On the night of 6 May 2023, nine members of the Kim family boarded a small fishing boat on the North Korean coast and slipped silently into the Yellow Sea. Within two hours, they had crossed the Northern Limit Line, the disputed maritime boundary between North and South Korea, and reached safety. It was, by any measure, a remarkable feat.
The plan had begun more than a decade earlier, when the brothers’ father first suggested escape by sea. He did not live to see it. His sons, Kim Il-hyeok and Kim Yi-hyeok, carried his ashes on board the night they finally left.
The preparation was methodical and patient. Kim Yi-hyeok moved to the coast, learned to fish, acquired his own boat, and quietly built relationships with local security officials through bribes. The brothers made repeated trips towards the heavily patrolled border waters, posing as fishermen, testing patrol patterns, and calculating response times. Every journey back was cover for the one they planned never to return from.
On the chosen night, a spring storm provided the conditions they had waited for. Radar visibility dropped. Patrols slowed. The brothers bribed the night watchmen and set off.
The women in the group, including Kim Il-hyeok’s wife who was five months pregnant, first had to cross a minefield on foot. They had memorised the route long in advance. Two young children, aged four and six, were hidden in burlap sacks and told to stay silent throughout the crossing.
The boat moved at little more than walking pace, slow enough to appear as drifting debris on radar. Nobody spoke. CNN reports that Kim Il-hyeok later recalled the sound of his own heartbeat being louder than the engine.
When they finally spotted South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island, lit up against the night sky, a South Korean Navy vessel approached. The family identified themselves and the ordeal was over.
Four months later, Kim Il-hyeok’s wife gave birth to a daughter in Seoul. The family gathered a year on to celebrate the child’s first birthday. It was, briefly, a moment of pure joy.
Two months later, Kim Yi-hyeok, the younger brother whose years of coastal work had made the escape possible, died in a scuba diving accident. He had lived just 19 months of freedom.
Kim Il-hyeok is now training as a chef in South Korea and speaking publicly about life in North Korea. In March 2026, he welcomed a second daughter. “I consider myself one of the lucky ones,” he told CNN.