"Three women share their heartbreaking stories of escaping North Korea and how they ended up in Canada and the U.K...
Jang was born and raised in more rural environs, in a small city in North Korea near the Tumen River, which borders China...
It was now the mid-1990s and the country was in the middle of a famine caused by weather abnormalities and mismanagement of the state's food distribution networks. From 1993 to 1997, the worst years for the famine, between 600,000 and a million people died, according to the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea...
Like many North Koreans who lived in the border regions and were desperate for food, Jang started entering China illegally to trade petty goods, including her own clothes, in exchange for food. Contraband businesses began popping up along the border as well as trafficking operations that sold North Korean women into marriages with Chinese men...These marriages, however, were (and still are) illegal. China does not recognize North Koreans as bona-fide refugees; rather, it considers them illegal migrant workers and deports any caught within its borders."