Somewhere Inside Read online

  One afternoon we took a taxi from our hotel in Yanji to a nearby location where we had arranged to meet with a young woman who had fled North Korea the previous year. Ji-Yong was in her early twenties and had a round baby face. She looked as if she was playing dress up in her black go-go boots, long, thick false eyelashes, and electric blue eye shadow. We picked her up and drove her back to our hotel.

  While Ji-Yong was able to eat three meals a day in her village in North Korea, the portions were very small. Many North Koreans only receive meat on very special holidays, which occur roughly three times a year. Ji-Yong, like an increasing number of young North Korean women, was told by a broker that he could find her a job making good money working with computers. Unable to swim, and in the dark of night, these girls brave the cold, rushing water of the bordering river to reach the other side, where the promise of opportunity awaits them. Some perish along the way. While the broker did arrange for Ji-Yong to work with computers, it wasn’t the office job she had envisioned. She was placed in the online sex industry, video chatting with clients and undressing for them online.

  Many women like Ji-Yong are filling the ranks of China’s growing prostitution and Internet sex world. They must pay back large sums in order to win their freedom, an almost impossible task given their paltry wages. Some are beaten and confined in their working quarters. Others are afraid to leave for fear of being arrested and deported.

  LISA

  I WAS PROUD OF THE STORY Laura would be reporting. We had both covered a number of stories about sexual trafficking throughout our careers and felt strongly about the issue. When our mother was a child growing up in Taiwan, she had seen desperate women having to sell their bodies to survive. Her stories both enraged and touched us as women, and as young journalists we sought to raise awareness about the global sexual exploitation of women whenever possible.

  But in recent months, I was starting to get very concerned that Laura was overworking herself. Her self-imposed pressure was unrelenting. It hurt me to see how much her work was bleeding into her personal life, even to the point where it started affecting her health. She had literally made herself sick from taking on so much.

  Our family was most concerned about the recurring ulcers she had been dealing with for more than a year. I can’t recall how many times Laura would call from another country to tell me about her stomach ailments, which seemed to be made worse by severe foreign environments. She had been on medication for more than a year, and her last endoscopy indicated that though her original ulcer had shrunk, a new one had formed. I was with her during that procedure and became deeply saddened because she and Iain had been seriously thinking of starting a family, and she didn’t want to do that while she was on ulcer medication. My husband, Paul, is a physician, and he was also becoming concerned about her health. He remarked a number of times that Laura “really needs to lower her stress levels.”

  I know I was annoying Laura by constantly urging her to slow down. She would often shoot back with “You’re one to talk. You travel as much as I do, if not more.” While this was true, I wasn’t managing a department simultaneously, and I rarely got sick on the road. Plus, she was my little sister, and looking out for her was the role I’d always played.

  LAURA

  AFTER THREE DAYS OF FILMING in Yanji and its outlying villages, the three of us, along with our guide, went to a café to discuss our next day’s filming plans. It was 9:00 P.M. and we’d just finished interviewing a defector in a small town close to the North Korean and Russian border. Signs for restaurants and shops were written in all three languages: Chinese, Russian, and Korean. We passed a row of brothels disguised as massage parlors and could see groups of young women waiting inside rooms that were dimly lit with red lightbulbs.

  I was exhausted. When we landed in the region a week earlier, we hadn’t allowed any time to get over the jet lag of a sixteen-hour flight and the sixteen-hour time difference. But it wasn’t the lack of sleep that was getting to me. I was feeling emotionally drained from hearing the harrowing life stories of the defectors we’d met. I hoped that our report would bring greater attention to their plight.

  Inside the smoke-filled café, we talked about going to the Tumen River, which forms the border between North Korea and China in this region. Days before, we’d filmed at the bridge in the city of Tumen, one of the official border crossings. But North Korean citizens don’t have the luxury of simply walking across the overpass if they want to visit China. They cannot freely leave the country, and traveling abroad is reserved for the highly elite, who must obtain special clearance from the government. Defectors must take a different path if they want to get to China, traversing the waters separating the two countries. We wanted to film at the river to document this well-used trafficking route, one that in the wintertime is frozen, making it easier for defectors to cross. I thought about Ji-Yong’s story and how she, like so many other North Korean defectors, had braved the ice-cold waters to escape their country’s poverty, only to end up being used and exploited.

  Throughout the night, our guide had been getting calls on his black cell phone. He had two phones, one black and one pink. He claimed the black one was used to communicate with his contacts in North Korea. He said he’d been talking to an officer in the North Korean military and was trying to determine if any defectors were crossing over and if we might be able to interview them. He also suggested the possibility of chatting with a North Korean border guard while standing on the frozen river. He said he had taken journalists to the area before, and they had been able to make small talk with some of the lackadaisical soldiers.

  We wanted to get closer to a part of the Tumen River where defectors typically cross, so late that night we drove about an hour to the city of Tumen. We checked into a hotel and planned to head to the river the next morning before sunrise. We didn’t intend on staying at the river long because we wanted to get back to Yanji to catch an afternoon flight south to Shenyang, where we would continue on with our shooting schedule.

