Closed-Off North Koreans Finally Hear Rumors Of Man's Harrowing Defection: Report

Despite the ongoing diplomatic blitz by North Korea at the Winter Olympics, citizens of the oppressive regime appear to be eating up news of a defection, according to a source who has spoken to DailyNK.

The news site, based in Seoul, speaks to sources inside North Korea to bring news from the closed-off country to the outside.

The defected soldier that’s causing a stir is Oh Chong Song, who defected from North Korea across the heavily fortified demilitarized zone (DMZ) in November of last year. Oh was shot several times as he escaped and required extensive surgery to survive.

“Even though news from the outside world is restricted and heavily censored, some information about the outside world still gets in,” a source told the site in a phone interview. “North Korean merchants active in China have returned to North Korea and began circulating the story of the defector soldier. Parents who have children in the military are particularly interested.”

Phone calls to the outside world are banned except for a privileged few in North Korea. DailyNK keeps their sources anonymous.

The source said that people in North Korea who heard news about Oh, 24, were stunned by his recovery. South Korean surgeons were able to save Oh despite a bullet tearing open his intestinal tract, and losing a massive amount of blood. Oh was found in a heap under some leaves near the DMZ and was evacuated by a U.S. military helicopter.

During surgery Oh was found to have several roundworms in his intestines, one was almost a foot long. These parasitic worms, commonly found in impoverished nations, are indicative of conditions soldiers face in the oppressive regime.

“People are also discussing the fact that parasites were found during the surgery. They are saying that this reveals the real environment that soldiers are forced to deal with. They are given ineffective supplements to treat roundworm, something that doesn’t even resemble medicine,” the source told the website.

The news, allegedly, is being spread most quickly along the Chinese border. People with black market Chinese cell phones can pick up Chinese cell service, but calling outside the country is banned. North Korea attempts to track and prevent these calls from happening.

The source also said that news from the Olympics hasn’t resonated with people because they don’t feel like it affects their lives very much.

Getting North Korea to participate in the South Korea Winter Olympics was seen as a major diplomatic breakthrough as the two countries are technically still at war. The winter games also come on the heels of a year where North Korea detonated their sixth and most powerful nuclear weapon and demonstrated the theoretical ability to strike anywhere in the U.S. with an intercontinental ballistic missile.

North Korean autocrat Kim Jong Un sent his sister, Kim Yo Jong, to the games showing that the country was willing to, for now, de-escalate tensions with it’s neighbor to the South. Kim Yo Jong invited South Korean president Moon Jae In to Pyongyang and garnered a number of laudatory headlines from U.S. news outlets. This caused a backlash by some, due to North Korea’s long history of alleged human rights violations.

Diplomacy with North Korea isn’t universally beloved in South Korea either. North Korean women were shoehorned onto the South Korean women’s hockey team shortly before the games, causing protest.