Those on the outside trying to understand what goes on inside North Korea have long had to trust the people that manage to flee the country. Testimony from defectors plays a vital role for researchers and activists trying to get an insider’s perspective, providing unique and important, but often unverifiable, information.

Charles von Denkowski is a doctoral student on North Korean state crime at the Ruhr University of Bochum. With a background in criminology, he has been researching the relationship between policing and state criminality in North Korea for the last four years.