From Pyongyang to Ottawa

Posted by The Gridlock on Nov 25, 2014 in Second Edition | Comments Off on From Pyongyang to Ottawa

By Priscilla Hwang

 

 

He pickpocketed in a North Korean market by day; he loitered in a train station by night.

Today, he’s an intern for Conservative MP Barry Devolin in Canada.

Sungju Lee, 27, is a North Korean defector. He escaped from North Korea in 2002 when he was only a teenager.

Canada is his latest stop on a journey that began in Pyongyang.

“We went to mountains almost everyday. My father collected firewood, sometimes he caught rabbits, sometimes squirrels, sometimes snakes,” Lee said.

It wasn’t always like this for Lee and his family. This lifestyle of scavenging began for Lee in 1997.

Lee’s father once worked closely to then-leader Kim Il-sung in his personal military until he made what Lee calls a “political mistake.” His family was then kicked out of the wealthy capital city and fled to the northeastern outskirts of North Korea where poverty and famine were rife.

“When we were in Pyongyang, we had a house, nice food, and nice clothes. But after we got kicked out of Pyongyang… we lost everything,” he said.

In 1998, his father left to look for food in China. He never returned.

Three months later, Lee’s mother disappeared, too.

Lee, being an only child, was left to survive on his own. That’s when he met six other boys.

“We became a gang,” he said.

Together they made money from stealing, begging and fighting; they slept at the local train station at night.

“It became our job,” he said. “That was my life.”

He lived on the streets for four years.

 

In February 2002, Lee met his grandfather, by chance, at the train station – an encounter he called “a sort of miracle in my life.” This was because there were no cellphones, Internet or functioning postal service in North Korea at the time, according to Lee.

He lived with his grandfather for eight months, until one day when a stranger showed up at his doorstep.

“He had my father’s letter. It said son, I’m living in China. I really, really miss you. Come to China with your mother,” said Lee. “I asked the stranger, who are you? Do you know my father? He said, yes I am one of your father’s best friends. So I trusted him and the next day, I left my grandfather’s house.”

Paid human traffickers helped Lee cross a river to China, create a fake passport, bypass airport security and to take an airplane to “Han gook”– a place Lee thought was just another city in China.

Lee now knows that “Han gook” is the South Korean word for South Korea – a place North Koreans fear.

North Koreans are brainwashed to believe that defectors to South Korea will be manipulated for information, and then killed. Knowing this, Lee’s father had told him he was in China, not South Korea.

Lee was reunited with his father in South Korea.

 

 

Lee is a North Korean working in the Canadian government.

He arrived in Canada mid-July of 2014 after being introduced by a friend to the HanVoice Pioneers Project.

The project selects one young North Korean defector per year to come to Canada. The defector has an opportunity to be active in sharing information with Canadians about human rights violations in North Korea.

HanVoice is the largest Canadian organization to advocate human rights for North Korea.

“They believe that the pioneer will be a leader in the North Korean community. They think we are potential leaders,” he chuckled, “But I don’t like that word, because everyone has potential.”

Through this program, Lee received the opportunity to intern at MP Barry Devolin’s office.

“I’m sharing my story with politicians,” said Lee.

In October, Lee was a witness at the House’s Subcommittee on International Human Rights, discussing human rights issues concerning North Korea with Canadian policymakers.

Canadians don’t often hear a North Korean’s impression of Canadian democracy. Lee finds some aspects of Canadian democracy noteworthy.

“In South Korea, they try to be gentle in front of the camera. But here, they just do what they want. They just do what they believe so it’s a more outspoken country, outspoken government,” he said. “It’s really childish, it’s really rude, it’s really loud, it’s annoying sometimes, but at some point, that’s democracy.”

 

 

 

As much as he appreciates his experience in Canada, Lee wants to live in Korea in the future.

“I love my country but I don’t want to say that only South Korea is my country. North and South Korea is my country,” he said.

Lee wants be a specialist in the Korean peninsula. “I’m preparing for the reunification of the Koreas,” he said.

Reunification is Lee’s only way to go home, he said. If he were to try returning to North Korea today, “I will be executed by the government.”

There’s a middle class that is emerging, according to Lee. “Those born after 1990 didn’t get enough brainwashing education,” he said. “Twenty years from now, they will be the core power of North Korea… They don’t have any respect for the government.”

“That’s why we have to prepare for reunification,” said Lee.

Lee will return to South Korea mid-December, but not without a final message to Canadians: