Heartbeat louder than the engine: How a family of 9 pulled off one daring escape from North Korea

For more than a decade, the Kim family planned one of the most dangerous journeys imaginable, escaping North Korea by sea.


Living under constant surveillance, with harsh punishments for even talking about freedom, they quietly built their own exit route while the rest of the world saw North Korea only as a closed, isolated state.

On the night of 6 May 2023, all those years of planning boiled down to just two hours of nerve‑wracking sailing across the Yellow Sea.

What makes their escape even more powerful is that it did not end neatly!

How a 10‑year escape plan from North Korea turned into a 2‑hour escape

The escape idea began over ten years earlier with the family’s father, who believed there was “no hope” in North Korea and that the sea was their only way out. He died before the plan was completed, but his sons, Kim Il‑hyeok and Kim Yi‑hyeok, carried his ashes on the boat the night they finally left, as if bringing him along on the journey he had dreamed of.


According to a CNN report, the younger brother, Yi‑hyeok, moved to the coast, learned to fish, fixed boats, and slowly built relationships with local security officials by bribing them. The brothers made repeated trips to the heavily patrolled border waters, always posing as fishermen, until they had a clear picture of patrol patterns and response times.

According to Kim Il‑hyeok, they even calculated how fast the military would spot them if they crossed the Northern Limit Line, the disputed maritime boundary between North and South Korea.

The night they slipped into the Yellow Sea

On 6 May 2023, a spring storm passed over the coast, reducing radar visibility and slowing patrols, a condition the brothers had waited for years. They bribed the night watchmen, and nine family members, including Kim Il‑hyeok’s then‑five‑month‑pregnant wife, met at a secret coastal point. The women first crossed a minefield on foot, following a route they had memorised long in advance, while two children, aged four and six, were hidden in burlap sacks and told to stay silent.


They boarded a small fishing boat and moved at little more than walking pace, just enough to appear as drifting debris on radar. CNN reports that Kim Il‑hyeok later recalled the sound of his own heartbeat being louder than the engine. Within about two hours, they had crossed the Northern Limit Line and reached South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island, where a South Korean Navy vessel picked them up.

But the struggle ended in tragedy

Four months after the escape, Kim Il‑hyeok’s wife gave birth to a daughter in Seoul, and the family celebrated the child’s first birthday a year later in a brief moment of pure joy. Yi‑hyeok, the younger brother whose years of coastal work had made the escape possible, lived only 19 months of freedom before dying in a scuba‑diving accident.


Today, Kim Il‑hyeok is training as a chef in South Korea and speaking publicly about life under the North Korean regime. In March 2026, he welcomed a second daughter and told CNN, “I consider myself one of the lucky ones.”