98 4) Living with hope Even though North Korean refugee women were constantly chased by the police and had to cope with being treated like a ‘worthless body’ in their neighbourhoods and within familial relationships throughout their life without citizenship, in general, they still had hopes and dreamt of a better future. ‘Living with hope’ meant that they still tried to work and do more than their share within the family, to save some money on the side for themselves and to live a self-determined life. Yi Chunhui (2009, 1-6) left ‘without telling my family that I’m going, I just told my children that I will go in order to earn some money and return’. She crossed the Tumen River and asked a Chinese woman to introduce her to a good workplace, but when she arrived after a 20 hour-drive she found herself at an isolated house. The place this woman was sold to was a shabby farmhouse where a mother who could not leave the house due to back problems lived together with her undersized son who was 145cm of height and weighed around 45kg. This interviewee cried for a long time but then settled her mind. Then [I thought], ‘&ow you’ve made it here, so let’s earn some money and return’. As I couldn’t communicate with that person I used gestures and body language and imitated him. After around 6 months had passed I thought I should work and went to a workplace. So, where did I work, well, you know these rice bags, right? You collect these rice bags and then put them all together. You dust them, wash them in water, rip them apart, then you make a coal fire in a roller drum with a heat of around 1700 degrees, put them in the roller and melt them, and then you pull them out in threads. You pull them out and then cut everything again. With that material you press boxes. You know, I worked in a place that produced the raw material for plastic boxes. So, if you dust these all day, when you go in the morning and come back in the evening you face is so black that your eyes glitter. The daily wage is 8 Won. In the currency here, it’s 1600 Won. I was working getting these 8 Won [but then thought] saving this will not be good enough. So I started to handle the machines. People like us, when we first go and don’t know anything, they don’t make us work on the machines, they make only men work on the machines. But we know at least the general things. When I looked at the machine, [I thought] ‘Ah, this works like this’. Because I know the principles. [I said], I want to work on the machines. They say, there’s no such thing as women working on the machines. [I say] even if there’s no such thing, I’ll do it. You work 12 hours. You rotate in 12 hour shifts. I earn according to what our team has produced. So I thought I have to earn a lot of money and went 30min. earlier than anyone else and started the coal fire. … I worked there 12 hours, lost my consciousness but worked and worked. And our team beat the men’s team and I was always number 1. Our team got 25 Won, 20 Won on very good days. That is, when you compare it to 8 Won this is an enormous amount. … In that year I did all I could