Joy's Story: Part 3 - A Difficult Decision
Read parts one and two of Joy's story that detail her life in North Korea and how she was sold as a bride in China.
When I started living with the Chinese man I was sold to, I thought of escaping after six months. I just did what the Chinese man wanted without thinking about birth-control—I never had proper sex education. Two months later, he and his family took me to a hospital for a pregnancy test. I was pregnant. I am so sorry to my daughter for this, but after I got pregnant was so miserable and I felt like I was stuck in this situation because of the baby. I knew that I couldn’t escape until I gave birth to my daughter and raised her for a while. I was not happy, but the Chinese man and his family were. I am very sorry to my daughter for how I felt about having her back then, but the pregnancy was not what I wanted and I didn’t love the Chinese man. I actually tried to abort the baby by jumping down from a high tree many times but it didn’t happen.
I ended up having a daughter and raised her for two years before I escaped.
When I was still raising my daughter and living with the Chinese man and I was losing hope about my life, the North Korean broker who sold me into marriage got back to me and introduced me to some people who later connected me to LiNK’s network. She told me that she felt really bad for selling me to the Chinese man but she had to do it to survive in China as a North Korean herself. When she told me about going to South Korea and life there, I felt like that was my last chance to have my life back again. At that point, I was no longer breastfeeding and my baby had started to talk, so I thought the Chinese man’s parents could take care of her. I decided to leave for South Korea.
I was so sad to leave my two-year-old daughter in China.
Before I left, I thought of taking her with me, but she was still very young and I was not sure if I was going to make it to South Korea safely so I didn't want to risk her life.
To this day I feel guilty and sorry about having left her so I could have freedom and better life. I know my daughter has been hurt a lot by my leaving.
Before I started moving to get out of China I stayed with some other defectors before I got connected to LiNK's network. At the time, I cried every day thinking of my daughter. Even when I was sleeping in the house, I kept waking up to see if my little daughter was sleeping well on my arm and realized that she was not with me anymore.
I didn't want to cry in front of other defectors, so I cried behind a curtain and I found another North Korean woman crying there because she also left her child. We ended up hugging each other and crying together.
Since I resettled to South Korea a few years ago, I have been talking with my daughter through online video calls as often as possible. She is doing well and is now in elementary school, but I can tell she has been so hurt by my absence in her life. It breaks my heart when she asks me why I am not with her. Whenever there is homework about family or whenever her teacher asks her to bring her mom, she gets so sad and I feel so helpless and remorseful. I plan to visit her in China on one of my summer breaks from college.
It is so ironic because I was so hurt a lot by my mom for leaving me and my family when I was a little kid and I did the same thing to my own daughter.
Now I understand why my mom had to make such a decision...Hopefully there will be a day my daughter can understand and forgive me.
Yoon Ha's Story: Part 3 - Making it to South Korea
This is the third part of a three-part story. Read part one about the hardships Yoon Ha experienced growing up in North Korea, and part two about being trafficked in China.
After connecting with LiNK’s network, I had to hike up more mountains to get out of China. It was very difficult being eight-months pregnant. My legs hurt and began to swell up a lot. It was really dark and I fell a few times. It was so hard - I was completely exhausted.
There were other North Koreans escaping China with me and they were pulling me and helping me up. Whenever I wanted to give up, they encouraged me.
“We must go. We must go to South Korea to live. To live…”
I felt like it was my responsibility to keep going and to survive for myself and my daughter. The journey getting out of China was so tough. I was worried that my unborn baby might have died because I didn’t feel the baby moving in my stomach for a while.
After many months in government processing and after going through the Hanawon resettlement education center, I was finally able to live freely in South Korea. I was overjoyed.
Thankfully, my baby survived and I had a beautiful baby daughter right after I came to South Korea. More than a year later now, I am thankful that she is growing well and is in good health.
In North Korea, the police oppressed me, keeping me from doing what I needed to do to survive. And in China, the police were trying to find North Korean refugees who were living in hiding. They wanted to send us back to North Korea, even though they knew we would be brutally punished by the regime. Whenever the police came around, I locked all the doors and hid in fear until they left town. So at first, I was scared of the police in South Korea.
I got to know my assigned police officer and realized he is just a person like me and we are not that different. (Every resettled North Korean refugee in South Korea is assigned a police officer for their first five years. They check in on them on a regular basis, and provide basic legal advice and special protection if necessary.)
We talked openly and he shared about the challenges he had when he was younger. He calls me once a week to see how my daughter and I are doing. He has brought us fruit and diapers for my daughter. He is so sweet. He also helped me with paperwork, paying bills, and getting my phone fixed when it broke. I really appreciate him and now he feels like a friend to me.
Thanks to people like him, I can sleep well.
I have been surrounded by many good people from my church community, the Hana Center (the local South Korean government resettlement assistance center) and my designated police officer.
It felt so good to talk freely with many people in my first language--Korean. I had lived in China for many years and when I first went there, I knew no Chinese. I struggled so much with communicating and I couldn’t talk to people freely either because of the fear of getting caught.
Now I can talk to anyone without worrying about getting caught.
I am so glad I came to South Korea. My life here is much better than my life in North Korea or China. I feel very safe and free in South Korea.
I am still learning the meaning of freedom as I experience it in this new society. I can do what I want and go where I want to go. I can go somewhere just to have fun and no one stops me.
That is freedom to me, and I am living it right now.
