North Korean defectors, former soldiers, now living in South Korea, release balloons carrying propaganda leaflets on January 15, 2014 in Paju, South Korea. Getty Images

A 17-year-old who says he is a street child from North Korea is seeking refugee status in Sweden, maintaining he walked across a frozen river into China and traversed two continents in cars, the trans-Siberian railway and the back of a truck. But he offers no evidence to back his claims and Swedish authorities suspect he may be Chinese. The teenager, who uses the pseudonym Han Song to avoid reprisals by North Korean agents, fears Sweden will deport him to China because he has no documents. "I can't speak Chinese," Han said in telephone conversations with Reuters in Seoul, the capital of South Korea. "But it's hard for me to prove anything," he said, speaking in Korean with a strong North Korean accent. Hundreds of people in isolated North Korea make a getaway from its persecution and poverty each year. The vast majority slip across the border into China and then make their way to South Korea, although some end up in other countries.

Access to North Korea is severely limited and it is impossible to verify the accounts of most of those who escape. One of the most prominent refugees, whose flight from a brutal prison camp was the subject of the bestselling book "Escape From Camp 14", has changed key parts of his story and apologized this week for misleading people. Han, the teenager, says he was born in Songbuk County, a rural and sparsely populated corner of North Korea that juts into China, the border marked by the Tumen River. Read MoreHow millennials are shaking North Korea's regime When he was seven, his mother died of a stomach ailment. His father was later imprisoned for criticizing former leader Kim Jong Il, according to Han. "I ran away from the village after that, and roamed around as a 'kotjebi'," he said. Kotjebi is a word used in North Korea to describe homeless, orphaned children. Like most kotjebi, Han said he had to beg for food, usually in groups with other homeless children who loitered on the fringes of markets, foraging for scraps. Flight across continents Then a wealthy trader, a former army colleague of his father, came to his help. "He was warm hearted, caring and helpful. He was quite rich around his neighborhood because he was selling many daily commodities smuggled from China," Han said. With his help, Han said he made a deal with an ethnic Korean in China, a broker who helped North Koreans seek refuge in a third country.