  I looked out the window of my room and could see the twinkling lights from a North Korean village off in the distance. We’d been told that at different times, the whole area across the border goes pitch-black from electricity shortages. An hour later, I peered out the window again and could not spot a single light on the other side. Satellite images of the Korean peninsula at night paint a stark picture of a brightly illuminated South Korea compared with the North, which is bathed in utter darkness. It’s as if a child had taken a black marker to the upper half of the peninsula.

  I set my iPod to wake me up at 4:00 A.M. It was already 1:00 A.M. by the time I got into bed. I figured I’d plow through on little sleep until we were on our flight later that afternoon, when I could take a nap. By 4:15 A.M., the time our team had arranged to meet, I was in the lobby. After about five minutes of waiting groggily, I decided to knock on everyone’s doors to roust the group. Our guide had been adamant about our filming early because he figured there would be fewer people around. I rapped on Mitch’s door; he was gathering his belongings. But when I knocked on Euna’s and our guide’s doors, no one answered in either room. I began pounding on Euna’s door and shouting out her name. Confused and worried, I went down to the lobby and had the woman at the front desk call her room. After several rings, Euna finally picked up. She explained that she and the guide had gone out to the river to try to get some evening shots. They had been out late, which is why they overslept. She called the guide’s room to wake him up. We were out the door of the hotel fifteen minutes later.

  On our way to the river, our guide, who lived in the area, stopped off at his home to pick up a warmer jacket. The morning chill was numbing. I had on multiple layers of clothing under a coat Lisa had loaned me, along with a thick scarf and gloves. Despite the weight, I was glad to have on my sheepskin-lined leather boots. Our guide emerged wearing a long black coat. At first I didn’t notice anything odd about the jacket, but when he turned away from me I spotted the word p
olice written in English on the back. A badge on the sleeve revealed what appeared to be a Chinese police patch. I felt slightly uneasy with his disguising himself as a cop, but I figured he’d done this before and knew what he was doing. I took his attire to be a precautionary measure, one that he had used on previous excursions to the river with media to better avoid detection.

  As we drove to the river, our guide told Euna in Korean that he had decided to go to a different location than the one he had previously mapped out. There was a spot a little farther down the way that he thought would be better for us to film. I didn’t think much of this change in plans. The guide was from the area and knew the vicinity well. Foreign journalists place a lot of trust in their local fixers or guides, and I didn’t feel any reason to question his decision.

  Minutes later our car pulled off the pavement onto a dirt path. Our guide drove through large patches of dried grass and weeds until coming to a stop within the brush.

  The river wasn’t immediately within sight when we got out of the car. We had to walk through the grass and over a small mound of dirt to reach it. The sun was just beginning to peek through a thin layer of fog as we made our way toward the border. The only noise was from our own footsteps and breath. When we arrived at the river’s edge, we saw that it was frozen. That’s what we were hoping for. Knowing that many defectors attempt to cross the border in the winter months so they can walk across the ice rather than navigate through the rushing waters, we too intended to set foot on the frozen river to give our audience a glimpse into this world.

  Our guide made his way onto the ice and we followed. When I placed my boot onto the frozen river, the sound of crackling ice sent chills throughout my body. Though the temperature outside was bitterly cold, spring was settling over the region, and parts of the river snapped under my feet. I feared the ice was not too far from breaking. I began to tiptoe ever so carefully, feeling the crunch of icicles with each step. I held my breath, somehow convincing myself that this made me feel lighter. As Euna followed me on the ice, she began filming the area with her digital video camera. Mitch pointed his camera at me as I narrated where we were. I motioned toward North Korea on the other side of the narrow river. From here, I could see why the area has become a popular crossing point—the width of the river seemed to be the length of an Olympic-size pool.

  Our guide then let me hold his black cell phone, the one he used for smuggling operations. I explained how smugglers like him call their North Korean connections and do business. Euna asked me to walk along the ice so that she could get some shots of me. I proceeded cautiously, walking parallel to the riverbank. Until this point, I never thought I would be setting foot on North Korean soil.

  There wasn’t a single sign or fence to indicate the international border, but we knew North Korea was on the other side of the river. Our guide began walking across the ice toward North Korea while making several low-pitched hooting sounds. His actions startled me at first, but I assumed he was trying to make contact with the border guards he knew. He continued walking and motioned for us to follow him. We did, eventually arriving at the riverbank on the North Korean side. Off in the distance was a small village, which our guide explained was where the North Koreans wait to be smuggled into China.

  I was nervous. I could tell we all were. We’d never planned on crossing the border, and just as it began to sink in that we were actually in North Korean territory, we knew we needed to leave. We weren’t on the edge of the riverbank for more than a minute before we turned around and headed back across the ice to China.

  Midway across the river, I heard yelling coming from downstream. I looked in that direction and saw two North Korean soldiers sprinting toward us with rifles in their hands. Immediately I felt a wave of panic and started running. I no longer cared that the ice might rupture. I just wanted to get away fast. When I was just two steps from the riverbank on the Chinese side, the ice cracked below my left boot causing it to slip into the frigid water. Fearing I might sink to my death, I quickly threw my body onto Chinese soil, pulled my leg free, and continued to run.

