Tag Archives: Jilin Province

Panicked Chinese Students Evacuated

Yanji, China

North Korea’s second nuclear test on May 25 shocked the world and caused the strongest tremor ever to hit the border area between China and North Korea.  People in the region feared that it was another huge earthquake like the recent one in Sichuan.  Fortunately, I had lived in Japan long enough to be familiar with earthquakes, so I did not panic.  However, most people living in the border area were clearly terrified.

Special US Report on NK Refugees

Interviews with North Koreans in China

In June 2004, Joel R. Charny of Refugees International spent one week in Jilin province in China interviewing 38 North Korean refugees. They live, Charney found, a precarious and clandestine existence as illegal migrants. Download Charny’s 7-page report in PDF format.

China Raises Bounty on NK Refugees 1600%

A year’s Pay for One NK Defector

Stories of a shocking new development are just beginning to leak out of China. The government there has just raised the stakes in the human rights issue now coming to a boil. While the world’s attention is focused on the uproar in Tibet, other important developments are quietly taking place in the shadows.

Human Trafficking Victim – Choi Chong-mi

Name:            Choi Chong-mi
(Female, Name changed for safety)
Birth date:    1969
Hometown:   Hamgyong Bukto

It is an unending nightmare. I don’t know how to begin telling everything that has happened to me. It will probably sound like fiction to you. When I was two years old, following the death of my father, I was taken in by four aunts and an uncle. My cousins were like my parents, sisters and brother.

NK Defector Couple Face Death… or Life

Special Field Report

One of LFNKR’s local staff members went to Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, in the Jilin Province of China recently to interview a couple who, in hopes of reaching Japan, had decided in early 2007 to escape from North Korea. The husband and wife (names are not disclosed for their protection) were just children when their parents, ethnic Koreans born in Japan, moved to North Korea, expecting to find the “Paradise on the earth” that was being touted in a widespread campaign to attract immigrants. The husband had been 6 years old and his wife only 1 year old when their parents made the move.