Traveling to freedom

Fascinating story - makes leaving Cuba sound like a stroll through the park. From GlobalPost:

North Korea defectors take to the "Underground Railroad"
In the beginning, they arrived in ones and twos across the Mekong River. They were dirty, skeleton-thin and scared to death.

Sugint Dechkul, a small-town lawyer in Thailand�s far-northern Chiang Rai province, had no idea what to make of them. They�d wander up the riverside country road near his home, sometimes begging for food or shelter in an alien tongue.

�We�d ask, �Where are you from?� They couldn�t answer,� Sugint said.

Finally, through painstaking pantomime, one of the stragglers conveyed his origins. North Korea. Nearly 3,000 miles away.

That was nine years ago. Today, the so-called �underground railroad� traveled by North Korean defectors increasingly terminates in Thailand.

In recent years, North Korean defectors� network has discovered Thailand is the gateway to their dreams: resettlement in Seoul, South Korean citizenship and thousands in cash to start life a new life. Though this tropical nation is distant from the often chilly Korean peninsula, it is the nearest reachable ally of South Korea, which maintains a policy of financially aiding and patriating its divided kin.

Quite the story -- there is a lot more at the link. Why the Ill family is still in power beggars the imagination. Workers paradise my @#$%...