The story is worthy of being portrayed in a major motion picture. Shrouded in secrecy, hundreds of North Koreans, mostly women and children, escaped into China, traveled to its southern border, and entered an undisclosed Southeast Asian country to reside and wait for permission from the South Korean government to defect. And then they finally arrive in Seoul and are carted off to a defector training center to become acclimated to freedom, democracy, and capitalism.
North Korea has condemned the South for "an organised and planned kidnapping as well as a terror crime." But this is to be expected from a country that builds a fence to keep people from fleeing brutal Stalinism and starvation.
With appropriate commentary, Robert Koehler provides an overview and running account of the drama at the Marmot's Hole.
From a personal perspective, I'm old enough to recall the images of East Germans being shot and impaled on barbed wire fences trying to escape communism. The North Koreans' flight to freedom pulls at my heart.
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