  I turned to see how far away the soldiers were and determine if they were going to chase us after we reached China. Euna and our guide were about eight yards behind me, with the soldiers closing in on them. Mitch, an avid runner, was around six yards ahead of me. I remembered that I still had on the wireless lavalier microphone and that Mitch could hear me through his headphones.

  “Mitch, keep filming,” I said as I continued to run.

  If we were apprehended, I wanted him to have it on tape that we had been taken in Chinese territory. Mitch turned back toward me, pointed the camera in my direction, and then disappeared over a small hill.

  With each step, my foot that had fallen into the cracked ice felt heavier and heavier, like a weight pulling me into the ground. “Run, Laura, keep going,” I said to myself. But as in a dream when the force of the world seems to be pinning you down, I found myself falling, unable to budge.

  “Euna, I can’t move,” I said to her as she approached.

  She stopped beside me and knelt down to help. Seconds later the two soldiers were on us, with their guns pointed. To this day, I live with the guilt of wondering if Euna would have been able to outrun the guards had she not stopped for me.

  Our guide, who had been able to elude the guards as they encircled us, walked back cautiously in our direction, but not close enough for the soldiers to reach him. He told Euna to take out some money, which she did, and offer it to one of the guards. Pausing for half a second, the soldier next to Euna seemed to consider taking the few hundred Chinese yuan, the equivalent of about one hundred U.S. dollars, but his comrade standing above me would not be persuaded.

  “Take me instead,” our guide pleaded in Korean. But when the soldier tried to reach for him, the guide dashed off. The soldier next to me grabbed my bag and noticed Euna’s small video camera, which I had been trying to cover with my leg. The red record light was on.

  “Please, please, please,” I called out in English. “We’re sorry. We’re foreigners.”

  I knew they couldn’t understand a word I was saying, but I was hoping they would sense an innocence in my tone and feel sympathetic. Furious, the guard holding Euna grabbed her camera and backpack and told us to get up and walk.

  “They want us to go across the river,” Euna translated.

  “Euna,” I said nervously, “tell them that I want to walk, but I can’t because my foot is numb from falling into the water.”

  Though I still had feeling in my foot, I began to hit my boot so it would appear that my leg was truly immovable. I was trying to buy as much time on Chinese soil as possible. I figured that as long as we were in China and not on the North Korean side, we might have a chance.

  The soldiers were intent on taking us across the river and began pulling us toward the ice. We frantically tried to cling to bushes, the ground, anything that would keep us in Chinese territory, but we were no match for the angry soldiers. The one guard standing above me was particularly ferocious. His grip was strong and his eyes piercing. To let me know he was serious, he kicked my jaw and shoulder with his heavy black boot and then delivered another crushing blow to my shoulder. I felt my neck snap from the first kick, and my whole body went numb from the second one.

  Before we knew it, the soldiers were dragging us back onto the frozen river. Euna and I scrambled to grab each other. Not wanting to be separated, we grasped each other’s hands. The soldiers violently ripped us apart and continued to haul us across the ice.

  I tried to make the weight of my body as heavy as possible as I lay there on the frozen river. The soldier who was dragging me by one of my arms looked down at me with a fiery intensity, his eyes burning with determination.

  “Please, please, we’re sorry,” I yelled, hoping some Chinese border guards might hear the commotion and come to our rescue. “Mitch!” I screamed, wondering if he was still within radio frequency and could hear my voice. “Help us
. I think we’re going to die.”

  I saw the soldier’s boot coming for me again, this time pounding the right side of my face. I could feel my body writhing from the pain.

  “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” I screamed, looking up into the soldier’s cold eyes. Seething with anger, he raised his rifle. I froze in terror. This could be the end, I thought. In a flash, he struck the butt of the gun down against my head. Immediately, I fell into a daze.

  I’m not sure when I regained consciousness, but when I did, I found myself walking behind Euna on the top of a hill above the river, heading into a tunnel. My head was still in a fog. How did I get here? Was this really happening? The air was cold, crisp, and dead silent. Light emerged as we left the darkness of the tunnel and descended onto a small army post. I remembered the microphone that was clipped to my scarf. Fearing the soldiers might think I was transmitting messages back to the United States, I subtly pulled the wire down through my sweater and tucked the microphone into my pocket.

  We were taken into a small room, where the guards handed over our belongings to a commanding officer. We were then escorted back outside and made to wait. The post was little more than a dirt clearing, where I assumed military training took place. Several curious, wide-eyed soldiers surrounded us. In any other situation, I might have attempted to make a friendly connection by offering a smile or “hello” in Korean. For the past decade, I’d worked in dozens of countries, many of which have poor relations with the United States, yet I have always been able to establish cordial, sometimes even warm, connections with the people. But this wasn’t just any foreign country. So little is known about what actually goes on in North Korea. The only thing that became immediately clear to me was the deep-rooted hatred North Korea’s government has for the United States. I had to remind myself that as an American, I was the enemy.