The real history behind The Lights Across the River
Escape from North Korea
Content warning: this page discusses famine, death, public executions, human trafficking and forced marriage. Nothing is described in graphic detail.
Published
In short
- In the 1990s a famine, later called the Arduous March, killed somewhere between about 240,000 and 3.5 million North Koreans.
- Most people who escape cross the Yalu or Tumen river into China, often on foot over the ice in winter.
- China does not treat them as refugees. Those it catches are sent back, where they face prison camps and worse.
- Many women who reach China are sold, into forced marriage or the sex trade.
- The way out runs thousands of kilometres across China to Laos or Thailand, and from there to Seoul.
- About 34,600 North Koreans had reached South Korea by mid-2026. More than seven in ten are women.
The famine
For decades North Koreans were fed by the state through rations. In the early 1990s, after the Soviet Union collapsed and its aid ended, the system began to fail; floods in 1995 made it worse. By the middle of the decade the rations had largely stopped. The government later called the years that followed the Arduous March.
Nobody knows how many people died. Estimates range from about 240,000 to 3.5 million, with the deaths peaking around 1997. Studies of North Korea's own 1993 and 2008 censuses point to roughly half a million excess deaths: the US Census Bureau put them at 500,000 to 600,000 between 1993 and 2000, and a South Korean analysis at 480,000. People survived by trading in informal markets, foraging and selling what they owned, and children who lost their families lived on the streets.
The famine is also where many escape stories begin. Hunger pushed people to the border, and on the other side of a narrow river they could see towns with electric light.
The river
North Korea's border with China runs along two rivers, the Yalu and the Tumen. In places they are only a stone's throw wide, and in the coldest weeks of winter they freeze hard enough to walk across. Hyesan, in Ryanggang Province, sits on the Yalu directly opposite the Chinese town of Changbai, where many people speak Korean, and for that reason it has long been a crossing point.
Crossing has always meant paying or dodging the guards. Escapees describe bribing soldiers with money or cigarettes, and crossing at night between patrols. People have been shot on the ice. Since the pandemic, both countries have added fences, cameras and checkpoints, and reporters with contacts on both sides say crossing is now close to impossible.
Hiding in China
Reaching China is not reaching safety. China signed the 1951 Refugee Convention, but it treats North Koreans as illegal migrants rather than refugees, and returns the ones it catches under a 1986 border protocol with Pyongyang. Those sent back face interrogation, prison and labour camps, and family members can be punished too. In October 2023 rights groups said China had returned hundreds of North Koreans in a single operation; Human Rights Watch put the number at more than 500.
So people who cross live hidden. They learn Chinese, work for cash in restaurants, farms and factories, and buy or borrow the papers of real Chinese citizens. Many live this way for years, never sure whether a neighbour, an employer or a routine ID check will give them away.
Women, sold
Many of the North Koreans hiding in China are women, and many of those women are trafficked. Brokers promise work and deliver women to buyers instead. In 2019 the Korea Future Initiative, a London-based group, published a report based on interviews with survivors. It estimated that about 60 percent of North Korean women and girls in China are trafficked into the sex trade: roughly half into prostitution, more than 30 percent sold as wives to men in rural China, some for as little as 1,000 yuan, and others into online sex work.
A woman sold this way cannot go to the police without being sent home. Some escape and move on to the route south, sometimes after years and sometimes leaving children behind. Others are never heard from again. This is why so many of the North Koreans who eventually reach South Korea are women: in 2024, 210 of the 236 arrivals were women.
The long way round
Seoul is only a few hundred kilometres from the border, but there is no way through: the road south runs through other countries. Most escapees instead travel the length of China with the help of brokers, who are paid in advance or from future earnings, by bus and train to the south-west, then over the border into Laos, often on foot through hills and forest. Some go on across the Mekong into Thailand, where they hand themselves to the police, are held for illegal entry and are then flown to South Korea; others try to reach the South Korean embassy in Vientiane. Laos has caught and returned groups, so every border on the way carries the same risk as the first.
