Having lost two limbs as a teenager, Ji faced discrimination in North Korea, and considered taking his own life. In 2000, he crossed into China on crutches in search of food. Guards spotted him when he returned, seized the small portion of rice he had managed to procure, and beat him.
"A worthless cripple like you is embarrassing our nation," they told him. By begging for food in China, they said he had defamed the Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il.
No longer willing to live under a totalitarian regime that persecuted the disabled, he planned to escape with his brother in 2006. They crossed the Tumen River bordering China, with Ji clasping a crutch in one arm. At one point, Ji fell and began to drown. His brother grabbed his hair and dragged him to the other side.
Entering China was only the first step. Ji traversed the jungles of Laos, Burma, and Thailand along an underground railroad used by North Korean defectors, before finally securing a flight to South Korea. Each step involved immense physical pain.
"There were many moments during the 6,000 mile journey, when I was so tired and just wanted to give up, and many times I just cried by myself on the mountainside and lamented the fact that I was born in North Korea, that because I was born in North Korea I had to go through this experience," Ji said in an interview through a translator.
"I remember at one time just praying to God, looking toward the heavens, pleading with him that if I make it out alive from this journey, if God saves me from this journey, I will do whatever it takes to bring about change in North Korea so that there will be no more people like me coming out of North Korea."
Ji is now fulfilling that promise. He founded the group Now Action and Unity for Human Rights (NAUH) in South Korea, which broadcasts radio messages of "truth, culture, and knowledge" into the North and helps rescue defectors. His group has saved more than 100 women, children, and disabled people who, if caught and returned to North Korea, would likely be executed or sent to a labor camp.
While visiting the United States this week to give speeches and meet with lawmakers, Ji discussed the challenges faced by defectors and expressed his hope that a new generation of leaders could help reunify the Korean peninsula. Brian DiSabatino, a company executive in Delaware, arranged the visit after he was inspired by Ji’s talk at the Oslo Freedom Forum in May.
Ji grew up during the North Korean famine of the 1990s, when the Kim regime deliberately starved parts of the country that it viewed as disloyal. He witnessed classmates, neighbors, and relatives die of hunger as his teachers insisted that North Korea had perfected the socialist system. In 1996 when Ji was 14 years old, he fell off a train as he was attempting to pilfer coal to sell for food. The train ran over his left hand and foot. His 12-year-old sister found him and gathered other men to take him to the hospital.
"There was no blood transfusion and no painkillers," Ji said, sobbing, at the Freedom Forum event. "I still remember very vividly to this day the sound of the saw cutting through my leg bone and the vibration that it caused throughout the rest of my body."
Still haunted by the memories of his childhood, Ji did not initially become involved in human rights work when he made it to South Korea.
"I wanted to live a comfortable life now that I had resettled in South Korea, having escaped the difficult situation in North Korea," he said.
But that all changed after he was invited in 2010 to visit churches in Arizona. The religious communities held prayer campaigns and events to raise awareness about the abuses against the North Korean people.
"When I saw these Americans, people who are not Korean, being involved in this issue I was so moved and also was very embarrassed at the same time to see these non-Koreans, to see these Americans move me so much," he said. "When I think of Americans, at least the ones that I’ve met, and have had the privilege of getting to know, I regard Americans as a very exemplary people, the way that they care about other people’s plights."
Ji formed his human rights group soon after the U.S. trip. They started out working in people’s homes before moving into a cramped office in South Korea, where Ji had to walk up five floors every day.
"It was very, very small. I mean it was really small," Ji said, laughing.
Thanks to a crowd funding campaign started by Indiegogo and the Human Rights Foundation, Ji and his group have been able to move into a much larger office, replete with elevators and bathrooms for the disabled. He continues to stream radio broadcasts into the North with the support of Radio Free Asia and the Far East Broadcasting Company, a Christian network. He said he has met with defectors who listened to the broadcasts and were inspired to escape to South Korea.
The group also sells Christmas cards in an annual campaign to raise money for its efforts to rescue North Korean refugees.
Ji’s next project is to train young defectors to become future leaders of a reunified Korea. Young escapees often become complacent, like he once did, when they reach South Korea, he said. He wants to take them to a refugee camp in Southeast Asia, "to give them a sense of purpose again and to have them be reminded, and to be resolved to not forget about what they left behind."
"We believe that reunification is going to happen; it’s a matter of when not if," he said. "When reunification happens, these defector students, who have been trained in how to be leaders in the community, will go back to an open and free and reunified North Korea."
Ji’s brother, currently a university student in Seoul, intends to pursue graduate studies in the United States and eventually work on human rights issues at an international organization. His sister lives outside of Seoul with her husband and recently had a child, while his mother operates a small restaurant in the South Korean countryside. "She’s happy that her children at least have made it out and are living and doing well in South Korea," he said of his mother.
His father was not so lucky. He later learned that after the rest of his family had escaped, his father was detained by authorities and tortured to death. He still has the wooden crutches that his father gave him, which he leaned on throughout his 6,000-mile journey.
There are several ways Americans can aid the North Korean people in their struggle, he said. He urged Congress to pass the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act, which would impose financial restrictions on North Korean individuals and entities that sponsor arms exports, money laundering, censorship, and human rights abuses.
He also noted that the Kim regime was "really upset" when the George W. Bush administration froze millions of its funds at Banco Delta Asia in Macau. Those sanctions were later lifted to induce Pyongyang to end its nuclear program, but it has continued to conduct underground nuclear tests.
"Finances, money, that’s the weak spot for the regime," Ji said.
Ji also encouraged American families to host North Korean defectors and find ways to help them study in the United States, where they can "broaden their horizons" and gain knowledge that they can then impart to other escapees when they return to South Korea.
Despite all the hardships in his life, Ji said he has retained his sense of hope.
"It has not been an easy journey, but it certainly was doable through the conviction of my heart," he said. "If everybody had this positive outlook and optimism, no matter how difficult the situation might be for some of the defectors in South Korea and elsewhere, they can be assured that better days will come ahead."
"Don’t ever think that it’s impossible."