Different sections of the Denbaram Maparam escape room in Seoul, which simulates the experience of escaping from North Korea | Images: Miri Cha, edited by NK News
Portraits of the former North Korean leaders hang overhead as the escape plan rumbles into motion. The would-be defectors move toward the border, where they struggle to deactivate lasers that would alert guards to their presence. Bullets whiz by as they ford through the icy waters of a narrow river crossing.
Their journey follows the path to freedom that thousands of DPRK refugees have taken in recent decades — except for a key difference: Those fleeing are South Koreans, and they’re escaping a shipping container in the middle of Seoul.
Portraits of the former North Korean leaders hang overhead as the escape plan rumbles into motion. The would-be defectors move toward the border, where they struggle to deactivate lasers that would alert guards to their presence. Bullets whiz by as they ford through the icy waters of a narrow river crossing.
Their journey follows the path to freedom that thousands of DPRK refugees have taken in recent decades — except for a key difference: Those fleeing are South Koreans, and they’re escaping a shipping container in the middle of Seoul.
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Ifang Bremer is a Seoul Correspondent at NK News. He has worked on investigations for The Guardian and The Observer and previously wrote features on Korea for Dutch newspaper NRC.
Lina Park is a news trainee at NK News. She previously researched North Korean human rights issues at Hanvoice and South Korean foreign relations at the Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada.