Not all North Korean refugees escape from North Korea through China, in rare instances some make their way to South Korea through Siberia of all places:

Young North Koreans volunteered to work in timber camps in Siberia just as South Korean miners went to Germany in the 1960s. Siberia’s timber camps were once a kind of utopian workplace, and the wages were high; but by the late 1990s, when North Korea started to suffer financial difficulties, they were Hell.

“I worked 15 hours a day for five years. In July 1998, I counted the vouchers I had been given instead of money. They were worth US$3,000. That was my goal. I risked my life earning that money. I was excited about bringing the money home, but when I told the logging office to pay me, they said they had no money.” The logging office had sent all the cash it received from Russia to the North. That was the last straw: Kim escaped in January 1999.  [Chosun Ilbo]

Make sure to read the rest of the story of how North Korean defector Kim Man-soo escaped from the logging camp and hid in Siberia for 10 more years before making his way to South Korea.  The way his five years of income working in the logging camp was sent to North Korea to fund the regime sounds just like what continues to go on today with North Korean slave labor in the Czech Republic along with South Korean approved slave labor in the Kaesong Industrial Complex.

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