Poverty and repression: North Korean defector denounces what the pandemic meant in his country

Mr. Kim is one of the few North Koreans who, after fleeing his country, can tell what happened there during the pandemic. His story sheds light on the greater repression and the economic and nutritional deterioration that the covid and that human rights organizations denounce.

The coronavirus restrictions began in his border province of South Hwanghae (southwest) on May 13, 2021, Kim vividly recalls, who in the interview with EFE only agrees to give his last name to protect his relatives on both sides of the border. .

Two plainclothes police officers who do not leave his side attest that he is a potential target for the regime due to the uniqueness of his testimony; Between 2020 and 2023, only a handful of people managed to flee from the North to the South given the strict border closure applied by Covid and the strong restrictions implemented by China, a transit country for the majority of deserters.

Kim speaks of neighbors dying of starvation due to the shortages caused by health restrictions and the commercial blockade or of his acquaintances executed for consuming South Korean music after the tightening of ideological laws during that triennium.

Until that May 13, the regime seemed to give a low profile to the covid, since with the suspected cases – the country lacked testing until 2022 – the doctors, says the deserter, ““They diagnosed simple colds and recommended isolation just in case.”

In that May wave in which, in Kim’s opinion, “six out of ten” were infected in their region, those who fell ill managed without medicines since “they ordered all pharmacies to close,” causing the price of aspirin to multiply by 40 in the black market.

By the time another wave arrived two months later – the authorities, this time, provided medicine and even food – strict restrictions were already a reality.

“A propaganda campaign said that the South, to spread the coronavirus in the North, sent infected people to the (South Korean) islands of Yeongpyeong and Baengnyeong,” located in front of his province, ““With which in these coastal areas mobility was greatly limited and we lost access to the sea,” account.

At that time reaching the sea was essential for him, since due to its proximity it was the route chosen for him and his family to flee to the South (in addition to his pregnant wife, he was joined by his mother, his brother, his sister-in-law and his two nephews). .

He and his brother would finally land a job operating a small fishing boat in January 2023, allowing them to meticulously plan an escape that materialized one night the following May.

The plan involved putting his nephews to sleep with sleeping pills, carrying them through a minefield and sailing at the mercy of the wind that blew in a southerly direction so as not to activate radars until they approached the maritime border in a journey that seemed endless.

Kim did not flee for financial reasons –“leave North Korea for many reasons, although I can simply say that the day to day life there is reason enough”-, since during the pandemic he worked in sales and prospered due to the serious shortage generated by the closing of the border with China.

The restrictions, which called for going out only from 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. and not gathering more than three, were more lax outside the cities since “The State had to allow a certain degree of economic activity.”

“People managed as best they could the first two years. And then at the beginning of 2022 I started hearing about people dying of hunger,” relates.

These deaths, including those of some farmers he knew, lead him to consider that “Right now the economic situation is much worse than during the ‘Arduous March’ (the great famine of the nineties)” in his region, where he does not remember anyone dying of starvation during that period.

“In summary, the person who previously ate rice now eats corn, the person who ate corn has to eat wild plants and the person who cannot find herbs and plants goes days without eating.”, he says about his neighbors.

Added to this are the new laws of 2020 and 2023 that toughen penalties for consuming foreign cultural content or seek to eliminate South Korean expressions in speech that, especially young people, were beginning to adopt after hearing them in music or series from the neighboring country.

“Crimes that previously would have been punished with labor re-education are punished more, to the point that now you go to prison, and for things that previously put you in prison, you are now executed”details.

Among those imprisoned or executed that Kim knew was a twenty-something man shot simply for listening to southern songs and sharing a few foreign movies.