North Korea: one family's escape
Updated on 22 August 2007
In a small flat, inside North Korea, a mother and daughter pose for pictures.
And a father and son.
This, their secret family album, shot on a camera-phone, an illegal device in North Korea. Owning one is a crime that could land them in labour camp.
Overwhelmed by hopelessness, struggling to survive, the Park family has decided to try to escape.
To do so will cost them their every last penny. They all know it could also cost them their lives.
The camera-phone pictures were taken in January. Months would pass before the escape plan could be put into action.
It's all being coordinated from neighbouring China.
"Uncle Jung" is Mrs Park's brother. He's masterminding their escape. It's his job to get them safely into China.
A former North Korean state security agent, he defected six years ago. We can't show his face. "Uncle Jung" is not his real name.
The man driving the car is a serving North Korean agent, who's in on the plan.
It was "Uncle Jung" who'd smuggled the camera-phone in to his sister. He calls her.
He tells her to pay off the traffickers and smugglers with the money he's just sent in. Then they discuss the route. "Go to Musan," Jung says. "When you get there, hide and then call me."
The world's most repressive regime rules the other side of the river: Musan, a bleak North Korean mining city.
The "Stalinist paradise" of the Korean Democratic Peoples' Republic is a land of gulags, privation and misery. Not hard to see why people defect.
The Park family will cross the Tumen River which runs along part of the 900-mile border with China.
If they're caught, they face concentration camp and almost certain execution.
There's been silence for months now and growing fears the family's been rumbled.
Then, one day in mid-May, Uncle Jung gets the call. They're in Musan.
On his own mobile phone, he's able to film the first to cross: a friend of the family who says they're on their way.
Jung repeately tells him to hurry.
Then, with the family on board, they quickly move to a safe house.
Reunion
Finally, brother and sister collapse into each other's arms. Appropriately enough, the scene is caught on camera-phone. There's no audio, but body language speaks volumes. There's exhaustion and relief - a moment of respite between the end of one risky journey and the start of another.
So here they all are then: the Park family. By North Korean standards, fairly privileged, middle class.
Mr Park is an ex-policemen. The couple have a 23-year-old daughter, Wun Jong, and a shy schoolboy son, Chol Hak.
Now they're out, Jung hands over responsibility to another man. We'll call him "CK."
He's a South Korean Christian who, through an underground network, smuggles North Koreans into South Korea. 10,000 of them now live there. In the south there is freedom - and food.
There's a price on CK's head in the North. Some of his associates have also been jailed in China.
CK gleans new information about life inside. From Wun Jong he learns that possession of a South Korean film now gets you five years in jail.
A people-trafficker has been paid to get them through China.
Over the next week they will travel by any means possible to reach the Laos border; a trip of around 4,000 miles.
They don't speak Chinese. They don't have any documents.
For the Parks, it is time to reflect. They had left home in such a hurry that there was no time for farewells. China. though, is like a breath of fresh air.
But North Koreans aren't welcome in China. Thousands get deported every year. In contrast, Thailand, where they're headed, deports North Korean defectors to South Korea.
They make it to a small town on China's border with Laos.
The closer they get to the border, the more jittery they become.
Their trafficker gives the order to move only at the last minute. For three days, they sit it out in a farmhouse near the border, nerves jangling.
Packing up
Day four, 6am, and they've just been told to pack up fast.
The trail they're taking through the mountains to the Laos frontier is mostly used by opium traffickers. They've been lucky - no Chinese border patrols.
Their people traffickers guide the five travellers to the token barbed wire fence - and then they're through.
They don't hang around. First, five hours cross-country by motorbike; then 14 hours in a van to Vientiane, the Laos capital.
They've been on the road for a fortnight. The strain of their epic journey is beginning to tell.
Flooding and heavy rain has caused delays. Laos is also a Communist country. They've had to skirt regular checkpoints here too.
Finally, in Vientiane, CK joins them again.
They're physically and emotionally wrecked, each overcome at some point by conflicting feelings.
In North Korea, where 10 years ago famine killed two million people, they haven't seen food like this in living memory.
Mrs Park talks about how harsh it was having food strictly rationed at home. It wasn't enough to survive on, she says.
Wun Jong says she's been left with a bitter taste. "I kept wondering whether I was doing the right thing, leaving the land I was born in," she says.
They're in another safe house now. Another long wait. Five days this time.
Myong Chol sinks into depression. His wife and son had walked out on him when he had been unable to put food on the table during the famine.
The Park family settles down to watch a South Korean movie. For them and for CK, this is a moment to savour.
In eight years, CK has helped more than 100 North Koreans escape.
He doesn't enjoy what he does but he's driven by his desire to expose the excesses of the Pyongyang regime. Pressed, CK provides a rare insight into his operations; it's not really an organisation, he says.
CK operations are financed by gifts from friends, he says, and anonymous donors.
The arrest
They're on the move again. The final frontier.
Away from the camera, they quietly cross the Mekong river into Thailand under cover of darkness.
The plan now is to get to the South Korean embassy in Bangkok fast, register, then give themselves up to the Thai police.
After 11 hours, just short of Bangkok, Thai police spot them.
Arrest means they won't get to the embassy - it's not that big a deal. But coming from a police state, this encounter has scared the whole family.
They'll be taken to an immigration holding centre where they'll wait while their cases are processed. They'll then join the queue of other North Korean defectors waiting to be flown to the South Korean capital.
The caged police pick-up, a strange welcome to Thailand, the "Land of the Free." Tonight, the Parks and their trusty companion Myong Chol remain in a Bangkok detention centre.
They are survivors. By putting a family's lives on the line, these parents have given their children something they never had - hope and a future.
