Eating MICE to survive and forced to watch executions aged 7 — North Korean defectors reveal horrors of regime as Trump cosies up to Kim
NORTH Korean defectors have revealed the unimaginable cruelty and starvation they suffered under its brutal regime days after Donald Trump cosied up to despot Kim Jong-un.
Hyeonseo Lee, who was forced to watch her first public execution aged seven, warns Kim is a "murderer" who has fooled the world into believing he wants peace.
She has seen the barbarity of the despot's regime with her own eyes, having been yanked out of class to watch a man hang to death as a child.
Still too young to truly understand what was going on, she and fellow pupils stood in complete silence as the man was thrown off a bridge with a noose around his neck.
guards forced them to watch so they "never forget you must not do anything against the Dear Leader".
She added: "If you do, you too will be killed... That is the message they want to give to young kids."
Human rights groups have claimed Kim's firing squads have execute suspected criminals in schools and markets to create an "atmosphere of fear".
Starving Koreans are killed for anything from stealing rice to sharing South Korean media, .
As well as being widely condemned for human rights abuses, North Korea has angered Western nations including the US by conducting illegal nuclear missile tests for years.
Kim promised Trump he would get rid of his nukes during their historic summit in Singapore this week but Hyeonseo is convinced he is lying.
She said: "I know the nature of the regime and I don't think it's really going to give up its nuclear weapons.
"I don't want people to be under the illusion he's a nice guy, or a smart guy, as Trump said he was. That's ridiculous. He's a murderer."
South Korea's spy agency has accused Kim of ordering the assassination of his estranged half-brother and the execution of five senior officials by anti-aircraft gun.
And while Trump praised him for being a great leader who "loves his people", Grace Jo, another defector who lost most of her family to famine, told of how she once survived in the country by eating mice.
She remembers eating just one meal a week during much of the 1990s when millions perished from starvation.
Her father sneaked across the border to China to beg relatives to get the family out but on his return, he was caught by North Korean guards and beaten to death.
Jo, who finally made it to China before becoming a US citizen in 2013, told CBS: "My grandmother passed away by starvation. My two younger brothers too."
She is now living happily in America - and Hyeonseo in Seoul - having trekked across the frozen Yalu river into China, before entering South Korea as refugees.
How North Korean women are exploited after escaping
Tens of thousands of North Koreans have fled the reclusive state since famine struck in the 1990s.
The most common route to South Korea, where they are seen is refugees, is by crossing the Yalu or Tumen rivers into China.
They must stay hidden until they cross into a neighbouring country or risk being sent back to the North where they face torture in labour camps.
Prominent defector Hyeonseo Lee was one of the lucky ones, successfully making the 2,000-mile journey to the South through Laos and Vietnam.
Many female defectors are captured the moment they step foot in China and sold as brides to farmers or forced into cyber porn, .
These women live in "extreme fear" of their "husbands" and can be sold multiple times without warning.
Defector Su-jin told SCMP how a trafficker promised her a new life and good job before selling her for just £110.
Another escapee, Ji Hyun Park, said the "husbands" would resell the wives like objects if they considered them "damaged".
Others are known to have been trafficked to tourist hotspots in Vietnam where they are forced into prostitution.
Yeonmi Park, 24, also managed to flee the horrors of the North but her escape came at a brutal and traumatising cost.
After leaving her home as a terrified and malnourished 13-year-old, Yeonmi and her mother were captured by human traffickers who sold them to different men.
She told the Times: "He told me if I was his mistress he would bring my relatives back to me... That's how I allowed myself to be raped by him."
Yeonmi was eventually sold to the man who bought her mother but says they were both "treated like animals".
Her father meanwhile was still in the North, trapped in a labour camp where he was "starved, tortured and beaten".
Before the unthinkable suffering she endured during her escape, Yeonmi remembers the lies she was told about the Kim family.
She said: "We were told... our Dear Leader suffers and starves for the good of his people... We were told he doesn’t have food because he gives all the food he has to us.
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"Even though Kim Jong-il was fat, we never learnt critical thinking, so it didn’t register that the regime was lying.
"Donald Trump met Kim Jong-un this week, but what concessions have been made?
"North Korea hasn’t given up anything. How can Trump romanticise a dictator who has killed millions of people?"
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