These three, Hyok Choi, a 12-year-old boy, his sister, Hyang Choi, 13, and another girl, Hyang-Mi Choi, 17, were caught in Laos as they were trying to find safety after having fled North Korea. And Laotian officials are asking for $3,000 "to grease the wheels of their release."
Are you kidding me? That's absolutely ridiculous. I'm at a loss for words...
"If you don't help us, we will kill ourselves because we don't want to go to North Korea," Choi Hyok wrote on April 6.
Choi Hyang-mi told her uncle that the three had been interrogated and threatened by North Korean officials and urged him to send them the money being demanded in exchange for their release. "Don't count the number and please save human life! They can take our dead bodies to North Korea, but not us alive. I mean it!" she wrote.
Choi Hyang-mi wrote that her letter was "the last chance of a drowning person who will catch at a straw," according to a rough translation into English from the original Korean.
To tell you the truth, I can't believe the officials only demanded three thousand dollars. Not to say that it's right that they demanded anything at all--oh, I don't know. This whole situation is just disgustingly wrong.
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