North Korea: Defectors adjust to life abroad
Life inside North Korea's closed borders is hard to imagine. One of the only insights into how ordinary people live, beyond the official line of the regime, comes from those who have escaped. Two defectors, Chanyang Joo and Yu-sung Kim, who left North Korea in 2011, tell their story.
"I heard that people sold and ate human flesh," says Chanyang Joo. "I heard they were killing other family's babies and selling the flesh after burying the head and fingers."
Ms Joo says she ignored the rumours until the parents-in-law of a man she knew were publicly executed. They were butchers and the crime, people said, was selling human meat.
Rumours like this have surfaced in the testimony of several defectors coming from North Korea. Whether they are true or not - and we may never know - the fact that they circulate and are believed illustrates the level of hunger, deprivation and fear in parts of the country that marked the Great Famine.
Full article:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22209894
