Eunhee Park loves the trees in Australia. Credit:Nicole Precel According to the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, fewer than five permanent visas per year are granted to North Korean nationals, and another five tourist visas per year. Eunhee is on a working holiday visa, living in a boarding house and trying to make a go of a job in hospitality. And it feels like she is inhabiting a different planet from her old home in the repressive Communist country. Fed lies The town of Wonsan on North Korea's east coast, where Eunhee grew up, has few trees because they have been cut down for firewood, but clean air because of a lack of motor vehicles. It's being made into a tourist zone under supreme leader Kim Jong-un, but is also the site of missile launches.

The most striking difference, though, is not in the physical landscape but the mental one. "Sometimes people don't know their mother's birthday, but we have to know [the leaders'] birthdays." Credit:AP "Sometimes people don't know their mother's birthday, but we have to know their [the leaders'] birthdays," she says. "North Korean people cannot compare with others. There is no internet or information. Just about Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung, that's why, when Kim Jong-il died, you saw all the people crying ... It is true, 50 per cent of North Korea people believe everything." Eunhee now believes much of what she was taught was lies. But getting to this point has been a very long journey. "When I was 18 years old I decided I would escape my country because my grandma told me, 'if you want to have freedom and if you want to live like a human being, you can escape your country'," she says.

Her grandparents had a more open outlook than most. They visited relatives in China, and had a glimpse of a world outside of the secretive regime. American and South Korean movies were smuggled in on the black market and watched furtively. A dangerous crossing These small glimpses were enough to spark Eunhee's desire to escape. Once she had made the decision to flee, she distanced herself from her family to avoid suspicion. Four years later, at 22, she engaged a people smuggler. "It is true, 50 per cent of North Korea people believe everything." Credit:AP "I had a dream to go to other countries," she says. "It was OK, even if I died. Even if police caught me and killed me, it doesn't matter, I must go."

One night, wearing only the clothes on her back, she crossed the dangerous Yalu river at the border with China. Water reached her shoulders as she crossed with four other people, including an infant. "The baby started to cry, I was so worried because I thought the soldier would hear her crying and he would shoot his gun," she said. What followed was a seven-day journey through China via taxi, truck and track. The group hid in the secret compartment of a truck, where she was sexually harassed. "[There] were some guys ... three guys approached us and touched us but we couldn't say anything, we couldn't scream," she said. "Maybe the police would catch us and we'd go back to North Korea ... It was a terrible and horrible time for me."

Women for sale Sokeel Park is the South Korean country director at an organisation called Liberty in North Korea, which helps extricate refugees from North Korea, through China and reintegrate them once they've reached South Korea. He says 70 per cent of defectors are women, who are often left out of the workforce in North Korea's patriarchal society and relegated to the home. Sokeel Park is the South Korea country director of Liberty in North Korea. It gives them the opportunity to create their own source of income in black market trades. The other tragic reason for the large number of female defectors, he says, is that North Korean women are sometimes sold to Chinese men. For some it's a way out.

In her desperation to leave North Korea, it was an option Eunhee considered. But Eunhee's journey did not end in China. On the secret mountain track into Laos, Eunhee wondered if she'd made the right decision. "At the time I wanted to go back to North Korea because I couldn't imagine it was so hard," she said. She pressed ahead, and the trail led to Thailand, where she was jailed while waiting to be granted refugee status. "We stayed with real criminals," she says. "We wanted to fight with [the Thai authorities] but we don't have citizenship." After 50 days the group was taken to a South Korean detention centre. They stayed for three months.

"The [South Korean] government checked how we lived in North Korea and if one of us was a spy," she says. Blade runners and coffee After that it was another three months of de-conditioning, with North Korean refugees being taught history, how to use a computer and "Konglish", a version of Korean language which includes Americanisms. Sokeel says that for a North Korean, a Western city looks like "a nicer version of Blade Runner". "Some North Korean friends have described it as like coming out of a time machine to a future version of society," he adds.

"If you are from a provincial city, even more so if you are from rural Korea, you are looking at like 100 years back in time, in the towns, maybe it's like South Korea in the '60s or '70s." In Melbourne, Eunhee works in a cafe, but she did not learn how to order a coffee until her retraining in South Korea. She had to learn what a macchiato was, and a cappuccino. "We cannot remember everything because everything was new for us," she said. "I wanted to say, 'I'm a North Korean, even if North Koreans don't have information, I can do everything'." Credit:Nicole Precel "Six months I stayed with the government program and finally I got freedom in South Korea, but also I don't have time to think about a new country and new life." Eunhee says leaving North Korea has had its challenges.

Used to eating rice, kimchi, pork and fish, she had to get used to Western foods and beef (cattle are considered a working animal used only in farming). "We cannot eat American food in North Korea, because America is our enemy," she says. She has also enjoyed the trees in Melbourne. "Here there's a lot of nature, there are no trees [in Wonsan] because people use trees to make fire to cook," she said. Sokeel says LiNK helps defectors with the challenges they face, but also helps "fulfil their potential as agents of change".

"[Defectors] are an irreplaceable source of information and advocacy," he says. Isolation and ignorance Eunhee is often frustrated with misconceptions and closed-mindedness within Australia when it comes to North Korea and its population of 25 million people. "Sometimes it made me angry and upset, because [people] have to know that North Korea is also a country, there is a middle class and rich people, but they just [talk] about its poverty," she said. "That's why I came out and I wanted to say, 'I'm a North Korean, even if North Koreans don't have information, I can do everything'."

Sokeel says although the country is cut off, there are ways to re-establish contact with family and even send money. "They are speaking on Chinese mobile phones, being able to have these illicit phones, that information is accelerating economic and social change inside the country. We see those things happening and we think those things are … empowering the North Korean people for broader change in the long term," he said. Eunhee has only spoken to her grandma over the phone once, three years ago. "I didn't say anything. She cried, then I cried and she didn't even understand my talking because my accent and my pronunciation had changed," she said. Her grandma often appears in her dreams. "I miss her so much, I want to say, 'I love you and thank you for growing me for 20 years'," she said.

"Always I say to my friends, you have to treat your mum and your dad very well, because you don't know about your future," she said. As for living in Australia, she has some words of advice for those inclined to complain: "People need to know, they have freedom, they have family, they have everything. "If you have a hard situation, if you know about North Koreans, you can be stronger. You can think 'my life is good. This life is enough for me'."