7 NK Refugees Waiting for Help
Low Funds Delay Rescue Mission – Can You Help?
For a while now, LFNKR has been working quietly with a couple of South Korean NGO partners. Currently, we are ready to launch missions that will result in the rescue of a total of seven North Korean defectors (3 families and one woman) now hiding in China. However, due to a depleted rescue budget, we find ourselves unable to implement the first step of this rescue plan.
As always, for their safety, we cannot disclose full background information on the seven refugees, but the following summary gives you an overview of their background. Every day they wait, they face the danger of arrest and repatriation by Chinese police, so they need immediate help getting out of China. The average cost for rescuing one person is $1,300 USD. If you could donate anything at all, it would greatly help them. Here is a link to our donation page.
And here are the people waiting for rescue:
Case 1: Two sisters (ages 18 and 14)
These sisters escaped from North Korea together with their mother in the year 200X but very soon all three became victims of human trafficking. In October of 201X, their mother went out for groceries and never came home. Every day they live in fear of either being arrested and repatriated, or being sold again.
Case 2: Woman (age 26)
This woman was sold to a 60-year-old Chinese man living in a rural area. He is a heavy drinker and gambler and often becomes violent. She escaped when he passed out after heavy drinking. First, she had to walk for 5 hours to go over a mountain, and then she hitchhiked to reach our local shelter.
Case 3: Mother and daughter (ages 46 and 9)
The mother escaped from North Korea in the year 200X. She was sold to a Chinese man and bore a baby girl from that union. About a hundred days after her daughter was born, she was arrested and repatriated to North Korea in the year 200X. Her baby daughter remained in China. After 3 years of serving time in a labor training camp, she escaped back into China to see her daughter. The mother and the daughter, now in hiding, are terrified of possible arrest and repatriation.
Case 4: Mother and daughter (ages 43 and 16)
The mother escaped from North Korea in the year 199X. She was sold to a Chinese man in a village, where she had a baby girl. The local police and the villagers understood her situation, so she did not have to worry about being arrested and repatriated. However, in the year 2007, in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, police from another city came to the village and arrested the mother. She was repatriated and spent 3 years in a North Korean labor training camp.
After being released from the camp, she escaped again and returned to her family in China in the year 201X. She has been paying protection money to the village police, but she fears that if another political change or other random event should occur, she could easily be rearrested and repatriated once again. Thus, she needs to leave China with her daughter, sooner rather than later.
One of our recent successful joint rescue operations:
LFNKR has received the letters of thanks from two North Korean refugees, Ms. Jung and Ms. Choi, via its South Korean partner NGO. They both started their new lives in South Korea on February 20, Ms. Jung (age 70) in Tongyeong, South Gyeongsong Province, and Ms. Choi (age 22) in Cheongju, Chungcheongbuk-do.
Below shows the letters of thanks, written in Korean language, from the two women.
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In her letter, Ms. Jung expresses her gratitude for our help, because she had been at a complete loss as to how she would make her way to South Korea following her escape from North Korea. She mentioned in her letter that she now has a comfortable place to live and is enjoying her peaceful new life.
Ms. Choi, in turn, expresses her gratitude for our role in helping her escape the hardships she was experiencing as a human trafficking victim. She mentioned in the letter that she has finished the training at Hanawon Resettlement Center, and she is eager to work hard to make a full new life. She also expresses her hope that we will continue rescuing North Korean defectors who are even now suffering as she did.
Note: Their names and some of the other information in the letters have been obscured to protect their safety.