Today's witness is a 29-year-old woman from Onsong who first arrived in China 5 years ago. She left her husband and 3-year-old daughter in North Korea to find a way to make some money. She tried one day as a waitress in a Chinese restaurant. But she doesn't speak Chinese. So at the time of the interview she was living in Yanji with relatives.

Earlier in her life she had worked in a coal mine and in a market making snacks. Her brothers and husband are coal miners too. If all the daily quotas are met, a person can make 1000 won a month mining coal. Not bad? I don't know the exchange rate back then, but now 1000 won is $7.00 . $7.00 per month. And that's if the work gets done. More like seven or eight hundred won. Five bucks. And with that kind of money, of course she couldn't afford enough rice to live on, so she'd go to the mounatins and clear out a small field where she could grow corn. Still not enough. That's why she took the risk of an illegal visit to the north.

Now she is in China, though soon she must return. China is beyond description to her. "Chinese eat rice every day," she exults. "There is no hope in North Korea." She laments that NK is not open as in other countries. She is willing for anything to happen to open her country. She even would take an Iraq-like war if it would mean her people would be liberated! That might mean she does not buy the propaganda about the evil Americans.

"Give me your tired, your poor... the wretched refuse of your teeming shores... send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me," Americans used to sing from the heart. So many have abused the privilege of coming here that that song has gone a little sour.