-Source-BBC-
In the late 1990s, Grace Jo was still a child in rural North Korea when her dark black hair turned yellow. "I was so malnourished," she said, "we would spend days without having anything to eat". One of her two brothers, the youngest, had already died of starvation; the other, weak, could barely walk.
Her eldest sister had left the family in search of food and had never come back. Her father had also died, Ms Jo says, after being arrested and then tortured as he returned from China where he had gone to buy rice.
The only hope for those still alive to survive, her mother thought, was to escape.
From their north-eastern province of North Hamgyong, Ms Jo, then aged seven, her mother and another sister, Jinhye, 10, walked for three days on unpaved roads and through mountains, until they reached the Tumen River and crossed into China. Once there, they lived underground, fearful of being caught - China, North Korea's main ally, has a strict policy of sending defectors back. During that time, they learned that Ms Jo's five-year-old brother, who had been unable to travel and so stayed behind, had also died.
"We tried many ways to stay in China," she said. But in 2001, three years after arriving, they were found out, jailed and returned.
Back in North Korea, Ms Jo's mother was sent to a forced labour camp while the girls were put in an orphanage, where they also had to work. Eight months later, as the two children were being transferred to a different shelter, they managed to escape. Their mother had already been released and, shortly after, the three were back together. In 2002, they managed to flee North Korea for a second time. Ms Jo's mother bribed some border guards but, two years later, they were caught again and sent back.
"We thought we would die in prison. We didn't have any hope."
But, while in China, they had started working with an American-Korean pastor to protect North Korean defectors. Now, it was them who needed help. So in 2006, he paid some $10,000 (£7,500) in bribes to the North's secret police to free the family. "Money talks in North Korea," Ms Jo said, and four months later they were released. For a third time, they escaped to China and, in 2008, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) settled them as refugees in the United States. Ten years later, Ms Jo, who is now a college student in Maryland, would watch something she thought impossible unfold: the leaders of the US and North Korea shaking hands. Read more
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