However, Cheol Ok was never granted a Chinese residence permit and, for 25 years, lived in seclusion in a rural area in China’s northeastern Jilin province.

Yu Bin mentions that her brother died in North Korean custody, the details of his harrowing death relayed through fellow inmates who managed to escape.

DW also spoke to other North Koreans who had been deported back to their home country from China before finally managing to escape to South Korea.

More than 1,000 eyewitness accounts have been collected by Korea Future, an organization that documents human rights abuses in the North Korean penal system.

North Koreans who manage to escape the country and are repatriated face a brutal interrogation process aimed at determining their motives for leaving.

China did not respond, while North Korea’s Embassy in Berlin, in a brief written statement, dismissed the accusations in connection with the deportations as “misleading propaganda” by “the United States and hostile forces.”

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