Her son died for her but guess the grass is not greener on the other side?

[theking]

A North Korean defector says she and others like her are struggling to survive in the South: 'I want to go back and die there — South Korea is as suffocating as the North'

A North Korean woman who defected to the South in 2017 now says she wishes she could return to the North and "die there."

"I am so lonely. I want to go back and die there — South Korea is as suffocating as the North," she told Bloomberg's Sangmi Cha and Jon Herskovitz.

The woman, identified only by her last name due to safety concerns, said she could only bring one of her sons with her to South Korea. When her family realized they didn't have enough funds for all of them to flee, her eldest son volunteered to stay behind, she told Bloomberg.

He was beaten to death when the North Korean authorities learned Lee had escaped, she said.

Her account of life in the South is an indicator that escaping Kim Jong Un's regime doesn't guarantee a smooth-sailing life post-defection. But in contrast, North Korea has one of the world's worst human rights records, and its people struggle with famine and intense food insecurity.

Another defector interviewed by Bloomberg, 51-year-old Im Su-ryuh, spoke of homesickness and missing her family.

"I often cry because I miss the family I left behind," she said, per Bloomberg. "It's been about three years, but I still dream about North Korea."

"I should have brought my mother's clothes so I can smell her," said Im, according to the outlet.

She escaped North Korea through China and traveled through Laos and Thailand, in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. To secure her escape route to South Korea, Im ended up paying a broker around 10 years of the average North Korean's salary, per Bloomberg.

Despite being homesick, she called Seoul a "heaven on earth" because she receives money and rice from the South Korean government every month, per the outlet.

[Dok_Champa]

Their stories /voices are similar to our stories especially our parents.

[DuMa]

Big time human trafficking going on there.  Pay you money or promise of a job once you in the south. 

Women and girls end up getting sold and force into the sex trade.  It is sad how innocence being lost.   It is like getting rape over and over again on every night.  My gosh, the route to freedom comes with a big price. 

My boat people also have a danger out there.  Wild weather can flip your boat.  Pirates killing you and taking all of your goods and  your women getting rape and killed.  Not all boats were privileges to have military men on board like mine.  We eve have bazooka launcher on board and had to used it to bluff a few times when pirates were nearby.  My route was to Malaysia.  Other people's like the viet chinese routes were to hong kong to the north.  Some don't even have any sense of direction and just go and floats out there and hoping that a big ocean liner will see them and will pick them up and take them to wherever that ship is head to.  This is why you see viets living in other parts of the world like France and my other uncle went to Israel.  Exodus is no joke for migrants. 

The sad part is any history about the boat people are not being taught in my country so the next generations of kids are brainwashed to not knowing and not knowing the struggles that their ancestors went through.  The commie government hides that part of history as a way to control the minds of its occupants.