89 maintain contacts with brokers all the time. This point distinguishes North Korean refugee women from other international migrant women. Although other migrant women, too, go through difficult processes and live in countries illegally, they can send remittances home and keep in touch with their families as they wish, allowing them to avoid endless forms of exploitation at the hands of brokers. In the case of North Korean refugee women, however, transferring remittances and contacting family members is impossible if not through brokers; what is worse, these brokers can decide on the life and death of North Korean refugee women. As will be mentioned later, North Korean refugee women who have, after their escape from North Korea, come to South Korea through the connection lines and networks of brokers and settled here, face difficulties in their settlement process because of brokers’ charges. 5) Breaking away from a life without citizenship and leaving in the pursuit of a better life While North Korean refugee women could hardly get a proper meal a day in North Korea due to the famines, in China, they did not encounter difficulties at least with regard to food. And those North Korean refugee women who had received secondary education in North Korea could sometimes earn more money by working more efficiently or demonstrating a greater trading ability, as they possessed a higher educational background than the Chinese or the ‘Chosun-jok’. Even though there were also North Korean refugee women who managed to establish a foothold in China, a part of them chose to abandon this footing and move to South Korea where they had to start anew. These decisions mostly originated in the wish to break away from the status of an illegal resident and from police crackdowns, as well as to pursue a better life. Due to the fact that Kim Jinsun (2009, 1-4) faced an everyday life of being chased by the police she decided to ‘go, even if I die on the way’ to a place which would grant her a citizenship. This change of mind came about naturally in the course of her watching South Korean soap operas while working as a care mother in China.