When Hyeonseo Lee crossed the frozen Yalu River to enter China, she didn't know she wouldn't return to North Korea for 14 years.

It was 1997 and she was 17 years old. She thought she was going only for a short while before returning. She didn't say goodbye to her mother or any of her friends and family. Over dinner she told her mum she was visiting a friend and would be home for bed.

"She said don't stay out too late it's dangerous as a young girl," she recalls. "Come back you need to go to school tomorrow."

"The last minute of my mum's face hurt me for 14 years."

Hyeonseo spoke with Hack after publishing an autobiography, The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector's Story. She's also shared her harrowing tale in a 2013 TED talk that's been viewed more than five million times.

I'm lucky I found freedom but I paid the biggest price for that."

'I thought they were gods'

Hyeonseo saw her first public execution at the age of seven. She grew up in the city of Hyesan in a house that looked across the river to China. She was so close she could talk to Chinese people. In school she learned North Korea was superior to China.

"Sometimes people died trying to cross the border," she says. "I saw people floating down the river. Either they were shot or they were drowned."

The man was hung from a bridge and, as at all public executions, his immediate family was made to sit in the first row. She grew older and saw many executions. "People were executed for killing a cow or stealing food for feeding a starving family or practicing religion or contacting South Korean people or for fortune telling or watching foreign media.

"Or they were defectors like me."

At the time, the supreme leader was Kim Il-sung - grandfather of the current leader Kim Jon-un.

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Whatsapp North Korean propaganda poster with Kim Il Sung.

Kim Il-sung had ruled the country since 1948 and was revered as a god. Under his leadership the country had become a socialist state with close ties with the Soviet Union. After the Soviet Union dissolved in the early 1990s the North Korean economy collapsed and there was widespread famine. And then in 1994 Kim Il-sung died.

"Until he died I thought they were gods," Hyeonseo says. "I thought they didn't go to the bathroom or smoke - I was really shocked.

I thought maybe he's human like us."

The famine worsened. Hyeonseo's mother showed her a letter she had received from the sister of a colleague: "When you read this, all five family members will not exist in this world, because we haven't eaten for the past two weeks," the letter read. "We are lying on the floor together, and our bodies are so weak we are ready to die."

Hyesonseo began seeing dead bodies at the train station. "There's no home for homeless people so they die at the train station. It was very shocking and goose bumping."

State propaganda called the famine the Arduous March. Estimates of the number of people who died from starvation or hunger-related illnesses range from 240,000 to 3.5 million. For context, North Korea then had the same population Australia has now.

Deaths peaked the year Hyeonseo crossed the border.

'I wanted to see real life in China with my real eyes'

Hyeonseo was 14 when Kim Il-sung died. Then through high school she had a sense something was wrong, that other countries were not as bad as she was told.

"Maybe for you it's hard to understand how we were so ignorant," she says. "We believe what the government told us. They told us many bad things about the outside world. Especially capitalist countries like America, South Korea and Japan."

"We were taught North Korea is a heaven. They told us how people in western countries die in hospital or have no money to study in school.

"I wanted to see real life in China with my real eyes."

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Whatsapp A bridge over the Yalu River on the China-North Korea border.

Once in China she could not return home. A rumour spread she had escaped the country for good and the security police began investigating her family. Her family was surrounded by spying neighbours. "The whole country was virtual prison and my mum is living in real prison. Everyone is reporting my mum's everyday schedule.

"Maybe they think my whole family would escape one day."

In North Korea she had led a relatively privileged life free from hunger. Now in China she was a 17-year-old runaway. She suffered from hunger and cold. She lived in fear. She was constantly at risk of being discovered by Chinese police and sent back to North Korea, where she would be interrogated and punished by the security police.

"People who have read my book ask if when you were about to cross the border you knew what was going to happen in the future, would you still have crossed?"

"My answer is I would not cross."

"I know North Korea is the most ridiculous country in the world but for me, my mum my brother and my families and old memories are so important

I can't buy my family, my Mum. We all die one time."

After 10 years hiding in China, Hyeonseo found asylum in South Korea.

Australian backpacker to the rescue

A few years later Hyeonseo sneaked back into North Korea and helped her mother and brother back over the border into China. They made a 3000-kilometre journey through China while her family, who could not understand Chinese, pretended to be deaf and dumb. Their goal was the South Korean embassy in Laos. They were caught as they crossed the Laotian border.

Hyeonseo negotiated for a month and paid a bribe to get them released. They were then arrested a second time a short distance from the South Korean embassy. This time Hyeonseo did not have enough money to pay a bribe. She lost all hope.

At this point Dick Stolp appeared.

Dick was an Australian backpacking about Laos. He saw Hyeonseo crying in a cafe and asked her what was wrong. After hearing her story, he withdrew $1000 and gave it to her.

Hyeonseo used the money to get her family out of detention. Dick and Hyeonseo lost contact and then met years later in a surprise reunion on the SBS show Insight.

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Whatsapp Dick Stolp and Hyeonseo Lee on SBS's Insight.

"You help a small hand and it reaches to other hands and you think, 'That's great, that's good stuff,'" Dick said following the reunion.

Hyeonseo and her family now live in South Korea.