First N. Korean refugees admitted to U.S. arrive. 6 defectors tell of slavery, famine & torture
Excerpt:

LOS ANGELES - Six North Korean defectors -- the first refugees the United States has admitted from the totalitarian nation -- arrived in Southern California on Saturday bearing accounts of famine, sexual enslavement, torture and repression.

The group was met at Los Angeles International Airport by leaders of four large Korean congregations in Southern California, all members of the Korean Church Coalition, which has pushed the government to take in North Korean refugees.

They hugged each of the refugees and handed them bouquets of fresh flowers as they emerged near the baggage area, accompanied by Chun Ki Won, the missionary who helped them escape via an underground railroad through China and Southeast Asia. Before leaving the airport, church leaders joined hands with the defectors and prayed for North Koreans still living in the Hermit Kingdom or hiding in China.

"This is the moment we've been hoping and praying for for years," said Sam Kim, an attorney and member of the Bethel Korean Church in Irvine.

The refugees, four women and two men ranging in age from 20 to 36, got off the plane wearing vivid new clothes, jeans and bright-colored sweat gear of a kind they said would have been forbidden in North Korea.

While it is not certain where the group will ultimately settle, church members have offered to help the defectors start new lives in California, which is home to the largest number of Koreans outside the Korean peninsula.

In interviews with a reporter in Washington last week, group members told harrowing stories of their path from North Korea to the United States.

Chan Mi Shin, 20, spoke of foraging for grasses to make a broth, the only ersatz food the family could find, and of being so hungry during the famine that killed millions that she started hallucinating that an accordion's keys were cookies and candies.

Speaking through an interpreter, she and the three other women, Na Omi, Young Nah "Deborah" Choi, and Ha Nah, explained how each had been sold as brides or prostitutes to already married Chinese men who paid the equivalent of a few hundred dollars for them. Shin said she was sold into marriage three times within a year of turning 16.