Only a passion for freedom and perseverance in the face of life-threatening situations has brought us here today. There are thousands of North Korean defectors who, like me, have traveled through China, Vietnam and Thailand in search of freedom. It takes just 4 hours by car from Seoul to my native land – to think that I had to travel thousands of miles to come to a place a mere stone’s throw away, it all seems like a dream to me. On the large map, the Korean peninsula crouches at the bottom of the Chinese continent like a small rabbit in Far East Asia.
BE NOT BLOWN ABOUT AS A LEAF ON THE WIND SKIN
The reason why I, who had never even studied geography, bought a world map full of tiny letters, was because of my memories of the thousands of miles that I had trekked, the different languages that I had encountered, and the foreigners of different skin color whom I had met, all in search of freedom. The very first thing I did when I completed my time at “Hanawon” (the South Korean resettlement re-education center) was to go to Kyobo Bookstore, purchase this world map and put it up on my wall. I am a North Korean defector who arrived in South Korea in 2003.Įven now, I look at my world map and often outline the North Korean defector’s escape route through Southeast Asia.
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