” Sam answers. “How could a mother not recognize her daughter?”
Emma says nothing. Will I... be able to recognize her? She does not say it aloud this time.
An announcement comes through the cabin speakers: "This is the first return flight for North Korean defectors to their hometowns. We know how much you have endured. We will carry you safely home."
It is a rare moment of comfort from a South Korean voice. Moments later, the plane lifts into the sky.
An hour later, the plane lands in Pyongyang. Emma weeps quietly, overwhelmed by the thought that across so short a distance, lives in the South and the North had been so utterly, irreconcilably different. For thirty years, she had not been able to cross it, that gap, so small.
From Pyongyang, the journey to Hyesan continues by bus. As the skyline of Pyongyang passes past the window, its taller buildings, its broad avenues, Emma allows herself the fragile hope: perhaps Hyesan has developed too.
After five hours on the road, the bus arrives at Hyesan Station. The apartments and the lay of the land are almost entirely unchanged from when she had left thirty years earlier, as if time had refused to move, as if it had been waiting for her. Emma found herself hoping the same might be true of her mother.
A thirty minutes' walk from the station: that is where her mother's house is.
As if drawn by a magnet, her feet start moving on their own.
Sam asks if they are going the right way. Without hesitation, "Yes," Emma replies. "I used to walk this road every day as a child. It’s still in my body."
He points to a bus queue down the street. "There's a bus queue over there. Want to take it part of the way?" She shakes her head gently. "If you don't mind, I'd like to walk." "Then we’ll walk," he replies without hesitation. Emma feels another surge of gratitude, grips on his arm and follows her memory home.
Since Emma left her hometown in 2015, the North Korean regime has conducted ten more nuclear tests as of 2045. And yet the face of this neighborhood has not changed by a single detail. The freedom and human rights that should have been the people's return on those tests have been vaporized into the air.
They arrive at a fork in the road. To the left, an alley leads toward the house. A familiar-looking house comes into view, enclosed by a wooden fence. She stops and stands motionless. It is the house, it is her house.
Several minutes pass. Then the door opens. Emma feels her breath catch. For a second, she forgets how to move.
After thirty years, she is here.
This is what the micropolitics of reunification looks like. Grand narratives, speeches, and legal texts may provide its official language, but its lived realities lie in moments, in feelings, like this: a mother and daughter recognizing each other after thirty years apart.
Author’s note: I dedicate this piece to my father in South Korea, who has never once wavered in encouraging my studies, as if realizing through me the freedom to pursue the dreams that were taken from him. And to my mother, who remains in North Korea: This piece is my proof that your daughter has not turned away from your suffering, but is working, in her own small way, to fight against it. I hope to see you, even if only in my dreams tonight. I love and miss you beyond my expression.
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Eunsook is a participant of the LiNK English Language Program (LELP), which serves to not only help North Korean defectors build confidence and skills in English, but develop their capacity as advocates for this issue. To that end, we partnered with select LELP “columnists” to write and polish personal essays through multiple rounds of external feedback and revision. Our goal is to have more North Koreans share their stories directly and lead efforts to change the narrative.
We believe the North Korean people can achieve their liberty in our lifetime.
Opportunities like LELP invest in the people building that future now. Help more North Koreans find their voice, reach their goals, and lead change on this issue.