Arriving
In South Korea, new arrivals are questioned by the intelligence service and then spend about twelve weeks at Hanawon, a government resettlement centre that teaches how South Korean society works, along with job skills. They are South Korean citizens under the country's constitution, but starting again is hard: many arrive in debt to their brokers and with family still in the North.
| Year | Arrivals |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 1,047 |
| 2021 (borders closed for the pandemic) | 63 |
| 2023 | 196 |
| 2024 | 236 |
| 2025 | 224 |
| First half of 2026 | 63 |
| All years, by mid-2026 | about 34,600 |
A true story: Hyeonseo Lee
Hyeonseo Lee grew up in Hyesan. In 1997, as a teenager, she crossed the frozen Yalu alone, meaning to stay only a short while. She spent about ten years in China under false identities, reached South Korea in January 2008, and later became one of the best-known voices for North Korean refugees.
The following year she went back to bring out her mother and brother. Crossing China, when a policeman questioned them, she told him they were deaf and mute people in her care, and he let them go. In Laos they were caught at the border; she paid a bribe and a fine in Luang Namtha to free them. They were arrested again in Vientiane, a short distance from the South Korean embassy, and for almost fifty days she went from office to office trying to raise the money. In the end a stranger, an Australian named Dick Stolp, paid the rest. When she asked him why, he answered, as she later told it: "I'm not helping you. I'm helping the North Korean people."
She told the story in her 2013 TED talk, My escape from North Korea, and in her memoir, The Girl with Seven Names.
Escaping can take one night. Being safe can take years.
Historically true
- The 1990s famine, the ration collapse, the markets and the deaths in the streets.
- Crossing the frozen Yalu from Hyesan to Changbai, and paying the guards.
- Living hidden in China under borrowed names, and the fear of every ID check.
- Women sold as brides by brokers who promised work.
- The route across China into Laos, the arrests and the bribes.
- The "deaf and mute" answer on the bus, the fifty days in Vientiane and the stranger who paid: from Hyeonseo Lee's own account.
Fiction
- Sun-hee, Mi-ok, their families and everyone else in the story are invented.
- Sun-hee's life is a composite of many public accounts, not Hyeonseo Lee's life; Lee was not trafficked, and the story never suggests she was.
- Mi-ok's fate is invented. The fate itself is not.
- The scenes, the dialogue and the order of events are written for the story.
Questions people ask
How do North Koreans escape?
Most cross the Yalu or Tumen river into China, often in winter when the rivers freeze, then travel thousands of kilometres with brokers to a third country such as Laos or Thailand, where they can ask to be sent to South Korea.
Why can't North Korean defectors stay in China?
China treats them as illegal migrants, not refugees, and sends back those it catches under a 1986 border agreement with North Korea, where returnees face prison camps and worse.
How many North Korean defectors live in South Korea?
About 34,600 had arrived by mid-2026, according to South Korea's Ministry of Unification. More than seven in ten are women.
What was the Arduous March?
The name for North Korea's famine of the mid to late 1990s. Estimates of the dead range from about 240,000 to 3.5 million; studies of the country's own censuses point to roughly half a million excess deaths.
Is The Lights Across the River a true story?
Its characters are invented. The story is built from public accounts of North Korean defectors, and its rescue through China and Laos follows the account Hyeonseo Lee gave in her 2013 TED talk.
Sources
- 1990s North Korean famine (Wikipedia, with its sources) and Yet another estimate of famine deaths (Peterson Institute for International Economics)
- Reporting from the Hyesan and Changbai border, 2025 and 2024 (ASIAPRESS), and Fleeing North Koreans killed by troops (Al Jazeera, 2012)
- China's forced repatriation of North Koreans (US Congressional-Executive Commission on China) and Large number of North Koreans likely deported by China, says Seoul (Hong Kong Free Press, 2023)
- North Korean women uniquely vulnerable to sex trafficking in China (Radio Free Asia, on the Korea Future Initiative report, 2019)
- North Korean defectors in Thailand (Wikipedia) and Laos route still open for business (Daily NK)
- Fewer North Korean defectors reach South Korea (NPR, 2023), Arrivals rose 20% in 2024 (Korea JoongAng Daily) and 63 arrive in the first half of 2026 (The Korea Times)
- Hyeonseo Lee (Wikipedia) and My escape from North Korea (TED, 2013)