‘Every day I just miss her, I will find her. One day I will find her. If she’s alive.’
Kyu Li Kim hasn’t seen her younger sister Cheol-Ok since 1997. Like so many others who have fled rampant poverty, starvation and human rights violations in North Korea, her family has been separated for decades, often with little or no idea as to their whereabouts or wellbeing.
Kyu Li was just 20 years old when she left North Korea. She fled to China where she was sold to a Chinese Korean man for 3,000 Yuan. She told CSW that she was lucky that the family she was sold to were kind to her and had some money, and that they lived further from the border which meant she was less likely to be caught and returned to North Korea.
The following year, in 1998, Cheol-Ok was approached by a broker who told her he could bring her to China where she would be reunited with Kyu Li and be able to get food. She was just 14 years old at the time – ‘she [had] no choice – if she [stayed] home she [would] die’, explains Kyu Li.
Once Cheol-Ok made it to China, the broker called Kyu Li and asked her if she would come and collect her from Yanji, which was some 15 hours away by train. But even as Kyu Li made arrangements to make this journey, that same broker arranged for her sister to be sold to a man some 20-30 years older than her.
‘Please just tell me where you sent her.’
Kyu Li spent months calling the broker trying to find out where her sister had been taken, until one day they stopped answering altogether. Every year she would post about Cheol-Ok on a Korean website – her address, what she looked like, when she went missing etc. – but for more than two decades she received nothing back.
Then, in 2020, her niece in South Korea contacted her to say that she thought they had found her. And remarkably, they had. ‘When she [sent] the picture, exactly it’s my sister,’ explains Kyu Li. ‘Even young we separate [sic], but I can see her eyes. Her eyes [are] exactly like me.’
By this point Kyu Li had moved to England, and Cheol-Ok was living in Guilin, China, where she had a daughter. Every year she would pay local police 2,000 Yuan to warn her whenever someone in the area attempted to report that North Koreans were living there, and after 20 years in the country she had forgotten how to speak Korean entirely.
With their reunion delayed by COVID-19 lockdowns, and of course the complications faced by any North Korean who is unable to travel freely in China without suitable visas or identity documents, Cheol-Ok finally made arrangements to escape China in April 2023.
On 5 April she phoned Kyu Li once more to confirm that they were about to leave. That was the last time the two of them spoke.
Twelve days later – on 17 April – Kyu Li’s niece called her to say that her mother had been apprehended by Chinese police and taken to Baishan City Detention Centre some five hours away from her home.
‘We will do something [to] save her.’
These were the words Kyu Li used to comfort her niece whilst they did everything they could to free her sister. With many North Koreans facing similar circumstances as the country’s borders remained closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, she believed that she had time to arrange her release.
But on 9 October she received another call: ‘Aunt, my mum tonight [will be sent] back to North Korea.’ Cheol-Ok had used a policeman’s mobile phone to call her daughter directly, telling her that she was going to be repatriated at 7pm that same evening.
This has been the policy of the Chinese Communist Party for decades – to forcibly return North Koreans who escape across its border, sending them back to face torture, detention and in some cases execution.
It is a flagrant contravention of the country’s obligations under international law, which mandates that the government must grant refugee status to all North Korean refugees in accordance with the United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. After a brief break in the deportations forced by the pandemic, it seems that China has returned to business as usual.
In October this year for example it was reported that over 500 North Koreans had been forcibly repatriated from the country, many of whom are believed to be civilians and religious figures who were arrested while attempting to travel from China to South Korea.
There is a good chance that many, like Cheol-Ok, will have been living in China for a long time, and might also no longer speak Korean or be familiar with the history of the country. This will only make their treatment worse, as if they are unable to answer the officials’ questions they will be punished even further.
‘We are born in North Korea, we don’t have freedom. That is not right.’
This cannot continue. There have to be consequences for regimes that tear families apart like this, and states must use every tool at their disposal, whether that is discussion at the United Nations Human Rights Council, or direct bilateral dialogue with the North Korean and Chinese authorities, to put a permanent stop to the forced repatriation of North Korean refugees, to the mistreatment they face upon their return to the country, and to the terrible conditions that force so many to flee in the first place.
By CSW’s Public Affairs Officer Ellis Heasley