MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Every year, thousands of North Koreans try to escape a life of brutal hardship by slipping across North Korea's 900-mile long border with China. They're often aided by smugglers who charge thousands for their service and in some cases, are almost as oppressive as the government the defectors are trying to flee. The escapees live in constant fear of arrest and deportation back to North Korea where they can face torture, imprisonment or even execution.
National Geographic magazine reporter Tom O'Neill followed the underground railroad journey of three North Korean defectors. For their protection, he gave them code names: Red, White and Black. And he tells those story in the current issue of National Geographic. Tom O'Neill joins me now in the studio. Thanks so much for being with us.
Mr. TOM O'NEILL (Journalist, National Geographic): You're welcome, hi.
NORRIS: Can you give me a quick snap shot of these three defectors, Red, White and Black?
Mr. O'NEILL: OK. Two women, Red and White, are in their 20s, and they both came across from brokers that were going to sell them for sex trade. And a missionary helped them escape, and that's how we found them.
Black was a college graduate, which is rare for a defector. The two women were not, and he had actually a job in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, and he got disillusioned with North Korean life and a missionary found him, and he was converted. So, when we came upon them, they were all on the run.
NORRIS: Is the goal to get to China and then beyond China to go to South Korea or elsewhere - a nation?
Mr. O'NEILL: They'd prefer being in China, if it was legal, if the Chinese didn't hunt them down. But I think why most of them decide to leave is that pressure and the living in fear of just if they're caught, they have no documents, and they're really exploited.
NORRIS: How are they treated in China? How are they viewed in that country?
Mr. O'NEILL: When they first started coming over in the late '90s, after the famine or during the famine, I think a lot of the Korean-Chinese and the Chinese welcomed them, almost out of a humanitarian impulse to...
NORRIS: Because they knew what was going on in North Korea.
Mr. O'NEILL: Yes and they said...
NORRIS: Where almost two million people died.
Mr. O'NEILL: Right. So they said we'll feed you, we'll give you clothing, and then they got caught up, I think, in the geopolitics of China and North Korea. North Korea complained that China was harboring its people. China needs North Korea's iron ore and other things. China needs a secure border so they started agreeing with North Korea and started cracking down and some of the crackdowns, especially right before the Olympics, were fierce.
NORRIS: Tom, I know you wanted to, through this story, to shed light on what's going on inside North Korea and also the way that these defectors are treated in China and even elsewhere, but do stories like this really make a difference when you're talking about a government that is so isolated, so oppressive, so unconcerned about what the world thinks of them?
Mr. O'NEILL: I don't think it will have any effect on North Korea. I think the purpose of this story partly is to show the world the borders that China has. China is very nervous about keeping its borders taunt, like in Tibet, Mongolia, North Korea. I'm hoping China will, if this gets good response, they'll say we have to let the U.N. into the border because right now, they're keeping them out.
And the other influence might be on the South Korean government. South Korea welcomed the defectors in the '90s because it was like the ultimate PR coup. We've got the enemy. They have come to us. They prefer to live with us. But the thing is, most of the defectors now are poor, no skills. Seoul is so hypercompetitive, so dependent on advancement on education. And when they get to - the defectors get to South Korea, it's not the promise land. They start at the bottom.
And I'm hoping South Korea people have been writing about this - I'm hoping they will give more training to the defectors, somehow bring them into mainstream because that's the final irony. They were hiding in China and then when I met them in Seoul, they were hiding there.
And the weirdest thing - they're homesick. We want to think, oh, if you live in a horrible place that's had, you know, where your parents have died of starvation or where you're given dead-end jobs or where there's no food, many of these miss their homeland. And if you don't feel at home in Seoul or somewhere else, you're going to miss a place that everyone else on earth is going that's living hell, you should leave. But it's not a Hollywood ending, that's for sure, for them.
NORRIS: Tom O'Neill, thank you very much for coming in to talk to us.
Mr. O'NEILL: You're welcome.
NORRIS: All the best to you.
Mr. O'NEILL: Thank you. Yeah, thank you.
NORRIS: Tom O'Neill is a reporter with National Geographic magazine, and if you want to know more about the story and see photos, you can go to our Web site. That's npr.org.