Book Review: Escaping North Korea, by Mike Kim
[By Guest Blogger, Dan Bielefeld]
A couple months ago I saw something about a new book by a Korean American who had lived in China for four years helping North Koreans. This really caught my attention — I’ve heard of such people but I don’t know a lot about them since most of their work is done in secret. To pique my interest a bit further, he’s from the same part of the country I am (he’s from Chicago, I’m from Milwaukee) and he’s only a few years younger than me (I’m going on 34).
The next day I happened to go to the Kyobo bookstore in Gwanghwamun, Seoul, for something completely unrelated but stumbled upon the book and bought it.
A few years out of college, Mike Kim quit his job, moved to California for language training, and then a year or so later moved to China, where he started the Christian organization Crossing Borders to help North Koreans refugees. Most of the staff are Korean-Chinese, which allows them to operate more easily and even to travel to North Korea.
The first half of Escaping North Korea: Defiance and Hope in the World’s Most Repressive Country (if you live in Korea, you might try this place) more or less is a run-down of the situation of North Koreans in their own country, China, and other Asian countries. To be honest I was a little disappointed because I wanted to hear more about his personal experiences in China (and some in North Korea) helping the refugees. To be sure, those and those of his staff members were woven in with the research he presents, but most of information in the first part of the book was along the lines of what I’ve read elsewhere. Perhaps because North Korea is not a “popular” or well-known topic, it seems many works spend a lot of time covering the same basic ground in order to sell enough copies.
Nonetheless, this part of the book will serve as an excellent resource for those who are new to the subject, while also providing some details that will be new to most.
Also, Kim carefully cites his numerous sources (both published and those gathered in author interviews), and the endnotes are an excellent reference for further reading. For instance, I knew that North Korea was responsible for bombing a Korean Air Lines flight but I was very surprised to learn that one of the terrorists later came to South Korea and wrote a book about her story: The Tears of My Soul.
Two things in particular did stick with me from the first part of the book, though. First, I was surprised by the extent to which the author describes stealing, manipulation, drug and alcohol abuse, and violence as having permeated North Korean society. He says many shelters in China hesitate to accept male refugees because they are so prone to violence. The North Koreans I’ve met do not reflect this, but they are a small and unique subset of the whole refugee population, of course. And those I know are much further removed in time and space from North Korea than those arriving in shelters in China.
Second, there’s a huge need in the shelters for trained counselors. A big part of what Crossing Borders does is to try to help restore the lives of those in their shelters. This would seem to be an enormous task, as most of the women have been the victims of sexual trafficking in China in addition to the things they faced in their own country that prompted them to leave.
About half-way through the book, Kim starts to describe in more detail his personal experiences. In one chapter he talks about leading a group of four teenage North Korean refugees into a consulate in Shanghai. Then in the next he tells of leading two refugees — one considerably weakened with tuberculosis — along the underground railroad out of China and into Laos, where someone else then guided them to Thailand. (Thailand does not repatriate North Koreans, but after holding them in a crowded prison of sorts for several months, allows them to go to South Korea). I read these two chapters a bit like I would read a spy novel — that is to say, very quickly. I was struck by the thoroughness of his preparations and his ability to think quickly on his feet. To be sure, he also had a lot of help from others, especially in the planning stages.
At the end of 2004 Kim and his organization stopped helping North Koreans get out of China. Now Crossing Borders helps those who want to permanently settle in China or who want to return to North Korea. I knew that many North Koreans leave their country with the intention of making some money or finding some medicine and then returning to their families. However, I did not realize that many are successfully returning to North Korea (about half return, according to a source with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees), and Crossing Borders helps them in that mission.
To close the book, Kim returns to reporter mode and interviews many activists, experts, and policymakers on how to solve the problem of North Korea. I was disappointed that he does not offer much in the way of his own opinions on the subject, though. One opinion that stood out to me was that of Michael Horowitz, who told the author that the Korean American community is “more powerful than anyone you could name in bringing down the regime in North Korea. He says it’s a power they do not realize they hold, if they pushed hard (i.e., voted against those who opposed them) for sanctions, the Congress would enact a Jackson-Vanik-like bill to “force China to choose between Kim Jong Il and their own economy.
As in any movement, the movement for the freedom of the North Korean people involves countless volunteers, activists, policymakers, fundraisers, leaders, and thinkers. Mike Kim spent four years on the front lines in a very dangerous part of the world. His book on the one hand is a personal account — both his own and that of the many refugees he worked with — and on the other hand provides a researched overview of the North Korean situation. I truly hope his story inspires more young people to consider giving a few years of their lives to make a huge difference in the lives of North Koreans. Kim now is an MBA student at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.