‘A lot of punishment, no food, hard work’: North Korean defector’s fears for sister who will ‘die in jail’
Kim Kyu-li welled up when she talked about the family she’s lost.
It must sometimes feel that ghosts and fragments are all she has left of them – such is the way when you’re a defector from North Korea.
But there was a very particular, very raw pain when she spoke about her younger sister, Kim Cheol-ok.
Cheol-ok escaped from North Korea to China in the late 1990s. But within days she was sold into marriage by traffickers and spent the next 25 years in the country – only to be arrested in 2023 by Chinese police and deported back to the country she sacrificed so much to escape.
She has, in a sense, just vanished.
And she is not alone. Human rights groups have told Sky News they believe the deportation of North Korean defectors from China is continuing “apace”.
It comes after October saw the largest mass deportation event in at least a decade, with up to 500 people sent back in just one day. A further 100 were deported during August and September.
It has caused such alarm that China was questioned for the first time on the issue at the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) last week, the fourth such review into China’s human rights record since 2009.
We met Ms Kim at her home in Morden, south London. She has her own remarkable story about escaping across the North Korean border into China as a teenager and eventually making it to the UK.
But it is not her story we have come to discuss.
Protesters call for an end to the deportations
Sold to a husband three times her age
At the time of her flight, Ms Kim did not take her younger sister with her.
Cheol-ok made her journey to China a few years later at the age of 14 to escape the devastating famine that was gripping North Korea.
But within a few days of her escape, Cheol-ok was sold by traffickers to a husband three times her age. Her sister then lost all trace of her for the following two decades.
It wasn’t until 2020, with the aid of Chinese social media, that they reconnected against the odds.
“I felt I got all the world,” Ms Kim reminisced with a smile, “every day we were talking, just crying, crying.”
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A dangerous undocumented life
By this time, Cheol-ok was nearly 40 and had a grown-up daughter of her own. She had survived in China for 25 years with regular payments to local officials to avoid being reported, a cost Ms Kim said the family could barely afford.
But North Korean escapees in China have no ID, and no right to work or access basic services like healthcare. It is a dangerous, undocumented life.
“In January she caught coronavirus very hard, very hard,” explained Ms Kim, “but she can’t go to the hospital, nobody cares. During that time she understood [that she had to leave China].”
“When she got better she said, ‘sister, I have to come. If I stay here, I will die like this’.”
‘It’s already too late’
So they made secret plans for her to travel to Vietnam, a well-worn route for North Korean defectors. But just two hours into her journey she was arrested by Chinese police.
Within six months the nightmare scenario for her family came true – with a call from Cheol-ok’s daughter saying her mother would be deported to North Korea in just two hours’ time.
“It’s already too late,” Ms Kim said with tears in her eyes, “we can’t do anything, what can we do in two hours?”
She now lives with the agony of knowing what likely awaits Cheol-ok back in their home country.
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Punishment, no food, hard work
“There will be a lot of punishment, no food in the jail, hard work,” she said.
“She doesn’t speak Korean anymore, she has no family there, she will die in jail.”
When she thought of China, the country she believes abandoned her sister, she choked on her tears.
“Twenty-five years she lived there, it is her home now.
“How could they do that?! Maybe they have a relationship with North Korea, but they shouldn’t do that. It’s not human, we are not animals. If she goes back to North Korea [she will be treated] like flies, they kill flies.”
North Korea enforced a strict three-year border closure in response to the COVID pandemic
Mass deportation
The Seoul-based human rights NGO Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG), has worked closely with other agencies tracking deportations. It believes Cheol-ok was in a group of up to 500 others all deported on 9 October, the largest mass deportation event in over a decade.
They have identified five crossing points along the 850-mile border. They believe the majority of people sent back were women, and the identities of most of them are not known.
The most prominent of the crossing points is in the city of Dandong, on the western end of North Korea’s border.
The bridge there, which crosses the Yalu River dividing the two countries, is a tourist attraction and a tribute to the Chinese soldiers who used it to join the fighting in the Korean war.
It stood largely empty during the pandemic, as North Korea enforced a strict three-year border closure.
We saw a handful of trucks making the journey across.
“Sometimes there are more, sometimes less,” one woman who works under the bridge told us, “sometimes there’s no trucks for the whole day, sometimes there are a few more.”
It was these border closures that caused such a large backlog in deportations.
A truck crosses the bridge over the Yalu River
Defectors seen as traitors
Multiple reports from inside North Korea say defectors are seen as traitors and punished brutally with imprisonment, torture and possibly execution.
