‘Treated like animals’: A North Korean defector tells the brutal story of what happened to him after he was caught trying to escape

Harrison Jacobs/Business Insider

• A 32-year-old North Korean defector named Scott Kim tells the brutal story of what happened to him after he was caught in China after escaping from the isolated country.
• Kim said that he was brought to a detention camp where he and his fellow inmates were “treated like animals.”
• After escaping North Korea three more times, Kim made it to South Korea where he now owns a company trading automobile and railway parts

Scott Kim first escaped North Korea at the age of 17 in 2001. At the time, he and his mother only wanted to get across the border to China so they could eat hot meals. Growing up during North Korea’s deadly famine in the late ’90s, Kim had spent much of his childhood starving.

Today, Kim owns a business trading automobile and railway parts in South Korea. He is currently working on an English-language memoir about his experiences with the help of Teach North Korean Refugees (TNKR), a volunteer-run organization in Seoul helping defectors develop English skills.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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