A convicted felon’s escape from jail was reported on the six o’clock news. Trying to be careful, he worked his way home taking a long route, running across deserted fields and taking every precaution. Eventually he arrived at his house and rang the door bell. His wife opened the door and yelled at him, “Where have you been? You escaped over six hours ago!”

It’s a funny story, but the stories of thousands of people who escape North Korea are not humorous at all. Since North Korea makes the news so often, I began to look into the living conditions of the people who reside there.

Anyone who visits North Korea must be accompanied by a tour guide at all times, and are told where they are allowed to go. They see little or no traffic and only the occasional Korean citizen during those tours, and are often the only people staying in an otherwise huge, but empty hotel.

But as I listened to several interviews with a young woman who escaped from North Korea at the age of 17, I heard what life in North Korea is really like for the people who call it home. She painted a very different picture of North Korea than the glimpses we are shown in North America.

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As a baby, she was taught to say their dictator’s name, even before saying Mommy or Daddy. When she received birthday gifts, she would give thanks to the dictator, not her parents, because she was told everything good comes from their leader.

At school, she was taught the regime’s version of history, where their past dictators had performed incredible acts, such as feeding starving people by turning sand into rice. The children believe it because they are constantly told their leader is the number one human being in the world, more like a god than a human being.

She was constantly told she lived in the best place in the world; that the rest of the world is full of crime and evil. As a student, she was taught that Americans, Japanese and South Koreans were her enemies, in that order, and Iran and Russia are friends of North Korea. Yet she received no information from the outside world, with the family’s television emitting government programs only.

There is a social hierarchy consisting of the upper, middle and lower class. Anyone in the lower class has no hope of receiving an education or joining the military, but will be a lifetime labourer.

In 1994, the power shortage began with power outages lasting for a week or even a month. Once there was a fire in their house and her dad risked his life to save portraits of their leaders.

He was praised for it, but if he had failed to save the portraits, he would have been punished. Government officials would come into their home periodically, wearing white gloves, and inspect the portraits for dust.

Every Saturday afternoon, all citizens are required to attend sessions where they gather with their co-workers, school mates or neighbours and are forced to criticize each other. During one of these sessions, a child criticized her friend saying every time she came to visit, she noticed there was something new in their home. An adult overheard and reported the family to the police. They discovered the family was receiving money from a family member who had escaped, so the family was imprisoned.

She witnessed her first public execution when she was seven years old. The immediate family of the person being executed must sit in the front row and watch. Some people faint while watching, and no one is allowed to extend sympathy or comfort to the family members, or they will be punished. People are executed for almost anything: bringing food from China, killing a cow to feed their family, speaking even one slightly negative word about the regime.

It’s obvious that what happens in North Korea stays in North Korea. Her description of life in North Korea is a sad, well-kept secret, but not for long. And it serves as a reminder to Canadians to uphold our democracy and exercise our democratic right of freedom of speech, along with our other rights and freedoms.

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