Other accounts say three years of border closures have wrought poverty and starvation.
But China has argued to the UN there is no evidence of such treatment and therefore the deportations are not illegal under the 1951 Refugee Convention.
“There is no such thing as a North Korean ‘defector’ in China,” said Wang Wenbin, spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs when asked by Sky News.
He said: “People who come to China illegally for economic reasons are not refugees. They have violated Chinese law and have disrupted the order of China’s entry and exit administration.
“China has always dealt with these people in accordance with the principle of combining domestic law, international law and humanitarianism.”
Pressure on China
But international pressure over the issue is growing. For the first time South Korea questioned China at a UN Human Rights Council review.
South Korea’s ambassador to the UN office in Geneva, Yun Seong-deok, said Beijing should stop repatriating North Koreans.
However, experts say any such pressure will almost certainly come second to the bigger geopolitical picture in which China needs a stable North Korea.
In the context of the war in Ukraine and the heightening tension between West and East, China’s alliance with Russia and other like-minded nations is paramount.
“In Beijing, it’s much more about geopolitics, and their primary interest is maintaining good relations with North Korea,” explained Ethan Hee-Seok Shin, a legal analyst at TJWG.
“The last thing they want is to destabilise the North Korean state.
“The feared scenario from Beijing is that this kind of exodus, or floodgate, of North Korean escapees would result in the collapse of North Korea, as happened with East Germany back in 1989.”
‘Stay strong’
These issues feel all the more pressing now in the context of North Korea’s recent relationship building with Russia and heightened threats against South Korea.
Some experts believe North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un may seriously be considering conflict.
Back in London, Ms Kim said she will not stop fighting. But it must sometimes feel that no one is listening.
She said she believes she will see Cheol-ok again, and wants to tell her to “stay strong”.
But she knows she is a pawn in a much bigger picture.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said there is a “good chance” to end the war with Russia.
The embattled Ukrainian president was speaking after he accepted a proposal for a 30-day interim ceasefire and Vladimir Putin stuck to his red lines on needing certain conditions to be met.
“Right now, we have a good chance to end this war quickly and secure peace. We have solid security understandings with our European partners,” Mr Zelenskyy said in a post on X.
“We are now close to the first step in ending any war – silence,” he said, referring to a truce.
Vladimir Putin. Pic: Reuters
He later urged the US and other allies to place further pressure on Moscow and reiterated his belief Mr Putin will delay the ceasefire for as long as possible.
“If there is a strong response from the United States, they will not let them play around. And if there are steps that Russia is not afraid of, they will delay the process,” he said.
Mr Zelenskyy said a ceasefire along the more than 1,000km (600-mile) frontline could be controlled with US help through satellites and intelligence – earlier this week Washington resumed intelligence sharing and military aid after Ukraine accepted the ceasefire.
Mr Zelenskyy also said officials at a meeting between US and Ukrainian officials in Saudi Arabia this week discussed the issue of territory, but a difficult dialogue would be required to resolve it.
“The issue of territories is the most difficult after the ceasefire,” Mr Zelenskyy said.
It comes as Donald Trump said he sees “pretty good vibes coming out of Russia”, and he thinks Moscow will make a deal on the war.
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Ukraine has ‘agreed to ceasefire’
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 has left thousands dead and injured, with millions displaced and towns and cities destroyed.
After three years of war Moscow’s forces now control nearly a fifth of Ukrainian territory and have been advancing since the middle of last year.
“The ceasefire unblocks the way for the sides to end the war. And the territories… will be the point that makes it
possible to end the war after this issue is resolved,” Mr Zelenskyy said.
The Kremlin has demanded Kyiv permanently cede the territory it has claimed.
Mr Zelenskyy also said he was discussing future security guarantees and economic support with Kyiv’s allies, saying 100% air defence cover would be required as deterrence in a peace deal.
Meanwhile, Mr Putin met with US envoy Steve Witkoff to discuss the details of the proposal and has asked him to convey Moscow’s thoughts to Washington, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
It comes ahead of a video call between Sir Keir Starmer and around 25 world leaders on Saturday, in which he will urge them to make concrete commitments to support Ukraine and increase pressure on Mr Putin to accept a ceasefire.
World
Former president of Philippines Rodrigo Duterte appears in court accused of running death squads
Rodrigo Duterte, the former president of the Philippines, has appeared at the International Criminal Court, accused of crimes against humanity.
The 79-year-old appeared in the Netherlands via video link on Friday.
