North Korea defector journalist speaks for those who can't escape

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA—Just two years ago, Zane Han couldn’t have imagined his life today: living in Seoul and writing whatever he wants about the North Korean government, which once tried to control his every move. 

Han, a broad-shouldered, energetic man approaching middle age, has lived a dizzying life. As a teenager, he survived the 1990s famine; later, he attended an elite Pyongyang university, where bribes were often necessary to get passing grades. Eventually, he worked for a North Korean construction company in Russia, where brutal conditions led him to seek freedom. 

Now, sitting in an office in central Seoul where he works as a journalist, Han struggles to describe what it feels like to have gone from the rigid outdatedness of North Korea to the vibrant modernity that now surrounds him. 

“It’s like experiencing a time machine,” he told VOA in an interview. 

Han is one of a strikingly small number of North Koreans to escape in recent years. During the COVID-19 pandemic, North Korea tightened border controls, intensifying a crackdown that began when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un took power in 2011. 

Forced labor

Han’s escape began in the far-western Russian city of St. Petersburg, where he worked grueling 15-hour days as a migrant laborer — pouring concrete, installing rebar, and laying bricks at a series of construction sites. 

Han said he and his North Korean colleagues were given only two days off each year. Confined to temporary container housing on the construction sites, they were rarely allowed to leave — usually about once a year. 

At first, Han didn’t see himself as a slave. It wasn’t until he overheard his Russian coworkers referring to him as a servant of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un — the pawn of a mafia boss — that the reality of his situation began to sink in. It was a moment of self-awareness and what Han describes as the first shock that set him on the path to escape. 

“Of course, I [knew] we have no freedom inside North Korea,” he said, “But I didn’t imagine that North Korea’s image [in the outside world] was so poor.” 

Still, he pushed on, trying to make the most of what he had been assured was a rare opportunity to leave North Korea and send money back to his family in Pyongyang. 

Dramatic escape

The breaking point came during the COVID-19 pandemic when North Korean authorities demanded an even larger cut of overseas workers' earnings. Han suddenly found himself keeping just $100 to $150 a month, half of what he had been earning before. 

He'd had enough. The next time Han was allowed to leave the construction site, he called the United Nations refugee agency office in Moscow, using a cellphone that he had purchased from an Uzbek coworker for about $30. 

The U.N. office helped facilitate his escape, first to Moscow then through a third country. Within 20 hours of fleeing the construction site, he had landed in South Korea, one of just 67 North Koreans to reach the South in 2022. 

New pattern

Han’s escape reflects an important trend, according to Lee Shin-wha, who until earlier this month was South Korea’s ambassador for North Korean human rights. 

Like Han, most recent escapees were already outside North Korea — mostly living in China and Russia working as diplomats, businessmen, or migrant laborers, said Lee. Some had lived abroad for 10 or 20 years before fleeing Pyongyang’s control, she said. 

According to a U.N. report this year, around 100,000 North Korean workers remain overseas, earning money for the North Korean government despite U.N. Security Council resolutions that prohibit such activity. 

Activists have long tried to reach overseas North Korean workers, who despite being in tightly controlled environments, might have some access to outside information. 

But Lee also emphasized the plight of those trapped inside North Korea, especially since the pandemic, when North Korea cracked down on unauthorized border crossings. 

“Ordinary North Koreans’ chances [of escape], I think, are almost zero,” she said. “That is my big concern.” 

Speaking out

Han, whose entire family remains in North Korea, is also motivated by those who cannot leave. 

After spending three months at Hanawon, a government-run facility that helps defectors adjust to life in the South, Han settled in Seoul and now writes for NK Insider, an English language website that aims to elevate North Korean voices. The project, funded by the U.S.-based Human Rights Foundation, launched earlier this year. 

Using his contacts back home, Han has written stories that help uncover rights abuses, such as sexual violence at North Korean prison camps, as well as a new system to incentivize North Koreans to spy on their neighbors. 

Though Han speaks with urgency — almost an evangelistic zeal — he is also cautious, using a pseudonym in part to protect his family, which he has not spoken with, two years after defecting. 

Despite the challenges, Han sees his work as crucial for revealing the true conditions inside North Korea. 

“Nobody can imagine what the situation [in North Korea] is like,” he said. “[But] I was there — I know.”