Melanie Kirkpatrick reviews Mike Kim's new book, Escaping North Korea: Defiance and Hope in the World's Most Repressive Country:
Tens of thousands of North Koreans, having fled famine and Kim's dictatorship, now live illegally in China. But China considers them economic migrants and refuses to allow the United Nations to assist them. Rather, Beijing's policy is to track down the refugees and repatriate them to North Korea, which throws them into prison camps or -- if they have been ideologically "polluted" by talking to South Koreans or Christians -- may execute them. A high percentage of the North Koreans hiding in China are women, who are sold to Chinese men as brides. Many have children who are rejected by their fathers as racially impure and who are stateless under Chinese law.
Mr. Kim's Crossing Borders Ministries works with locals -- mostly Chinese who are ethnically Korean -- to provide safe houses and orphanages. He has also helped some North Koreans escape via a clandestine underground railroad that ferries refugees across China to a third country, usually in Southeast Asia, and on to South Korea, whose constitution requires it to accept all "defectors" from North Korea.
The power of "Escaping North Korea" stems from the stories Mr. Kim tells. During his four years in China, he met hundreds of escapees from the North. He reconstructs their tales -- of the privations of daily existence in North Korea, of life on the lam in China -- in heartbreaking detail. Some are captured and repatriated, ending up in the gulag. Others make it to freedom in South Korea or the U.S. Most are still hiding in China. There are many heroes in Mr. Kim's book, not least the author himself.