----- 3 stars ----- The Underground Railroad of North Korea / GQ Any North Korean knows that escaping their nation is nearly impossible. First, the woman called “Faith” would have to evade the soldiers and surveillance cameras on the border. But even once she'd sneaked into China, the danger would only have just begun. To reach a South Korean embassy, where she could receive asylum, she would still have to clandestinely journey thousands of miles across China and then several Southeast Asian countries. If she was discovered anywhere along that trek, she would likely be repatriated to one of her nation's infamous gulags, where prisoners slave with so little food they capture rats to eat. But after more than 30 years of never daring to criticize the dictatorship out loud, even after enduring a famine, she was willing to risk anything to free herself. By late 2017, thanks to the help of a secret network of activists who serve as an underground railroad of sorts for North Koreans seeking asylum, Faith had managed to make it over 2,500 miles from her home. As she approached China's border with Vietnam, where many refugees have been arrested—she recognized that she was facing one of the most hazardous passages of her odyssey. Faith, her two preschool-age kids, and five other North Koreans hiked on a mud path through farmland and jungle, following a Vietnamese man in silence, for speaking Korean would blow their cover to anyone they passed. At the end of the trail, a soldier appeared, guarding a bridge over a river, and their guide hailed him. Safety lay just beyond the soldier. She waited for him to respond. In this moment, she would discover if her bravery had won a better life for her and her children—or if she had doomed them all. [...] Stephen Kim is a man whose life has been shrouded in legend. For leading the rescue of over 700 North Koreans, he has been called “the Oskar Schindler of North Korea,” a nickname that he shares with several other humanitarians who do similar work. Associates refer to him by the code name Superman, and he has been called “mythical” by human-rights activists, as reported by The Times of London. When I first met him, in the fall of 2018, at a private location in Seoul, I was struck by his constant wry smile—the kind that suggests someone who knows something they aren't telling you. After months of unsuccessfully attempting to arrange our interview through an intermediary, Kim had suddenly agreed to meet. “People need to know that the Underground Railroad is under attack by Kim Jong-un and China,” he explained. “And they need to do something about this and help the North Koreans.”
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----- 3 stars ----- The Underground Railroad of North Korea / GQ Any North Korean knows that escaping their nation is nearly impossible. First, the woman called “Faith” would have to evade the soldiers and surveillance cameras on the border. But even once she'd sneaked into China, the danger would only have just begun. To reach a South Korean embassy, where she could receive asylum, she would still have to clandestinely journey thousands of miles across China and then several Southeast Asian countries. If she was discovered anywhere along that trek, she would likely be repatriated to one of her nation's infamous gulags, where prisoners slave with so little food they capture rats to eat. But after more than 30 years of never daring to criticize the dictatorship out loud, even after enduring a famine, she was willing to risk anything to free herself. By late 2017, thanks to the help of a secret network of activists who serve as an underground railroad of sorts for North Koreans seeking asylum, Faith had managed to make it over 2,500 miles from her home. As she approached China's border with Vietnam, where many refugees have been arrested—she recognized that she was facing one of the most hazardous passages of her odyssey. Faith, her two preschool-age kids, and five other North Koreans hiked on a mud path through farmland and jungle, following a Vietnamese man in silence, for speaking Korean would blow their cover to anyone they passed. At the end of the trail, a soldier appeared, guarding a bridge over a river, and their guide hailed him. Safety lay just beyond the soldier. She waited for him to respond. In this moment, she would discover if her bravery had won a better life for her and her children—or if she had doomed them all. [...] Stephen Kim is a man whose life has been shrouded in legend. For leading the rescue of over 700 North Koreans, he has been called “the Oskar Schindler of North Korea,” a nickname that he shares with several other humanitarians who do similar work. Associates refer to him by the code name Superman, and he has been called “mythical” by human-rights activists, as reported by The Times of London. When I first met him, in the fall of 2018, at a private location in Seoul, I was struck by his constant wry smile—the kind that suggests someone who knows something they aren't telling you. After months of unsuccessfully attempting to arrange our interview through an intermediary, Kim had suddenly agreed to meet. “People need to know that the Underground Railroad is under attack by Kim Jong-un and China,” he explained. “And they need to do something about this and help the North Koreans.”