I was born in 1960's North Korea, in the northeastern province of Hamgyeung Bukto. I was the oldest child, but not the happiest. Happiness seemed impossible for me growing up.

Much of the reason for my sadness centers around my father. My father was a South Korean. That's a pretty serious thing in my country.

During the Korean War years, when my dad was in his teens, the Chinese attacked his home town and arrested him. They took him away and eventually brought him to a North Korean military base.

"Where are you taking me?" he cried out, "My mom and dad are waiting. I must go home."

"You cannot go home any more. Take this gun , protect this country."

And so it was. He never returned to South Korea. And from that time on, the North Korean "CIA" was always watching Dad. All of my childhood was shadowed with the knowledge that we were being watched, very carefully watched.

I could not even go to college. I actually blamed my father in my younger years. How could I understand such things, the bitterness he had toward his new "home," his homesickness for the land south of us?

Though I too had a growing resentment toward the land of my birth, I could not express my anger toward the North Korean system. I was well aware that three generations of people could be hurt by saying the wrong thing.

I loved and married a man. I think now it was the wrong person. He was a soldier. He was a very loyal soldier. The kind of soldier who could take a picture with Kim Il Sung. Tension grew between my husband and I because of my father. I began to understand him, but I wanted to please my husband too.

Both of our parents had been against this marriage, but we were in love. However, by the time my daughter came along and reached the age of ten, we divorced. Now, divorce in North Korea, at least in those days, was not a common thing. Technically it was forbidden. But in this case, the government actually stepped in and made the separation occur. My loyal soldier husband was valuable to the Party. He was in line for a promotion in fact but my father's South Korean heritage did not look so good on his resume. I had to go. I moved back to my mom's house.

In the course of time, my old acquaintances came over to see me. Lots of chit-chat, renewing of friendships, etc. We talked about a lot of things, like the fact that some of those friends have relatives in America.

Strange. The friend with whom I had that discussion suddenly disappeared. After her disappearance, a man working in the North Korean CIA confronted me, and let me know that tomorrow I would be arrested! I discovered later that the reason was that people imagined that somehow I was the one encouraging this person to go to America and had even set up the trip!

But I didn't know that at the moment. I was shocked. Why did they have to take me? I thought it was because I was selling antiques, actually running a forbidden business on the side.

Someone randomly asked me, "Did you help your friend go to America?" When he said that, I knew I had to leave right away for China or Korea!

Yes, I had had a lot of rage against the system when I was growing up, but I had my family to think of. I could not even think of escaping North Korea. But when he asked me that question, at that moment, all my feelings bubbled over. The injustice of it all! How dare they think this! I must go!

I asked for some money from my brother, added it to all my savings, took my daughter, and crossed the Tumen River that separates China from my land.

I gave the guard a bribe, and was able to cross over in the middle of the afternoon. People often ask, how do you know who to trust when you are offering bribes? Will the guard betray you? I can't speak for everyone, but the word at the border is that a bribe always works.

I didn't know what to do when I got to China. I saw a handicapped man working around the Tumen. I found only later he was a trafficker. I approached him:

"I have just come from North Korea, can you show us somewhere to go?" He invited us to his house, and called someone on his cell phone. We got a taxi and headed for a nearby Chinese city.

He put us in a house, and started inviting a number of men to come and "check me out." I realized something bad was going on. I told him, "Look, I am thankful to you but I know you are trying to sell me to a Chinese man. I promise you I will find a way to escape if you do this. Please just look for a job for me. I am not going to live in China. I want to go to my father's country."

With that, I gave him some Chinese money. He went somewhere for a day to think about my proposal. Thankfully, he agreed to find me a job. He sent me to a construction company to bake bricks. There were four other North Korean women there.

For the next couple of weeks, I went off to work each day, and left my daughter in "day care" at the house. I had just enough to cover our needs and the day care expenses.

It was after noon early in the third week that someone from the house came to the construction company with bad news for us North Korean mothers. All of us immediately ran home. Our children had all been arrested by the Chinese police.

In China to this day there is a reward system set up whereby any Chinese citizen discovering and turning in a North Korean can receive a handsome sum of money. Such had been the fate of my daughter.

For two days I did not know whom to call, to whom to report . All of us were out of our mind with grief. At least two of them had married a Chinese man. I had no one. We literally grabbed the grass, as mad women, crying morning, afternoon and all night for three days.

Eventually we heard there was a man trying to find out what had happened. He discovered that that they had been taken to a city one and a half days away by train. But they had traveled by truck. Military truck.

I heard from the man that one of the Chinese husbands had connections. But I had none. The pain inside became too intense. I got out of my room and saw a container of DDT. I noticed that the bottle had a little left, maybe 5-6 ounces. I drank it all.

I passed out. When I awoke, I was in the bed of a pretty bad hospital. A doctor informed me that if I had had much more I would have been killed, but that I had taken just enough to throw up everything. I was spared.

The treatment was not good. If you can imagine it, I was "flushed out" with a simple water hose...