Why North Korea is the Hardest Country to Escape

There is simply no other country in the world today that can be even remotely compared with North Korea. Without any exaggeration, it is a literal 21st century glimpse into what Nazi Germany would have looked like had it survived after 1945. It is the world's most hardcore totalitarian regime where absolute loyalty is always demanded and where even the slightest sign of disloyalty to the country's absolute ruler can get you sent to one of the regime's numerous concentration camps for life. Where you can expect a gruesome fate of starvation, literal slave labor, live medical experiments, constant torture and random execution depending on what the guards feel like doing to you.

There is no such thing as due process or human rights in North Korea. And hundreds of thousands of people are existing right now within these camps, living out this hell every day. This isn't history, it's happening live right now. As you're watching this video and listening to my voice.

Obviously, if you were one of the ones trapped inside of this real-life nightmare, you would want to escape. The problem with that, is that North Korea is without a doubt the world's most difficult country to escape from? Primarily because North Korea doesn't allow you to escape. The penalty for even trying to leave the country is treason. The camps and in many cases, death. And even if you successfully do get out, the North Korean regime has a tendency of going after your family members who stayed behind, this means your spouse, your children, your parents and even your grandparents can be rounded up and sent to a lifetime of horror.

In one of the camps, if they didn't make it out with you, for many, this is all the deterrent that's needed to keep them in line. Understandably, while frustratingly so. but if you've made up your mind to leave regardless of the risks and the consequences, these are the few ways you'd be able to do it. Unfortunately none of them are easy and they all have their own challenging geographic issues to account for. The most obvious destination for escape is to South Korea, the exact polar opposite of North Korea. A free liberal and rich democracy.

South Korea claims legal authority over the entirety of the Korean peninsula, and officially considers all 26 million North Korean citizens, her own citizens as well. This means that if you can make it in your guaranteed citizenship, a future and are effectively in the clear, but moving just this short distance from the north side of one peninsula to the south side is probably the most difficult journey that a human being can make in the 21st century.

Walking directly across the southern border is almost impossible because it's literally the most heavily militarized location on the planet. It's completely covered with high walls, electric razor wire, millions of landmines and is defended by millions of soldiers, with live ammunition who have explicit orders to shoot to kill anyone foolish or brave enough to try getting across. An escape through here might be the quickest, but it's also the most dangerous and risky. Your odds of success are low, but despite that, many have still tried and come out victorious.

In 2017, a North Korean man drove his car directly up to the military demarcation line between the two countries at the border, and dramatically crashed. Got out sprinted across the border under a hail of machine gun fire from the North Korean border guards, and collapsed on the South Korean side behind a wall before being rescued. He was shot five times and lost half his blood during the quick attempt. But he still managed to survive and now lives in the south.

For most people though, escaping directly into the south like this is simply too risky, so they'll take alternatives. While the southern border of North Korea is almost completely impenetrable to escape, the eastern and western sides are covered in ocean, which present their own challenges. Buying a boat and escaping with that is impossible since most North Koreans are severely impoverished and there's no possible way to buy a boat anyway even if you did have the money. For most people that leaves simply swimming to South Korea, which carries the risks of drowning or getting caught by the North Korean patrol boats.

In 2016, a man named Chul Yun-li, who was a high-ranking member of North Korea's ministry of state security, decided to defect with a friend using this method anyway. Together they bought a motorbike tire an air pump and some food and came to approximately this location in the west just behind the DMZ. Once the sun had set, they plunged into the water and began swimming frantically and undetected.

Unfortunately the air pump ended up not working and they had to abandon the tire and rely on their backpacks to help them stay afloat. Instead, they ended up swimming continuously for over four hours in the dark, until they saw an unidentified boat moving towards their location. Fearful that it was a North Korean patrol, they frantically swam to this tiny island here and waited for the boat to leave, but this was during the cold autumn months in Korea, and they were wet with very few clothes. They managed to find some garbage they used to insulate themselves with, got some rest in, and when the sun came up, they found some wooden pallets that they tied together into a makeshift raft with some styrofoam and other trash, and they paddled back out to sea using their hands and floating with the tide. Fortunately for them, they hadn't realized that by this point, they were already well past the South Korean border and South Korean ships quickly spotted them and came to their immediate rescue. They were successful but many others haven't been.

For most people getting to South Korea directly by running across the DMZ or swimming around, it will result in death or capture, so that leaves getting to South Korea indirectly via another third country. There are three other countries nearby North Korea. Besides South Korea that you can escape towards, but none of them are good options.

If you can make it Japan is probably your best bet because you'll be guaranteed your freedom and sent to South Korea, but you have to make it across the sea of Japan first, which can often be dangerous and is prone to typhoons. And in the best case scenario you probably have nothing any better than a small boat. As a result, there have only been three confirmed successful cases of North Korean defectors actually making it directly to Japan. So it's probably going to be better to look North instead.

