Nearly four years ago, a North Korean defector surnamed Kim received a phone call from her nephew still in the DPRK. He had a proposal: Would she help other defectors living in South Korea like her send money to their families back home? She would collect the funds and transfer them through a network of brokers in China, who would ensure they reached their intended recipients. She agreed.

But what Kim saw as an act of care for struggling people in the North soon turned into a legal ordeal that ended last month with a South Korean court convicting her of violating the country’s Foreign Exchange Transactions Act.