SALT LAKE CITY — Before sunrise each day, Holly Hwang nestles her little girl into a carrier and bikes her to a day care center. It is a 10-mile slog, sometimes through rain or snow, before she reaches the warehouse where she earns $9.52 an hour operating a forklift. After clocking out, she rides back another 10 miles to pick up her 4-year-old and head home.

The commute can be exhausting, but not compared with the grueling journey that brought her here. It started when she escaped from her native North Korea to China with the help of a smuggler, who then sold her into servitude, and marriage, to a stranger. She fled once again and arrived in Salt Lake City with her child nearly three years ago — one of a dwindling number of North Korean defectors admitted to the United States in recent years.

“My life is settled and very safe in Utah,” said Ms. Hwang, 39, who hopes to learn enough English to become a truck driver.

North Koreans have been fleeing economic and political oppression by the thousands for two decades. While most have ended up in South Korea, which grants them automatic citizenship, at least 220 have come to the United States since 2004, when Congress passed the North Korean Human Rights Act and opened the door to political refugees.