Dzhon Khen-mu’s decision to fake his own death and escape North Korea all began with a box of popular local herbs.

Working as a hotel manager in the capital, Pyongyang, he was one of the few North Koreans allowed to be in close contact with foreign guests who were on state-sanctioned visits.

One day, he gave a Japanese visitor a box of ginseng as a gift, who in turn gave him a $300 tip – an act of generosity that would change his life for ever, he explains from South Korea, where he has lived since 2003.

Commercial activity is prohibited by North Korea’s collectivist leadership. But in the 1990s, as famine killed hundreds of thousands of people, a thriving black market emerged. By 2004, North Korea’s first industrial park had opened and authorities started to allowed citizens to slowly engage in business.

Dzhon seized the opportunity and started to import clothes, bikes and other goods from China using the $300 he had been given – a small fortune by local standards – as start-up capital, selling his wares on the black market at home for a profit.

Soon he says he had amassed around $100,000, a substantial sum in a country where the average salary is less than $1,000 a year.

While some basic shopping was permitted in the early 2000s, most citizens were still relying on the state ration system for food and clothing, he explains. Underwear and socks were handed out quarterly – and “shoes were provided more rarely. Everything was scrupulously recorded.”

Dzhon’s business helped his customers supplement their state rations, and made him very wealthy, but also put him in great danger. “Large amounts of foreign currency in private hands poses a threat to the authorities, especially if this money is not shared with the state the way it wants,” he explains.

South Korea’s government speakers, used for anti-Pyongyang propaganda, near the border with the North. Photograph: Lim Tae-hoon/AP

When his business colleagues started disappearing, he became afraid: “It was just a matter of time – tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, in a week... they were definitely coming for me,” he says.

Dzhon believed it would be “too risky” to cross the border with his family so he decided to escape alone, faking his own death to shield his wife and two children from the potential repercussions that can befall the relatives of defectors.

For $50 he arranged for a forged certificate that said he had died in a car crash. “This was the only safe option for [my family]. If they had known that I was alive and that I had fled, but hadn’t reported it to authorities, they would have been severely punished.”

He made his way to the border with China where he pretended he was on a routine trip to buy goods, but never returned. Dzhon then spent four months lying low before applying of political asylum at the South Korean embassy.

Arriving in the capital Seoul, Dzhon was met by intelligence agents and taken for a briefing. He was then given specialised support given to all defectors to help them adjust to life in the South.

“It’s very difficult for people who have lived all their lives in a socialist country to adjust to a capitalist lifestyle,” he says.

“In the North, the [ruling] party tells you what to do your whole life – you don’t make any decisions. The South forces you to make all the decisions yourself, and at first this is incredibly difficult to understand.”

Dzhon, now 60, works as a broadcaster at National Unity Radio, a South Korean station that tries to broadcast messages to North Koreans to counter their government’s propaganda.



He has never remarried and says he has never given in to the temptation to contact his family in Pyongyang either. “If the party finds out that I’m alive, and that I’m in South Korea, my relatives will be in big trouble,” he says. “As long as I’m ‘dead’ they are alive. This is what I think about every day.”

He continues to keep a low profile, never posting comments or photos on social media. He has changed his name since defecting and refused to be photographed for this story.



Although he fled more than 13 years ago, he says he still has nightmares about being caught by the North Korean secret services. “I think fear will stay with me for the rest of my life.”

A version of this article first appeared on RFE/RL