Do you have any idea what it’s like to live in North Korea? Let me give you a taste. You wake up early in the poor rural area you call home. It’s mid-winter, barely 20 degrees Fahrenheit outside, and your only source of heat – a tiny woodburning stove - isn’t nearly enough to keep you warm. You get breakfast and realise that you have one meal’s worth of food that needs to last you for the next three days, when the rations are handed out. Thirsty, you gather ice from the local river to melt, because there’s no infrastructure to provide running water here. You drink from and wash in the dirty water, before spending all day tending a local farm. It’s 12 to 16 hours of backbreaking labour, because the farming industry here hasn’t been mechanised, so everything is done by hand or with animals. As you walk several miles home, because there’s no public transport here and you’re too poor to own a bicycle – let alone a car, you find a dead rat in a ditch. You take it home to eat, because you’re that hungry. As you’re cooking, your front door bursts open, and a group of soldiers swarm in. They ransack your home, help themselves to what little food you have, and leave. You feel…lucky. Lucky?! Yes. Because they have the unchallenged authority to sentence you to years of hard labour in a work camp at any moment, with even less food, more work, corporal punishment from the guards… and worse. You consider doing what you have before - making a soup from grass and weeds, digging out the grain from animal manure, or even eating the manure itself just to quell your hunger. But you’re too exhausted. So, cold and starving, you try to sleep on top of a rotten straw mattress, knowing you’ll wake up and do this all again… and again… and again… until there is no again. If this was your country, you’d want to leave, wouldn’t you? But what if you couldn’t? This is the stark reality that a staggering 60% of North Korea’s poverty-stricken population face currently, as the entire country struggles with major food insecurity issues stemming from severe economic mismanagement. But why can’t they leave? And if you were in their shoes, how would you? Well, stick with me, as we explore why it’s so difficult to escape North Korea, and the only 9 escape routes available.
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