Up here, the border is significantly less defended or patrolled, and is comparably much easier to cross than the south. But doing so, necessitates crossing into either China or Russia, neither of which are particularly very good options. The border with Russia is only 17 kilometers wide, along the two-man river. And it's easily patrolled by both sides. Even if you do make it across, Russia's official state, policy is to immediately deport all North Korean refugees back into North Korea anyway. And as a North Korean, you're definitely going to stand out here. Hypothetically you could make it up to the South Korean consulate in nearby Vladivostok and earn your freedom. But getting up there undetected by Russian police would be almost impossible.

And as a result, escaping into china is the significantly more popular and less risky option. Here the border is over 1300 kilometers long, follows the Yalu and two men rivers that flow through remote mountainous and rugged terrain. Patrols and border security through most of this area is light. The best months to escape in are either during the summer, when the river's depths are at their lowest, or during the winter, when they're usually frozen, enabling you to simply run across into China.

It's relatively easy to get into China, but China can't be your new home forever. China isn't safe because just like Russia, China's policy is to immediately deport all North Korean defectors straight back to North Korea. Where you'll almost assuredly face a gruesome end. On the bright side though, many of China's border provinces, like Yanbian, have significant Korean ethnic minorities of their own, who are naturalized Chinese citizens, meaning that it's fairly easy to hide out here for a while and avoid detection from the Chinese authorities.

While you plot your next move, if you decide to work with a foreign broker to assist in your escape, they can cost up to 18000U.S dollars for their services. An absolute fortune when you consider. That the average North Korean earns just a measly 1300 a year, that is over 10 years of an average North Koreans pay. If you've got the means, a broker can be a good option, but if you don't, the next best option is to probably continue on to the city of Shenyang, where the closest South Korean consulate building in China is located. If you can make it up here and inside the building, you're probably gonna be safe. But it's also about 200 kilometers away from the North Korean border and its perimeter is closely guarded by the Chinese police. If you're caught at any moment trying to get here, well, it's game over.

In 2004, a group of 44 North Korean defectors managed to storm the Canadian embassy in Beijing all at once. Dressed up as construction workers to avoid any detection, they used ladders to scale the walls and successfully got into safety. But ever since then, China has significantly increased their police and security presence around foreign consulates and embassies, especially South Korean ones. So repeating this now would be a lot more challenging.

Instead, you most likely need to get yourself across China and into another country, that's more sympathetic to your situation. But the problem with that, is that China is huge and there aren't many countries around it who will even help you either. Russia will deport you back to North Korea if you get caught there. While Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar all maintain close relations with Pyongyang as well. Just like China or Russia, they'll most likely deport you back to North Korea if they catch you as well. Getting into India, Bhutan and Nepal or Pakistan would require hiking through the Himalayas, which pretty much eliminates any of them as easy options.

So that effectively leaves you only two friendly and realistic nearby destinations to escape into, Mongolia or Thailand. Mongolia is the closer choice and the government here is sympathetic to the plight of North Korean defectors. If you make it up here, they'll deport you to South Korea rather than the north. Upon arrival, you just have to surrender yourself to the Mongol police. The only problem is that, to get here, one must pass through the formidably difficult freezing and hostile terrain of the Gobi Desert, one of the world's largest deserts with an abundance of dangerous wildlife, hostile temperatures and few resources to survive on. Navigating through the desert takes a lot of skill that one is unlikely to have ever learned back in North Korea. But nevertheless, some people have made it.

In 2007, Parkionmi and her mother escaped across the northern border into China by running across the frozen Two Men River. Because of China's deportation policy, it was impossible for the pair to find any kind of legal work inside of China, and they fell victims to human traffickers. After months of living beneath the radar, they eventually made their way here to the city of Qingdao and found a Christian missionary shelter. It was there that after nearly two years of remaining undercover in China, that they received enough aid from missionaries and human rights activists to finally take a chance and flee up towards Mongolia.

With the goal of getting deported to South Korea and freedom. This incredible mother-daughter pair successfully managed to navigate through the Gobi desert and reached the Mongolia border. But upon arrival, a group of Mongolian border guards intercepted them and threatened to deport them back over the border towards China, which would have ultimately meant deportation back to North Korea and the camps. Desperate, the pair both drew knives and promised that they'd kill themselves right there, if that's what the guards were going to do. Sadly, death is often a preferable fate to a North Korean defector than being sent back to the country and the camps.

Luckily for them, the guards took pity and brought them back in custody to the capital Ulan Batar before flying them directly to Seoul from there. Today, Yeonmi Park lives in New York City and runs a youtube channel where she talks openly about her life and experiences growing up in North Korea. They are fascinating and I highly recommend checking her channel out if you're curious about this kind of thing. So the link to her channel will be posted down below in the description.

