FOX NEWS
North Korean defector Grace Jo was forced to work on farms and building sites
Grace Jo, who is now 26-years-old, escaped North Korea and fled to the US with her mother and sister in 2008.
She says she was imprisoned as a child after being caught trying to run away from the oppressive nation.
Ms Jo said she did not recall being tortured in the orphanages but was forced into hard labour on building sites and farms.
She told the Christian Post her father, two brothers and grandmother died from starvation in the poverty-stricken country.
Her mother then tried to smuggle her two daughters out of North Korea but the family was captured.
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Basically, they contain children forcefully and then assign healthy kids to farms and labour areas
She was sent to an orphanage with her sister when she was about 11 and then to another institution by herself when she was about 14.
Ms Jo described the orphanages as “basically labour camps for kids”.
She said: “In a room, we had about 45 or 50 kids but it was really small.
“When we sleep, we couldn’t move. If one person tries to move to other side, everybody has to move. It was very difficult.
“Of course, we didn’t have any extra clothes and we didn’t have any extra shoes. We didn’t even have enough water to wash ourselves.”
Ms Jo said children in the shelters were forced to do work that would benefit the regime.
She recalled her sister and older childern were forced to work on a farm while she and other youngsters were forced to prepare corn.
Ms Jo said: “We were assigned to work on farms and mountains.
“Older kids, they had to work all day long. It’s kind of like a labour prison for kids.
“Basically, they contain children forcefully and then assign healthy kids to farms and labour areas.”
Ms Jo said there were orphanages in every major North Korean city.
The defector, who now leads an organisation dedicated to helping the escape and rescue of downtrodden North Koreans, was also detained for three weeks in a prison.
She and her mother were forced to help the North Korean government construct an extension on a building.
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Korean children in a government-run nursery
Ms Jo said: “We had to clean the dirty stuff from the ground and we had to move cement blocks for buildings and move the blocks with our bare hands.
“We didn’t have any tools, so we had to work with our hands.”
Eventually a South Korean missionary living in the US who helped arrange the family’s escape into China in 2006.
Ms Jo said: “When we crossed the border to China, we paid money and bribed officers and got rescued.
“Two months later, we were told the North Korean government was looking for us in the Yanbian area.
GETTY
Most North Koreans struggle to survive in abject poverty
“So we took a van and we drove to Beijing and we sent our story to the United Nations.
“The UN and US government got our letter and approved us as legal refugees.”
From 2006 to 2008, the family lived under UN protection until they were finally able to travel to the US.
Ms Jo became a US citizen in 2013 and is now vice-president of the nonprofit organisation NKinUSA, an advocacy group founded and run by North Korean refugees resettled in the US.
North Korea has long been criticised for its human right record and the defector’s claims come as US President Donald Trump visits the region amid fears of nuclear war breaking out.
As tensions escalate between the US and North Korea, Mr Trump arrived in China seeking help to rein in Kim Jong-un, telling the reclusive state’s leader he was putting his country in grave danger by developing nuclear weapons.