<p>To have made it, and  be fluent in English is quite rare.
</p><p>Here is Hyeonseo Lee, facing the standing ovation to her poignant <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.ted.com/talks/hyeonseo_lee_my_escape_from_north_korea.html">TED Talk</a>.
</p><p>She saw her first public execution at age 7.  Looking across the border, she wondered why 
"Everything around me was completely dark at night, except for the sea of lights in China just across the river from my home.  I always wondered why they had light and we didn't."
</p>
Her story resonated with what my parents experienced separately escaping the Russian occupation of Estonia at the end of WW II.
<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.flickr.com/people/44124348109@N01">Steve Jurvetson</a> from Menlo Park, USA
CC BY 2.0
<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/8585281190/">Escape from North Korea</a>