Missed chance to discuss human rights

-Source-BBC- In the late 1990s Grace Jo was still a child in rural North Korea when her dark black hair turned yellow. I was so malnourished she said we would spend days without having anything to eat. One of her two brothers the youngest had already died of starvation; the other weak could barely walk. Her eldest sister had left the family in search of food and had never come back. Her father had also died Ms Jo says after being arrested and then tortured as he returned from China where he had gone to buy rice. The only hope for those still alive to survive her mother thought was to escape. From their north-eastern province of North Hamgyong Ms Jo then aged seven her mother and another sister Jinhye 10 walked for three days on unpaved roads and through mountains until they reached the Tumen River and crossed into China. Once there they lived underground fearful of being caught - China North Koreas main ally has a strict policy of sending defectors back. During that time they learned that Ms Jos five-year-old brother who had been unable to travel and so stayed behind had also died. We tried many ways to stay in China she said. But in 2001 three years after arriving they were found out jailed and returned. Back in North Korea Ms Jos mother was sent to a forced labour camp while the girls were put in an orphanage where they also had to work. Eight months later as the two children were being transferred to a different shelter they managed to escape. Their mother had already been released and shortly after the three were back together. In 2002 they managed to flee North Korea for a second time. Ms Jos mother bribed some border guards but two years later they were caught again and sent back. We thought we would die in prison. We didnt have any hope. But while in China they had started working with an American-Korean pastor to protect North Korean defectors. Now it was them who needed help. So in 2006 he paid some $10000 (7500) in bribes to the Norths secret police to free the family. Money talks in North Korea Ms Jo said and four months later they were released. For a third time they escaped to China and in 2008 the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) settled them as refugees in the United States. Ten years later Ms Jo who is now a college student in Maryland would watch something she thought impossible unfold: the leaders of the US and North Korea shaking hands.