Hwang Ji-sung, 46, fled North Korea in 2009. Since then, he has helped roughly 3,000 people escape the North and sent money to many of the families they left behind. “At first, I didn't understand why defectors would cry over having no news of their families. Getting that kind of news wasn't hard for me,” Hwang said in an interview with The Korea Times. “So I told them, 'I'll do it for you.'” From smuggler to broker Growing up in Musan County, North Hamgyong Province, Hwang became familiar with the geography of the North Korea-China border, including the Tuman River's currents and water levels, knowledge that proved critical when he began smuggling goods into China in the mid-1990s, amid a famine that killed an estimated 600,000 to 3 million people, though the exact toll remains unknown. He also guided women who had been trafficked into China, later sent back to North Korea and wanted to return to their Chinese husbands, leading them to the banks of the Tuman River. In 2005, Hwang made his first attempt to defect, drawn by a longing for freedom and stories that people in South Ko