A North Korean family of four who paddled to Japan on a small wooden boat said they desperately wanted "freedom" and were ready to drink rat poison if caught, reports said yesterday.
The family, a couple and their two adult sons, told investigators they endured heavy seas during their seven-day voyage that ended Saturday in rural northern Japan.
"There is no freedom in North Korea. We want to go to a country where human rights are guaranteed," one of the four family members told Japanese authorities upon arrival, according to the Sankei Shimbun daily.
The four, whose names have not been released, told investigators they initially wanted to go to South Korea but changed course due to tight border controls between the two Koreas, media reported.
South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-soon said on Sunday that Seoul would respect their wishes to come there from Japan.
In a 7m wooden boat with a small engine, the family rowed and drifted more than 3,000km from near the North Korean port city of Chongjin.
Japanese media said the family carried with them money, sausage links, clothing -- and rat poison.
"We were prepared to die by drinking rat poison if we were caught by North Korean officials," one of the family members reportedly said.
"Daily life was very hard, we had no money, no job. We decided to defect because we thought our family would be destroyed," one said, according to the Asahi Shimbun.
In the isolated communist state, "you could barely eat bread every other day," a defector said. "We were very poor."
The four -- a husband in his late 50s, his wife in her early 60s and two sons in their 30s and 20s -- said they barely subsisted on the income of the younger son, an octopus fisherman.
The parents were unemployed, and the elder son attended a training school, media said.
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