His lawyer said he was suffering from “debilitating medical issues” but the judge in The Hague, Iulia Motoc, said the court doctor had found him to be “fully mentally aware and fit”.
She said he was allowed to appear remotely because he had taken a long flight.
Wearing a jacket and tie, Duterte spoke briefly to confirm his name and date of birth.
He was read his rights and formally informed of the charges. His supporters contest his arrest and say the court does not have jurisdiction.
If convicted, he faces life in prison.
His daughter Sara Duterte, the current vice president of the Philippines, said she was hoping to visit her father and have the hearing moved after meeting supporters outside the court.
Back home in the Philippine capital region, large screens were set up to allow families of suspects killed in the crackdowns to watch the proceedings.
Police protested over the killings when Mr Duterte was still in charge in 2021. Pic: AP
Prosecutors accuse Duterte of forming and arming death squads said to have killed thousands of drug dealers and users during a brutal crackdown on illegal drugs.
Police say more than 6,200 people were killed in what they describe as shootouts while he was president from 2016 to 2022.
They claim he was an “indirect co-perpetrator” in multiple murders, allegedly overseeing killings between November 2011 and March 2019.
Before becoming president, Duterte was the mayor of the southern city of Davao.
According to the prosecution, he issued orders to police and other “hitmen” who formed the so-called “Davao Death Squads” or DDS.
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Why was Duterte arrested?
Estimates of the death toll during his six-year presidential term vary, from more than 6,000 reported by national police, to 30,000 claimed by human rights groups.
The warrant for his arrest said there were “reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Duterte bears criminal responsibility for the crime against humanity of murder”.
Duterte has said he takes full responsibility for the “war on drugs”.
He was arrested on Tuesday amid chaotic scenes in Manila, the capital of the Philippines, after returning from a visit to Hong Kong.
He told officers “you have to kill me to bring me to The Hague” during a 12-hour standoff, a Philippine police general said.
He also refused to have his fingerprints taken and threatened Police Major General Nicolas Torre with lawsuits before he was bundled onto a government-chartered jet at a Philippine air base and taken to The Hague, Maj Gen Torre told the Associated Press.
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Steve Witkoff didn’t stay long in the Russian capital.
According to footage posted of his motorcade leaving and returning to Moscow’s Vnukovo airport, he was here for little more than 12 hours.
And for most of that, it seems, he was left waiting.
Trump’s fixer leaves Moscow – peace talks latest
US special envoy Steve Witkoff talking to reporters at the White House. Pic: AP
Mr Witkoff, a former property mogul who has become Donald Trump’s chief negotiator, and is often referred to as the president’s ‘fixer’, had been dispatched to Moscow to deliver the US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire to Vladimir Putin.
His visit had been scheduled near the start of the week, following the US-Ukraine talks in Saudi Arabia.
But after arriving around lunchtime on Thursday, he was left twiddling his thumbs for at least eight hours before being called into the Kremlin.
Mr Putin was apparently too busy meeting someone else – Belarusian leader Aleksander Lukashenko – for a hastily arranged state visit that had been announced the day before.
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Was ally’s visit a classic Putin power play?
We don’t know for sure if the timing of Mr Lukashenko’s visit was deliberate, but it certainly didn’t feel like a coincidence.
Instead, it felt like a classic Putin power play.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko. Pic: Reuters
The Kremlin leader doesn’t like to be backed into a corner and told what to do, especially on his own turf.
This felt like a message to the Americans – “I’m the boss, I set the schedule, and I’m not beholden to anyone”.
He did eventually grant Mr Witkoff that all-important face time, once night had fallen and behind closed-doors.
We don’t know how long they spoke for, nor the exact details of their discussion, but I think we can make a pretty good guess given Mr Putin’s comments earlier in the evening.
At a press conference alongside Mr Lukashenko, he made it abundantly clear that he’ll only sign up to a ceasefire if he gets something in return.
And it’s not just one thing he wants.
All Russia’s red lines remain
By the sounds of things, he still wants everything.
His comment regarding the “root causes” of the conflict suggests all of Russia’s red lines remain – no NATO membership for Ukraine, no NATO troops as peacekeepers, and for Russia to keep all the territory it has seized.
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According to Russian media outlet Radio Mayak, Mr Putin’s meetings in the Kremlin finished at 1.30am.
Around half an hour later, Mr Witkoff was back at the airport – leaving Russia, it seems – not with Mr Putin’s agreement but with a list of demands.
It’s now up to Mr Trump to decide what to do next.
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