With cash, defectors find North Korea's cracks

International Herald Tribune

BANGKOK - "Last March, Lee Chun-hak, a 19-year-old North Korean, went to the Chinese border to meet with a North Korean money trafficker. Using the trafficker's Chinese cellphone, Lee talked to his mother, who had defected to South Korea in 2003. She told him she was going to get him out.

Lee missed his mother and his sister and brother, and he had a persistent, if half-formed, desire. 'I wanted to go to a country that is more developed,' he said, 'even more developed than South Korea.'

In June, a young North Korean man appeared suddenly at his home with a message: 'Mother is looking for you.' The man then took him by bicycle and foot to the border and handed him over to a North Korean soldier. At the soldier's direction, Lee was ordered to leave his identification card and his Kim Il-sung badge, which is worn by all North Koreans to honor the nation's founder.

The soldier then escorted Lee across the Tumen River, where on the other side two Chinese men in plainclothes handed the soldier his bribe. Lee was free to go." Continue reading.