‘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.
Israel and Hamas said ceasefire talks have resumed in Qatar – even as Israeli forces ramped up a bombing campaign and mobilised for a massive new ground assault.
Earlier, the Israeli military said it had been “conducting extensive strikes and mobilising troops” as part of preparations to expand operations in Gaza.
Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz said Hamas had “refused to discuss negotiations without a cessation of the war”, but after the airstrikes and the mobilisation of forces the militant group’s representatives “have agreed to sit in a room and seriously discuss the deal”.
“Israel emphasises that if the talks do not progress, the [military] operation will continue,” he added.
A Hamas source told Sky News that ceasefire talks began in Doha on Saturday morning.
Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli strike on a house in Jabalia. Pic: Reuters
Tents were targeted in an airstrike on Saturday at al Aqsa Hospital in Deir al Balah in central Gaza. Pic: AP
Hamas official Taher al-Nono told Reuters news agency that the two sides were involved in discussions without “pre-conditions”.
He added Hamas was “keen to exert all the effort needed” to help mediators make the negotiations a success.
More than 150 people have been killed in Israeli strikes in the last 24 hours, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza.
This week has been one of the deadliest phases of bombardment since a truce collapsed in March and marked a significant escalation in Israel’s offensive.
The Israeli military’s preparations to expand operations in Gaza have included the build-up of tanks and troops along the border.
It is part of “Operation Gideon Chariot”, which Israel says is aimed at defeating Hamas and getting its hostages back.
Israeli tanks near the Israel-Gaza border on Saturday. Pic: Reuters
An Israeli tank being relocated to a position near the Gaza border on Friday. Pic: AP
An Israeli defence official said earlier this month that the operation would not be launched before Donald Trump concluded his visit to the Middle East.
The US president ended his trip on Friday, with no apparent progress towards a new peace deal.
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Forensic look at Israel’s escalation
Meanwhile, on Saturday, leaders at the annual summit of the Arab League in Baghdad said they were trying to reach a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
They also promised to contribute to the reconstruction of the territory once the war stops.
The meeting comes two months after Israel ended a ceasefire reached with the Hamas militant group.
A man carrying the body of a child killed in Israeli airstrikes on Friday in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Pic: Reuters
Parts of northern Gaza have been completely destroyed in the bombing campaign. Pic: Reuters
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on 5 May that Israel was planning an expanded, intensive offensive against Hamas as his security cabinet approved plans that could involve seizing Gaza and controlling aid.
This week, Israel said it had bombed the European Hospital because it was home to an underground Hamas base, but Sky News analysis has cast doubt on its evidence.
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Israel’s goal is the elimination of Hamas, which attacked southern Israel on 7 October 2023, killing around 1,200 people and seizing about 250 hostages.
Its military response has killed more than 53,000 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
World
The chilling moment in Russia-Ukraine peace talks – as Putin makes mockery of Trump’s efforts to end war
Vladimir Putin made a mockery this week of Donald Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine.
Far from punishing him for it, the US president went out of his way to dodge calls to get tough with the Russian leader.
Follow latest updates on Ukraine war
On Sunday, President Trump called on leaders of both Russia and Ukraine to meet.
He posted: “President Putin of Russia wants to meet on Thursday, in Turkey, to negotiate a possible end to the BLOODBATH. Ukraine should agree to this, IMMEDIATELY.”
That post let the Russian leader off the hook. Only the day before, Putin had been ordered by Ukraine’s allies, including America, to agree to a 30-day unconditional ceasefire.
Pic: AP
The Russian president had swerved that demand, suggesting talks instead.
“If the ceasefire is not respected, the US and its partners will impose further sanctions,” Trump posted before swivelling and backing Putin’s proposals for talks instead.
Undeterred, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accepted the call.
Putin though refused to go, sending officials instead.
And yet there was no reprimand from the US president. Instead, he chose to undermine the talks he had himself called for.
“Look, nothing is going to happen until Putin and I get together,” he told reporters on Air Force One. So much for that then.
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What happened at Ukraine talks?
It is what happened in those talks though that should give the US president the greatest pause for thought about Putin’s intentions – as it does in Kyiv.
The message they brought was blunt and belligerent, threatening eternal war.
“We don’t want war, but we’re ready to fight for a year, two, three – however long it takes,” lead Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky is reported to have said. “We fought Sweden for 21 years. How long are you ready to fight?”
Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky. Pic: AP
Far from offering a compromise, they are reported to have demanded the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the four regions they have partially seized by force and the capitulation of another two, just for good measure.
And there was a chilling moment when the Russians are reported to have threatened their interlocutors like gangsters.
“Maybe some of those sitting here at this table will lose more of their loved ones,” Mednisky said. Russia is prepared to fight forever.
For Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister, that was personal.
Max, his 23-year-old nephew, lost his life fighting the Russians in 2022 not long after their illegal and unprovoked invasion began.
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Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister. Pic: AP
At the end of this week, Putin appears scornful of Western efforts to end this war through a ceasefire and negotiations and Trump seems happy to let him get away with it.
Even Fox News, normally slavishly subservient to Trump, is wondering what gives.
Its anchor Bret Baier is no Jeremy Paxman, but in an interview last night asked Donald Trump 10 times if he might finally now put pressure on Putin.
The US president ducked and dived, talking about the money he had made in his Gulf tour, Zelenskyy’s shortcomings, Biden, and Iran instead. But he did not give a straight answer to the question.
With performances like that, Putin has nothing to worry about. Trump’s position though seems increasingly untenable.
Ukraine’s European allies though should be alarmed. They threatened Russia with sanctions and retaliation last weekend if he rejected a ceasefire. He now has.
With or without America, will they be good to their word?
A wave of deadly strikes in northern Gaza has marked a significant escalation in Israel’s offensive.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said on Friday evening it was “conducting extensive strikes and mobilising troops to achieve operational control in the areas of Gaza”.
Earlier, it said it had struck “over 150 terror targets” across the Gaza Strip in the previous 24 hours – an average of one airstrike every 10 minutes.
Israeli strikes on Gaza have killed more than 250 people since Thursday morning, the Hamas-run health ministry in the region said on Friday.
Nurse and his family killed in strike
The impact of this new bombardment is cataclysmic, as this video of an Israeli airstrike in Jabalia, northern Gaza, verified by Sky News, shows.
Other videos show huge smoke clouds rising from airstrikes on residential neighbourhoods surrounding the city’s Indonesian Hospital.
The hospital’s director, Dr Marwan al Sultan, told Sky News: “There is a shortage of everything except death.”
Among those killed in Jabalia on Friday was 42-year old Yahya Shehab, a nurse for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF).
He was killed alongside his wife Tamara, 37, and their five children: Sarah, 18, Anas, 16, Maryam, 14, Aya, 12 and Abdul, 11.
Nurse Yahya Shehab, 42, was killed alongside his wife and five young children. Pic: PCRF
He is survived by his niece Huda, 27, a civil engineer, who lives nearby with her husband Ahmad Ngat, 31, and their two young sons, Mohammed, seven, and Yusuf, four.
Ahmad remembers Yahya as kind and generous, and that he would use his skills as a nurse to treat Mohammed and Yusuf whenever they were sick.
“His kids were great too,” Ahmad says. “May God have mercy on them.”
Operation Gideon Chariot
An Israeli official said Friday’s strikes were preparatory actions in the lead-up to a larger operation.
Earlier this month, Israel’s security cabinet approved “Operation Gideon Chariot” – a plan to “capture” all of Gaza and force its entire population to move to a small enclave in the southern Gaza Strip.
At the time, a defence official said the operation would go ahead if no hostage deal was reached by the end of US President Donald Trump’s visit to the Middle East. That visit ended on Friday 16 May.
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Hamas had proposed releasing all hostages in exchange for a permanent end to the war. Last month, Hamas turned down Israel’s offer of a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the militant group laying down its weapons and releasing half the living hostages.
Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who sits in the security cabinet, said of Operation Gideon Chariot that Gaza would be “entirely destroyed”, and that its population will “leave in great numbers to third countries”.
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Fresh airstrikes hit Gaza
Ahmad says he is ready to leave Gaza with his family at the earliest opportunity.
“We want to live our lives,” he says.
Ahmad (C) with his wife Huda (R) and their son Mohammed (L). Pic: Ahmad Ngat
His wife Huda grieving the loss of her uncle Yahya, is seven months pregnant. The family are constantly struggling to find enough food for her and the children, he says.
“Unfortunately, she suffers greatly,” Ahmad says. “She developed gestational diabetes during this pregnancy.”
Israel has prevented the entry of all food, fuel and water since 2 March. On Monday, a UN-backed report warned that one in five people in Gaza were facing starvation.
Satellite imagery may show new aid hubs
Under new proposals backed by the US, Israel now intends to control the distribution of aid via private military contractors.
The proposals, set to start operating by the end of May, would see aid distributed from militarised compounds in four locations around the Gaza Strip.
Satellite imagery from recent weeks shows Israel has constructed four compounds which could be used for aid distribution.
Newly constructed compounds in Gaza, May 2025. Pics: Planet Labs PBC
Construction began in April and was completed by early May.
Three of these are clustered together in the southwest corner of the Gaza Strip, with one in the central Netzarim corridor.
None are located in northern Gaza, where Ahmad and Huda’s family live.
The UN has called this a “deliberate attempt to weaponise” aid distribution and has refused to participate.
The planned aid distribution system is being coordinated by a new non-profit, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which was set up in February in Switzerland.
Its board includes a former head of World Central Kitchen, as well as people with close ties to the US military and private military contractors.
Proposals drawn up by the GHF say the four planned aid distribution sites could feed around 1.2 million people, approximately 60% of Gaza’s population.
The GHF later requested that Israel establish additional distribution points.
Speaking to the UN Security Council on Tuesday, UN Relief chief Tom Fletcher said the plan “makes starvation a bargaining chip”.
“It is cynical sideshow. A deliberate distraction. A fig leaf for further violence and displacement,” he said.
Read more:
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Large areas of Gaza have already been razed in recent weeks, including vast tracts of the southern city of Rafah, where many had fled during the war’s early stages.
Sky News analysis of satellite imagery shows approximately two-thirds of Rafah’s built-up area (66%) has been reduced entirely to rubble, with buildings across much of the rest of the city showing signs of severe damage.
On Thursday, Human Rights Watch executive director Federico Borello said the UK and US have a duty, under the Genocide Convention, to “stop Israeli authorities from starving civilians in Gaza”.
He said: “Hearing Israeli officials flaunt plans to squeeze Gaza’s two million people into an even tinier area while making the rest of the land uninhabitable should be treated like a five-alarm fire in London, Brussels, Paris, and Washington.”
Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said on Friday that Israel’s new offensive is intended to secure the release of its hostages. “Our objective is to get them home and get Hamas to relinquish power,” he said.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
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