This article is the first in a series of interviews with people whose lives intersect with North Korea, offering firsthand accounts of the risks, routes and relationships that connect the two Koreas and continue to shape their lives today.

Hwang Ji-sung, 46, fled North Korea in 2009. Since then, he has helped roughly 3,000 people escape the North and sent money to many of the families they left behind.

“At first, I didn't understand why defectors would cry over having no news of their families. Getting that kind of news wasn't hard for me,” Hwang said in an interview with The Korea Times. “So I told them, 'I'll do it for you.'”

From smuggler to broker

Growing up in Musan County, North Hamgyong Province, Hwang became familiar with the geography of the North Korea-China border, including the Tuman River's currents and water levels, knowledge that proved critical when he began smuggling goods into China in the mid-1990s, amid a famine that killed an estimated 600,000 to 3 million people, though the exact toll remains unknown. He also guided women who had been trafficked into China, later sent back to North Korea and wanted to return to their Chinese husbands, leading them to the banks of the Tuman River.

In 2005, Hwang made his first attempt to defect, drawn by a longing for freedom and stories that people in South Korea could eat as much beef and pork as they wanted. He was caught and spent a year in prison.

"I'd already seen the wider world by then. There was no way I could go back to living in that small village," Hwang said.

He tried again in 2009 and succeeded.

Once settled in the South, Hwang turned his knowledge of the border and network into a business helping others defect from the North that peaked in 2015, when a request one day could mean a crossing the next. That year, his network brought in between 350 and 450 people, about 30 percent of the 1,275 North Korean defectors who entered South Korea.

When a North Korean's family in the South reaches out, Hwang calls his contacts in North Korea, tells them where to find that person and intructs them to bring the person to the Tuman River. From there, contacts in China take over, guiding them onward. Hwang knows the terrain well enough to direct the crossing by phone, telling them which bend in the river to wait at.

“From start to finish, you coordinate timing and locations over the phone,” Hwang said, adding that people inside the network don't know each other, since one person getting caught and talking could expose it all.

That secrecy comes at a price. Crossing the Tuman River out of North Korea used to cost about 1 million won ($707), plus 3 million won more for the leg to Thailand. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the total has more than tripled to about 15 million won. The rising cost also reflected how much harder it had become by 2019 to cross from China into Southeast Asia, the route defectors often take to reach South Korea.

“Before that, China had largely turned a blind eye, cooperating when Seoul asked for help by sending about half of those caught to South Korea.”

Tighter controls, higher risks

That cooperation ended as defectors and human rights groups criticized China, angering Chinese authorities into a harder crackdown, according to Hwang. Around the same time, facial recognition technology made it far harder to cross the border.

“China plants agents among defectors, using a Chinese national who studied in South Korea to persuade the defectors,” Hwang said. “The recruiting agent would tell defectors 'Say you want to go to South Korea. We'll guarantee your safety.' Once recruited, the defector persuaded by the Chinese agent joins the group to South Korea, and the agent activates a location tracking app. Then everyone is rounded up at that border,” he further explained.

North Korea has its own methods, and they are far crueler.

“South Korea has advanced technology and investigative techniques. North Korea doesn't, but it's brutal instead. If they suspect someone has family in the South, they take them in and ask, 'Will you betray Our Marshal if your family comes for you?' (referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un). Get caught with even something small and you're sent to a political prison camp and that's where you die,” Hwang said.

“That pressure forces intense obedience to the state. When a broker comes at the request of family in South Korea, some pretend to go along, then report the broker to security officials.”

**Sending hope across border **

Hwang's work is not limited to guiding defectors. When they ask, he also sends money to their families in the North.

The money changes hands several times along the way. Won sent from South Korea first lands in a Chinese bank account, where the account holder takes about 5 percent. As it crosses into North Korea, a broker there takes another 5 percent, a middleman takes 5 percent more and the courier who delivers the cash in person takes more because they risk their lives. In all, roughly 40 percent is deducted before the money reaches its destination.

Hwang said money flowing from South Korea to the North carries significant influence. He measured it in Chinese yuan, the currency typically used in North Korea's black market: 20,000 won converts to about 100 yuan, which he said is enough to buy 20 kilograms of rice.

“When that money reaches people in the North, do you think they'll think better of South Korea, or worse? The more people who think better of it, the sooner unification comes.”

Hwang said treating all North Koreans as enemies would be a mistake. To him, the alternative to helping each other, as he does through his work guiding defectors and sending money north, is conflict.

“If it comes down to picking up guns and fighting each other, it would wipe out the Korean people.”