Nordkoreansk flykting berättar om livet under kommuniststyret | NTD NYHETER

A North Korean refugee is telling her story about life under totalitarian communist rule. Grace Jo spoke with American Thought Leader's host, Jan Jekielek, about what it took to survive under the brutal regime. My memory, when I was six years old, was every day we were cold and hungry constantly. I remember for almost 10 days straight, we were just starving and drinking cold water only. And we were able to collect water from the water stream next to our house, and we were very lucky to have that. But because many people, they didn't have water resources at the time, too. So we were able to collect water, bring it home, pour it in the big jar, and then little girls and boys, we will drink water from the big jar every day. And adults in the family, like my father and my mother, they were fighting every day to look for food. And my grandmother was helping little children in the family. And my 10-year-old sister and 17-year-old sister, they will always go to the mountain in the morning when dawn comes. They will wrap their feet with the plastic and wear the shoes, trying to protect their feet from the snake or water. And then they will come home at late night with bags of wild vegetables. So our daily food was relying on the wild vegetables, tree barks. And I also remember some of the tree leaves that we can consume. Whatever we can consume from the nature, we tried to collect everything. But that didn't help. At the end of 1998, June, my grandmother passed away by starvation. And her last wish was to eat one baked potato. But my family at the time, we were not able to provide that as well. At six years old, Jo made her first escape attempt with her mother and sister crossing the Tumen River into China. She would be repatriated twice before finally escaping North Korea for good. With the help of a missionary, Jo, her mother, and her older sister made it to the United States. She became a U.S. citizen in 2013. Today, she's the founder of the Broken Chains Foundation. Jo speaks regularly at schools and other venues, sharing her story to educate young people about the realities of totalitarian and communist regimes.