A North Korean defector who at one point in her life was sold to a Chinese man for $2,300 and spent time in a North Korean prison has opened up about her life in squalor under one of the most brutal regimes in the world.
May Joo, who was born in Pyongyang in 1978 and came to the United States in 2012, shared her story publicly for the first time before a crowd gathered at a recent event in Washington, D.C.
According to International Christian Concern‘s regional director, Gina Goh, Joo detailed how she witnessed the death of many of her neighbors and friends when she grew up. During that time, people struggled to feed themselves and they were given inadequate portions of food.
Although Joo was born in Pyongyang, her family was relocated to the town of Hyesan in the Ryanggang province in 1988, when the Kim regime relocated thousands of families for population control.
“People struggled to feed themselves and often hiked into the mountains to scout for anything edible,” Goh wrote in a summary of Joo’s account. “Widespread famine from the mid- to-late 1990s, a period commonly known as the ‘Arduous March,’ followed on the heels of the relocation after North Korea’s founding father, Kim Il-Sung, died in 1994. Economic collapse, flooding, and loss of aid from the failing Soviet Union resulted in the starvation of countless people.”
The hunger was so severe for many that Joo recalled the story of one father in the Yanggang Province who became so “mentally deranged” that he killed his daughter and ate her flesh just to feed himself.
After getting married at the age of…
… Read More
—-
Click Read More to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Urban Christian News