Navigating through the Gobi is so challenging for most though, that the significantly more popular route is to take a train or a bus undercover across China, and attempt to escape into Thailand. These are the five closest train stations to the North Korean border within China that connect to China's vast high-speed rail network. If you hypothetically have the money and the skill to remain silent or undercover, you could board at any of these stations, exit at any of these near Mongolia and run across from there, or exit here at Kunming in China's Yunnan province and attempt to take a bus or run from there towards Thailand. There are plenty of buses that go from Kunming to other Southeast Asian countries. But the problem here is that even if you do somehow make it without getting caught by any of the authorities on a train or a bus, China and Thailand don't share a border, which means that you're going to have to get across the rugged and mountainous terrain of China's Yunnan province, and then get through the remote and dangerous jungles of Laos or Myanmar before finally crossing over the dangerous Mekong river in order to get to safety.

In 2017, this is exactly what Park Hyun-woo and his father did. Before they decided to escape North Korea, both of Park's sisters had already made it to freedom in the south and were covertly sending money back to them up in the north. After securing the help of a broker in China, they decided that it was time for them to leave as well.

In the dead of a winter night in February 2017, both men crossed the frozen Two Men River into China with a pill full of rat poison to kill themselves with if they got caught. One of the sisters and their handler was waiting on the other side, with a van and took them to a nearby safe house in the town of Yanji, where they changed clothes. From there, they took a train to Shenyang and then another train to Zhen Zhao followed by yet, another train to Beijing from here they took a series of buses to Kunming. But as soon as they got there, the Chinese authorities discovered them. Park and his father fled from their bus and became separated.

Park was forced to continue on foot alone through the dense jungles of Laos, eventually reaching the Mekong River. The final obstacle Park managed to get across and immediately surrendered himself to the Thai police, who took him into custody and surrendered him to South Korean officials, who flew him back to Seoul and safety. However, his father had been arrested by Chinese police and sent back to a prison near the North Korean border. For whatever reason, the prison released him. After getting back into contact with the brokers again, he made his way back down to Vietnam and from here was able to avoid all detection and finally got on a plane, bound for Seoul as well. It had taken him one and a half years in a journey of over 5000 miles simply to reach a place a mere 400 miles away from his home.

These are the only ways to escape that are available to the average North Korean stranded within the country. They are all hard and desperate, but sometimes even getting to South Korea doesn't guarantee you your safety.

In 2002, a woman named Jin Gyeongsuk successfully defected over to the south. She became a citizen and married a South Korean man. For their honeymoon in 2004, two years later, they decided to travel back to the Chinese North Korean border to film a documentary on the horrors of the North Korean regime. But while there, unidentified men kidnapped Jin and dragged her back into North Korea, where she was sent back to a concentration camp, tortured and eventually executed. Despite having been a legal South Korean resident, escaping from North Korea is never easy for anyone.

All of these options are difficult, and even if you do make it out, you can still very easily be dragged back against your will and killed. There are countless other stories of heroic people, who've defied the odds and escaped through various means. What makes North Korea so fascinating to many of us outside of it is that, it isn't history. You read the horrible accounts of survivors and hear their stories and realize that you're not listening to something from 1940, but something that could have happened yesterday. The cold war may have ended everywhere else in the world in 1991, but it never ended in Korea. And if anything, it's worse now, than it's ever been before.

The modern cold war in Korea is an incredibly complex and controversial story to tell. With countless other escape attempts that are too graphic to cover on youtube, the development of nuclear bombs, millions of people who believe that Kim Jong-un is a literal God missiles that can now strike at the heart of the United States mainland, the largest arsenal of chemical weapons the world has ever seen. And the fate of tens of millions of people all hanging in the balance, it is without a doubt. One of the most fascinating violent and controversial conflicts of both the 20th and 21st centuries, and unfortunately, not acceptable for me to cover in detail on youtube due to their terms of service. I know how making videos on youtube works and I know that this video already has an incredibly high chance of being demonetized and unpromoted by youtube's algorithm because of the content I'm discussing.

But the moment I really start diving into the whole history of the 21st century conflict between North Korea and South Korea in the United States. What's all at stake? Why it all began? How it's been fought and how it all led to where we are today? It's a guarantee that this video will be censored and you won't get to see it. So instead I created another full length companion video in my ongoing modern conflicts series, that's the same length as this video. With all of that controversial but fascinating information included and uploaded it to nebula, which as you've probably heard by now, is home to tons of exclusive ad-free content like my entire modern conflict series with five other additional full-length videos you can go watch right now.

That’s all for now, thank you so much for watching.