When Grace Jo’s grandmother caught six newborn mice near their home in North Korea, the whole family was overjoyed. Finally, one of them would have something to eat.
It was the year 1996, and little Grace was only 5 years old, and seriously malnourished. The famine in North Korea had been ravaging the country for half a decade, and the family of seven—mom, dad, grandma, and four siblings—sometimes spent up to 10 days with no food at all, surviving by just drinking water from a nearby stream.
So when the family found the mice, the adults had to make a big decision: Which child would get to eat them? Young Grace’s hair had turned yellow and dry, and she wasn’t able to walk properly due to being malnourished. So she was the chosen one to eat the mice, which were boiled and added to a soup with some grains of rice and corn. “We didn’t have salt, so it was a very plain flavor,” Ms. Jo, 33, recalled during an interview from her current home in Georgia.
After a harrowing journey through China, she, her sister, and her mother were able to escape to freedom in America in 2008. Ms. Jo is now an American citizen and human rights activist dedicated to telling youth about the horrors of living under a communist regime. “We don’t want that similar thing to happen in America,” she said.
A Family Lost to Hunger
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, North Korea lost its biggest economic supporter, and so the flow of critical imports into North Korea stopped. The communist regime was unable to adapt, and the state-controlled economy collapsed.
The little food available was distributed by the regime according to each individual’s political standing and loyalty to the state. Particularly in the northern part of the country where Ms. Jo’s family was from, many were left to fend for themselves.
The whole Jo family tried its best to procure food. Mom would handcraft different items to sell in the market. Grandma would make tofu, also for sale. Dad and the eldest daughter would travel for weeks in search of some provisions. Even the youngest ones, like little Grace, would help, foraging wild vegetables or holding up torches while the grownups worked at night—as they had no electricity in the house.
Like many other North Koreans who live near the border with China, one desperate day, Ms. Jo’s father decided to cross the Tumen River separating both countries to try to find some food on the other side. He didn’t have a passport, as he didn’t have the money to get one. Ms. Jo recalled, “In North Korea, everything is free. Education is free, healthcare is free … but it’s not free. The officers who have the authority to sign the paperwork ask for something. At the time, we didn’t have any food. How could he pay the bribe?”
So his father illegally crossed the shallow and unguarded Tumen and was able to return to North Korea with a few bags of rice. But he got caught at the street market by North Korean police, who then took him onto a train to be sent to a detention center. During the three-day trip, he wasn’t given any food or water, and he died before reaching the destination.
Ms. Jo with her mother in America. (Courtesy of Grace Jo)
The news was so shocking for Ms. Jo’s mom, who was pregnant at the time, that she started having contractions. The following morning, she gave birth to a premature baby boy, her fifth child. It was a difficult delivery, and she felt very weak.
A few days later, the eldest daughter, who was 17, returned home from her journey looking for food with an empty backpack, when she saw her mother was ill and the family had a new mouth to feed. After hearing the news about her father, she decided to leave again in search of food and said she would be back by the following night. “But she never came back. It’s been almost 26 or 27 years, and we don’t know what happened to her,” Ms. Jo said.
The family tried its best to find food for the baby, going to a nearby mill to collect the husk of corn, turn it into powder, and then make a porridge out of it. But the baby didn’t survive.
In the summer of 1998, Grandma also succumbed to starvation. Not long after the family buried her in the mountains, six government officials showed up and told Ms. Jo’s mother that they would be evicted from their home. “In North Korea, the house, the work, everything, will be assigned by the government,” Ms. Jo explained. “But they did not assign us a new home. And they kept asking us to leave, which meant we would become homeless.”
That’s when her mom decided to flee to China. But she figured that she wouldn’t be able to bring three young children with her on the perilous journey across the mountains and the river. So she decided to leave the youngest, a boy, with a local family and promised to come back for him as soon as she could.
The night of the departure, she asked the two daughters she would be bringing with her to take one last look at the house.
“This is the house where we lost all our family,” Ms. Jo recalled her mother saying. “Wherever you go in the world after you grow up, don’t forget this scene. This is your home, and this is your country, and this is your origin.”
