North Korea, the lately-quiet-third of the Axis of Evil, must be more wretched than imaginable.
A harrowing story, with a happy ending. From the UK Telegraph (free registration required).
A North Korean couple who fled to China in search of a better life have told how they spent two years hiding in a burrow dug in snowbound mountains to avoid being captured and sent home.
Sung Kyung-il and his wife, Chu Myung-hee, survived bitterly cold winters and the threat of starvation after digging a cave in the side of Dokgol Mountain, in the rugged terrain of northeast China.
Like many other North Koreans, the couple escaped the dictatorial Stalinist regime and a near constant famine under the mistaken impression that China would offer a better standard of living and more freedom.
They quickly learnt, however, that they faced being deported by the Chinese police back to North Korea, where they would have risked torture, imprisonment and possible execution.
Beijing regards the refugees as illegal economic migrants and regularly repatriates them.
To avoid arrest, the pair fled to a remote spot in the border region, hacking out a shelter from the mountain's frozen slopes and covering it with grass and foliage.
They lived there for more than two years before escaping China to resettle in the South Korean city of Daegu, where their remarkable story of survival has just emerged.
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