Inside the ‘houses of torment’ that hide North Korea’s darkest secret

A map showing Baishan City Detention Centre in China where North Korean defectors are held (Picture: Metro.co.uk)

Kim Kyu-li considers herself ‘the luckiest woman in the world’ after a decade on the run, starvation and forced marriage.

Stories of people defecting from North Korea – like her – are not uncommon. After surviving a catastrophic famine that decimated the dystopian state in the mid-1990s, she fled to China where she remained for seven years.

‘When I first went to China, I could not understand Chinese language, so I had no idea what the broker was saying, whether he was negotiating to sell me,’ she told Metro.co.uk of her initial experience in the country.

‘Many North Korean women who were sold end up facing domestic violence and are often unable to escape their neighborhood.’

A satellite image of the detention camp in Baishan, near the border with China and North Korea

This is one of the reasons Kyu-li thinks of herself as fortunate. After defecting, she was sold to a Korean-ethnic Chinese man who was three years older than her.

His family treated her well and even helped her find a job at a restaurant in Tian Jin, near Beijing.

From China, Kyu-li escaped to Mongolia; then made her way to South Korea, and eventually arrived in London in 2007, where she is now based.

Now, she is fighting to find her sister, Cheol-ok, one of as many as 600 defectors who were deported from China back to North Korea two months ago.

Kim Cheol-ok, a North Korean defector who had lived in China for 25 years with her family before being deported by Chinese authorities 

Fears have been growing for North Koreans like her, who are labelled ‘criminals’ and ‘traitors’ by Kim Jong Un’s regime, since they were forcibly returned to their homeland.

Pyongyang considers leaving the country without permission a crime of ‘treachery against the nation,’ punishable by death or by detention in labor camps.

There, defectors face the prospect of torture. Women are subjected to sexual and gender-based violence, and forced abortions.

Metro.co.uk has today mapped out five border crossing points in China’s Jilin and Liaoning provinces used to send them back to North Korea.

A map showing the five border crossing points used to send defectors back to North Korea and the detentions camps they are held in (Picture: Metro.co.uk)

These include Dandong to Sinuiju, Changbai to Hyesan, Helong to Musan, Tumen to Onsong and Hunchun to Kyongwon.

As revealed by Seoul-based human rights organisation Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG), these are the crossings where heavily guarded buses and vans transporting hundreds of escapees drove into North Korea under cover of darkness.

Hundreds were detained while trying to flee to South Korea and other countries in search of freedom.

Largely to her older sister’s credit, Cheol-ok is one of the few known to the public North Koreans who were recently repatriated.

Kim Kyu-li, the older sister of Cheol-ok, who is based in London after years on the run

After defecting at the age of 14 at the height of the famine in 1998, she settled in a town in the northeastern Chinese province of Jilin.

Like Kyu-li, she was forced into marriage with a Chinese man that had been arranged by a human trafficker, and later gave birth to a daughter.

She came to love her family over the past 25 years, but was abruptly arrested for unknown reasons on April 5, months before her granddaughter’s birth.

After an investigation by the TJWG, Metro.co.uk can exclusively reveal that Cheol-ok was held at the Baishan City Detention Centre in Hunjiang District, in the Jilin Province.

The Baishan City Detention Centre where hundreds of defectors are imprisoned

The last time Kyu-li spoke with her younger sister was on April 4, before she left home and was detained.

‘After repatriation, Cheol-ok will face severe punishment, forced labor, lack of food, and no access to medicine when sick,’ she said.

‘Furthermore, North Korean authorities do not care whether prisoners, like my older brother, live or die in prison.

‘He defected in 2002 and was subject to serious punishment and starvation. The location of where he is buried remains unknown.’

Both Chinese and North Korean governments have refused to confirm knowledge of the recent deportation

No communication has been established with defectors since being repatriated. Their location and wellbeing remain unclear due to what can only be described as an information blackhole in North Korea.

Their identities are also unknown, although most – more than 70% – are expected to be women.

Both Chinese and North Korean governments have refused to comment or confirm knowledge of the recent deportation.

It comes after Kim Jon Un’s government announced the reopening of the borders in August, which were sealed at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Kim Cheol-ok pictured in her youth

There are grave concerns that as many as 1,500 more people could be returned to North Korea in the coming months.

But China has never recognised those fleeing as defectors, and instead calls them ‘economic migrants’.

Catriona Murdoch, British barrister and partner at human rights law firm Global Rights Compliance (GRC), stressed that crimes like this occurring inside North Korea are going unchecked behind closed doors.

‘Crimes of enforced disappearance torment and plague the families left behind,’ she said.

‘The utter anguish of a life trapped in a Chinese detention centre faced with a forcible repatriation to dystopic North Korea where they will most likely endure a barbaric fate as punishment for their escape.

‘With the international gaze fixed on finding those kidnapped in Gaza, or forcibly transferred into Russia, the systematic human rights abuses and international crimes occurring inside North Korea continue unabated and unacknowledged.

‘The time has come to speak out, search for the missing, prevent disappearances and rigorously pursue accountability for those perpetrating such crimes.’

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.