Life in China
It wasn’t an easy journey, hiding both from people and wild animals that roamed the rocky mountain trails. But after three nights and four days on foot, they eventually made it to China.
About two months later, her mom sent two men to find the little brother, but she received heartbreaking news. The family that hosted the child couldn’t feed him anymore, so they kicked out the 5-year-old boy. After desperately roaming the streets of the village, crying out for his mom and two sisters for about a week, a kind woman took him in and offered him some rice porridge. He ate, fell asleep, and then never woke up again.
Living in China wasn’t easy, as North Koreans are not considered refugees. Instead, they are repatriated if caught. So Ms. Jo, her older sister, and her mom had to live in hiding throughout the 10 years they spent in China.
They were repatriated on several occasions and ended up spending 13 months in a Chinese prison. That’s where they met the man who would eventually help them escape.
Ms. Jo has spoken to thousands of students through her work as a human rights activist. (Courtesy of the Dissident Project at American Preparatory Academy)
Escape to Freedom
Pastor John Yoon grew up in what is now North Korea before the Korean War. He found his way to the south during the conflict and there, found faith. He decided to devote his life to ministry work. While in China, he realized he could help North Koreans to escape.
It was a dangerous endeavor that put his life at risk, and after being discovered, he ended up in the same Chinese prison as Ms. Jo and her family.
They were repatriated virtually at the same time in 2006: Ms. Jo and her family to North Korea, and Pastor Yoon to America, as he had emigrated to America and become a U.S. citizen. Once in Seattle, he organized a fundraising campaign to help rescue the Jo family and raised $10,000, which he used to bribe North Korean officials. The Jos were released near the border with China. Again, they crossed the Tumen River and spent two months in hiding. Once they got the chance to drive the 860 miles to Beijing, they received protection from the United Nations. From there, they were able to fly to America as refugees in 2008.
Adjusting to Freedom
Once in America, the Jo family took about two years to fully adjust to living in freedom. The hardest part was making choices. Ms. Jo explained, “Learning about individualism and making decisions was very hard for me. … I did not know what would come after I made a decision. So each decision was a very heavy weight on my shoulders.”
Ms. Jo with students at the American Preparatory Academy in Utah, on April 14, 2023. (Courtesy of the Dissident Project at American Preparatory Academy)
The family had a moment of realization when they understood what it was like to live in a free country. After her older sister got a driver’s license and the family saved enough money to buy a car, they went for a ride, and her sister got so excited that she pressed the gas a little too much, going way over the speed limit. A police officer soon turned on his flashing headlights and asked them to pull over. Her mom became very scared, scolding her older daughter for possibly getting them deported, or even killed, for the traffic infraction. But her daughter just laughed. “Mom, this is America. We are safe,” Ms. Jo recalled her sister saying.
Seeing both her daughters laughing, the mother calmed down and started laughing as well. That was the scene the police officer discovered when he approached the car. In her stilted English at the time, Grace explained the situation and finished with a sentence that even made the officer smile. “We are now in America and we are not scared of you!”
Telling Her Story
Ms. Jo recently graduated with a degree in interior design from the Savannah College of Art and Design, and is planning to start up a business with a friend. On top of that, she is part of the Dissident Project, a nonprofit that seeks to educate middle and high school students about the experiences of people who have lived under authoritarian regimes. Speakers like Ms. Jo share their personal stories around the country. The “dissidents” in the project want young Americans to better understand what life under socialism and communism is like, and at the same time cherish the freedoms they have and be informed by the time they start voting. “We want those students to know about that so they will know how to make a [good] decision in the future,” Ms. Jo said, stressing the importance of choosing responsible leaders who will safeguard America’s freedoms. “When they are able to learn, as early as possible, that this other type of world exists, it will help them shape their thoughts.”
She also founded a nonprofit, the Grace Jo Foundation, to help North Korean kids who resettle in America and other countries to adjust to their new lives and have a good education.“I’m hoping to help those North Korean children to become leaders because they will be the first ones who will go back to North Korea once North Korea opens its doors, and they will become the bridge between North Korea and the world.”
“That’s my personal mission,” she said.
This article was originally published in American Essence magazine.
