The leadership passes through the Kim family... but so does their evil. I had to get out or I would have been killed
DEFECTOR TELLS OF N KOREA HORRORS
KIM Chung-Seong might never escape the evil of North Korea’s sinister regime – even though he has managed to flee it twice.
By the age of 27 he had fallen from grace as a starving singer in the Supreme Leader’s official band to being brutally beaten and sentenced to death.
“The Kim regime never forgets,” he says. “The leadership may pass down from one generation to another but so does their evil.
“I saw at first-hand the most harrowing of atrocities that will haunt me until the day I die.
“There were mass public executions in which everyone was ordered to attend, including children as young as five.
“I watched one young girl beaten to death after the authorities accused her father of committing crimes when all he was doing was simply trying to sell things to feed his family. Millions of people there are deprived of any food. Thousands die through starvation. “I had to get out, or I too would have been killed.” Now living in South Korea, ChungSeong’s escape, although not unique, is one of incredible triumph and guts. The morning he was due to be executed under the dictatorship of Kim Jong-il, father of current despot Kim Jong-un, he fled and trekked barefoot to freedom, cutting his hands and feet to the bone as he did so. But, at the age of 41, he lives in constant fear for family and friends, still hunted by the regime’s army for his defection 13 years ago. And he lives in hope that, as tensions between North Korea and the US escalate, the election of liberal Moon Jae-in in Seoul will pave the way to closer ties with Kim Jong-un, and reunite him with his family. At the age of 20, ChungSeong was a poster boy for Kim Jong-il. Adored by thousands of young girls as a state-
employed singer, he was on constant call to chant gushing songs about Kim Jong-il that would be piped nationwide and played through speakers.
“I’d be woken at any time of night to perform. It could be 2am, 3am, 4am or 5am. It didn’t matter,” he says. “They wanted to reinforce messages of how great the Supreme Leader was.”
But Chung-Seong struggled to survive on his pay and turned to selling any small bits of copper cabling he could find to black marketeers.
In 2001 he was caught by Kim’s secret police, thrown in prison and told he would be shot at dawn the next day for dissent.
Such executions are carried out publicly, often in capacity-filled stadiums, by firing squad. But many former state employees are simply blown apart with anti-aircraft guns.
Death penalty offences include watching South Korean movies, distributing pornography, owning a mobile phone or possessing a Bible.
Those whose lives are spared are sentenced for years to the country’s ruthless labour camps often enduring months of torture once inside.
“They stripped me of almost everything other than my trousers and threw me into a makeshift cell,” explains Chung-Seong. “I was to be killed the next day.” But after a mistake by a guard, he escaped through an unlocked door and ran barefoot into the darkness.
After the breakout, his family’s home was raided by secret police. His parents and two brothers fled and the property was razed to the ground.
Chung-Seong trekked more than 100 miles north of capital Pyongyang – sleeping through the day and moving at night – to reach China.
For days he walked over treacherous terrain, avoiding roads, before swimming across the heavily patrolled Yalu River.
“My feet were cut to pieces while my hands were to the bone through climbing but I had no other option,” he says.
For the next three years, Chung-Seong rebuilt his life, close to the Chinese city of Dandong, doing odd jobs.
But in 2003 his desperation to see his family became too much and he made the hazardous journey back to his homeland.
For 15 days he stayed in North Korea, before returning to China. But as he crossed the border, ChungSeong was picked up by the Chinese military and threatened with a handover, back to Kim’s border patrols.
“I knew if they sent me back, I’d be killed instantly,” he says. “I pleaded with the Chinese to let me stay but they handed me over to their version of the CIA, and after hours of interrogation they offered me a way out.
“They said if I became a spy for them I would be allowed to stay. I didn’t need long to think and agreed almost immediately.” But as soon as Chung-Seong was moved into temporary housing, he escaped again. This time he set out on a perilous 1,600-mile journey to Vietnam. Once again he was barefoot. “I got there any way I could, it took me months,” he adds. “I hid in the back of lorries, begged for lifts, walked hundred of miles just so I was never picked up again. “I’d promised to myself that I’d rather die than go back.” After months, Chung-Seong finally made his way to China’s border with Vietnam, in 2004. Months later there was a resettlement effort by South Korea which took him, along with 460 other North Korean defectors, from Hanoi to Seoul to start new lives. Since arriving in South Korea, Chung-Seong has married and now has two children. He works as a church pastor, as well as hosting a radio show in which he defiantly sends a mix of gospel music and news into North Korea – all of which is strictly banned by the regime. “They want to keep everyone in the dark about the world, religion and the truth about its leaders,” Chung-Seong adds. North Korea strictly bans outside information, but a growing number of people consume illicit media, including South Korean TV soaps that show the prosperity of life across the heavily fortified border.
It is smuggled from China on USB sticks and DVDs. Black marketeers also help Chung-Seong stay in touch with his family.
“Smuggled Chinese phones are a lifeline to my family and me,” he says.
“The phones work on a Chinese network, making it hard for them to be traced. But, if they are ever found, whoever had one would be executed instantly. There would be no trial.”
Asked about the current threat of war, Chung-Seong hopes it will be avoided but he is hopeful that Kim Jong-un will be toppled.
“I hope the Americans take him out,” he said. “If they fired one bomb I hope it would be on him.
“He has to go otherwise North Korea will never be free.
“I hope one day the North and South will be reunited as one to live in peace as Germany once did.
“I pray to see it in my lifetime.”