For North Korean refugee Jinghey Jo, the chance at freedom came at a heavy price.
Her father was tortured and killed for attempting to escape to China to provide for their family. Not long after, Jo saw her grandmother and younger brother starve to death and watched the brutal beating of her mother after a spy reported her to the government.
Today, Jo is a four-year resident of the U.S. fighting for the rights of those still suffering oppression in her homeland. And Monday evening, about 70 students gathered in the Atrium of Stamp Student Union to meet Jo and to hear her story.
The event was sponsored by this university’s chapter of Liberty in North Korea, whose members seek to raise awareness of the human rights crisis in North Korea and raise funds to assist refugees who wish to escape and begin new lives in the U.S. To the outside world, the country is often shrouded in mystery; the government is a dictatorship, and very little information about its inhabitants’ lives passes through its gates. People who attempt to escape rarely succeed, and for those who do, the memories of the horrors they experienced may never completely fade.
Monday evening, Jo appeared before the audience as a relatively unassuming woman in her early 30s. Although she spoke with the aid of a translator, a calm focus permeated everything she said — even as she described the tragedies she endured as a child.
Jo was born the third of six siblings in a small, rural village that lay within sight of the Chinese border. She was only nine when her father tried to flee across the border to bring back food to their starving family, and after his return, he was captured, tortured and starved to death. This same fate likely also befell Jo’s older sister when she also fled to China in search of food later that year.
“My family did whatever we could to survive and to live, from eating tree bark and grass, anything that was not poisonous, to live,” Jo said.
After losing even more relatives to poverty and brutality, Jo’s remaining family members resolved to flee to China permanently.
However, Jo said the troubles of North Korean refugees begin once they cross the border into a free nation. In compliance with Chinese laws requiring defectors to be repatriated and returned to their home countries, Jo and her family were sent back to North Korea four times. While in China, Jo and her sister could not go to school or enjoy their partial freedom for fear of being reported by their neighbors.
“What I envied the most was when I saw students with backpacks going to school,” she said.
After ten years of failed attempts, Jo’s family managed to connect with a group of Christian missionaries who helped them to be granted asylum in the U.S. Jo believes it was through prayer she was able to connect with kind guards and officials who took pity on her family and reduced their punishments or accepted bribes on their behalf, and she finally arrived in the U.S. with her mother and sister in 2008.
Jo is now studying to become a missionary, and she and her sister also operate their own home health care business in Virginia that employs more than 400 people. She credits her strength and resilience to her faith, and she continues to fight passionately for human rights in North Korea.
“Sometimes I feel like giving up, but I realize it is wrong for me to complain because I have gotten too comfortable,” she said. “The international community must continue to put pressure on the Chinese government to stop the repatriation policy.”
Several students said hearing Jo’s story was an eye-opening experience.
“Very moving,” said John Holland, a graduate student in government and politics. “It was a rare experience to hear from a North Korean, but I’m glad for the opportunity.”
Lois Yeom, a senior hearing and speech sciences major and former LiNK president, agreed.
“I think it was groundbreaking how Maryland has something like this … that they can see the more human side of things,” Yeom said.
