11/24/2015

DefectorwantstoreturntoNorthKoreaCNN.com

Defector wants to return to North Korea

by Will Ripley, CNN
Updated 1813 GMT (0113 HKT) September 24, 2015

North Korean defector says she's "trapped" in South Korea 02:56

Story highlights
Dressmaker defector in South Korea wants to
go home
She says it was a mistake for her to leave North
Korea
She says she left North Korea only to get
medical treatment

Pyongyang, North Korea (CNN)Of the tens of

thousands of North Koreans who have fled to South Korea
since the Great Famine of the late 1990's, only a rare few
have ever asked to return.
Kim Ryon Hui is one of them. The Pyongyang dressmaker
-- turned North Korean defector -- says she is trapped in
South Korea and desperate to return to her family.
Before defecting in 2011, Kim lived a relatively upscale life
by North Korean standards. Her husband is a doctor and
the family recently received a new, larger apartment from
the government.
Kim in South Korea and her family in North Korea spoke to

CNN about her case.

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/09/23/asia/northsouthkoreadefectorfamily/

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11/24/2015

DefectorwantstoreturntoNorthKoreaCNN.com

Kim went to China four years ago to visit relatives and seek medical care for liver disease.
She had been hospitalized for six months in North Korea and had heard China may have more advanced
treatment. She assumed it would be free of charge, as it is in North Korea, where the state covers most
expenses including housing, healthcare, and higher education.
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But once in China, Kim soon found she couldn't afford

the staggering medical bills. "It became a huge burden
for me to go through treatment in that situation. I
couldn't ask my cousin for money," she told CNN.
Kim says she began working at a restaurant in Shenyang
but the low wages were not nearly enough to pay for her
expensive treatment. She says the Chinese doctors
wanted cash up front.

Kim's family in North Korea hope she

can get back home.

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/09/23/asia/northsouthkoreadefectorfamily/

"A broker told me that Chinese people go to South

Korea and earn a lot of money. The broker's neighbor
also did it for two months," she told CNN.
"I was thinking of recovering completely before returning
to my aging parents. I wanted to return home in healthy
state. So I said I will go to South Korea for two months
and earn the money and get myself treated."

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DefectorwantstoreturntoNorthKoreaCNN.com

Smuggled into South Korea

She now calls that decision a horrible mistake.

Kim was taken with a group of other defectors to South

Korea, but even before she got there, she says she was
having second thoughts.
Kim says she didn't realize that once she signed papers
renouncing her North Korean citizenship she could never
go home.
"I told them that I didn't know this so I wanted to
escape. But the broker took away my passport from me
and refused to give it back," she says.

Related Video: N. Korean woman's family

says she was kidnapped abroad 02:38

"Other defectors who were with me said if I go out and

get caught they too will be handed over to China's
Public Security and their life will be in jeopardy. Because
I didn't have a passport, I had to follow them and I
ended up in South Korea."

Kim says that, at the time, she didn't even know what a North Korean defector was.
As soon as she arrived in South Korea, Kim began demanding to go home to the North.
For South Korea, it's not that easy. It has a protocol to bring defectors in, but it is illegal for them to return.
Where young defectors go to school in South Korea

No way home
And in order to be released from a South Korean processing center, Kim says she had to sign document
renouncing communism and agreeing to follow the laws of the South. By doing so, she became a South
Korean citizen.
Kim says she's tried to find a smuggler, made repeated calls to the North Korean consulate in Shenyang, -- and
then took a desperate measure she now calls "foolish."
She says she pretended to be a North Korean spy in order to be deported. But South Korea doesn't deport
spies, they imprison them.
So after turning herself into the police, Kim was sentenced to two years for passport fraud and espionage. Her
sentence was suspended in April and she is now out on parole and under close watch. Her status as a
convicted criminal makes travel out of South Korea legally impossible.
She told CNN: "There is nothing else for me to say but I am sorry. I didn't even imagine that I would create such
a huge problem.
"The wrong choice that I made, my choice of wanting to earn money for my treatment, led to the worst situation
in my life. I am regretting with my heart and I am so sorry that I've brought such suffering to my aging parents
and husband and my daughter."
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11/24/2015

DefectorwantstoreturntoNorthKoreaCNN.com

Kim says she is now stuck in South Korea with no more

options, working as a machine operator at a recycling
plant.
"I am living in Daegu and I am going through a regular
treatment in a hospital there," she says.
Although her health has improved, Kim says the mental
anguish is unbearable. Her arms bear the scars of
multiple suicide attempts.

Orphaned by famine: The 'child mother' caring for North

Korea's parentless

55 photos: Kim Jong Un and North

Korea's military

Messages across the border

In Pyongyang, we met Kim's husband and 21-year-old daughter, who hasn't seen her mom since she was 17.
"Why? Why can't she come back," asks her sobbing daughter Ri Gyon Gum. "Why do we have to go through
such suffering?
"Why do they drag her like this, despite how she says she wants to go back, [why] not let her go? She has her
family, husband and daughter in her country, a daughter who misses her mother, a husband who misses his
wife. Do they not have heart and blood?"
Asked if they'd like to send Kim a message, her husband, Ri Gum Ryong, speaks to the camera, at times
bursting into tears.
"To my wife in South Korea, don't forget here you have parents, a husband and daughter, and a socialist
nation. Keep on fighting until the end," he says.

"My wife is fighting until the end right now, my whole family, my whole North Korean nation.
We will all get
We'dliketohear
together so that she can come back. Never stop the
fighting."

fromyou

In South Korea, Kim's hand covers her mouth when she sees their video message, as she sobs violently and
watches the clip playing on the computer screen. Weareinterestedinyourfeedback
andwouldappreciateitifyouwould
It's the first time she's seen her family in four years.answerafewquestionsaboutyour
experiencetoday.

"How can this be? What am I going to do," she asks.

Kim records a tearful apology to her family, telling them

GiveFeedback

doctors are treating her, saying she's never forgotten

them or her country, and promising to do everything she
can to come home.
"I will return. At some point I will return. Please wait for
me until I return," Kim says.

South Korea's Unification Ministry says the law does not

allow them to bring Kim's family back together.
Like so many others on the divided Korean Peninsula,
they are suffering the anguish of separation caused by

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/09/23/asia/northsouthkoreadefectorfamily/

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11/24/2015

DefectorwantstoreturntoNorthKoreaCNN.com

17 photos: The photos N. Korea banned

decades of hostility between North and South, one of

thousands of families torn apart.

We meet once again with Kim's husband and daughter

in Pyongyang, to show them her message, which they promise to pass on to her aging parents. They remain
unsure when, or if, they'll ever be reunited.
As the video begins, Kim's daughter's hand covers her mouth in the exact same manner as her mother. They
bear a striking resemblance. Mother on screen, daughter watching, both sobbing violently.
There are no words. Only heartbreak.
North Korean defector: Kim Jong Un's days are numbered

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/09/23/asia/northsouthkoreadefectorfamily/

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