After fleeing 200 miles across the Yellow Sea, the rebel’s only regret was not taking night vision goggles.
Nearing the end of his jet-ski trip from China last summer, Kwon Byun peered into the darkness off the coast of South Korea. As he approached shore, he saw a seagull bobbing as if it was floating. He steered his boat forward, but then it ran aground. The seagull had landed on the mud.
“I had everything: sunscreen, extra batteries, a knife to cut the buoy lines,” he recalled in an interview. He had a laser pen to give away his location if he got stranded, and a lighter to burn any notes if he was caught. He also had a visa for South Korea, and planned to make it to a port of entry rather than be stranded on the mudflats.
That wasn’t enough.
Kwon, 36, of Korean descent, has derided China’s strongman leader and criticized the Communist party’s persecution of hundreds of pro-democracy activists at home and abroad. In retaliation, he said, he faced a travel ban, years of detention, imprisonment and surveillance.
But fleeing to South Korea did not bring the relief he hoped for. He said he continued to be hounded and detained by the Chinese government, and even after his release he was in legal limbo, unwilling and not allowed to leave the country.
It will be another 10 months before Kwon is allowed to leave South Korea. Just days before his flight out on Sunday, he returned to the tidal flats off the coast of Incheon where he was ill-fated last summer, and spoke publicly for the first time of details about his meticulously planned journey.
Court records from his criminal case in South Korea, previous interviews with friends and family and a statement from the Incheon Maritime Police Station last year corroborated many of the details of his testimony.
To avoid tipping off police, Kwon withdrew the equivalent of $25,000 in cash from various banks, bought a Yamaha WaveRunner and set off from the misty coast of the Shandong Peninsula on the morning of August 16.
He wore a black life jacket and motorcycle helmet during the voyage, but he plunged into 10-foot waves, dodged floating sake bottles, and, with his skin baking in the summer sun, fell overboard twice and lost his sunglasses.
He fueled up using five barrels of gasoline that he had strapped to the WaveRunner, packed five bottles of water and five ham and tuna sandwiches for himself, and used a marine compass and smartphone that someone had given him to navigate.
His first glimpse of land was as the setting sun bathed the islands off Korea’s coast in a warm glow. What should have been an eight-hour voyage turned to 14, and by the time Kwon reached Incheon, the pink sky he had stopped to gaze upon had turned black.
He said he did not see any patrol boats or ships despite entering a heavily militarized area where the navy monitors the activities of North Korean defectors and others.
Kwon, who speaks Chinese, English and a little Korean, called local police for help, then waited for an hour, walking around the boat in his beige Crocs, trying to ward off mosquitoes.
That night, Incheon Coast Guard and the South Korean Marine Corps rescued him, took him into custody and launched an investigation together with the South Korean National Intelligence Service, he said.
South Korea accepts very few refugees, so authorities issued a deportation order for him, but in the months since then he has been fighting criminal charges of illegal entry, which can carry up to five years in prison, and has been banned from leaving the country.
He said he wondered how events would have unfolded if his arrival had gone as planned.
South Korean prosecutors have not lifted a travel ban on Kwon until his criminal case is over later this month. Kwon has said he plans to apply for asylum in the United States or Canada. His Sunday flight was to Newark.
“I want to live my life,” he said. “I want to live in peace for a while.”
Kwon, whose Chinese name is Kuan Ping, is from a city in Jilin province in northeastern China near the border with North Korea. Since childhood, he has regularly visited South Korea, where his grandfather was born. He spent his college years in the United States, where he was known as Johnny. He attended the Army Reserve Officer Training Program at Iowa State University and also took flight training.
He studied aerospace engineering at university for several years, then returned to China in 2012, where he ran an online clothing brand and traded cryptocurrency, before continuing to travel to places like Lebanon and Syria with the aim of becoming a photojournalist.
He first drew the ire of Chinese authorities when he began criticizing the Communist party online: In 2016, he posted on social media about an anti-government protest he had taken part in in the Chinese territory of Hong Kong, wearing a T-shirt that referred to Chinese leader Xi Jinping as a “shitler.”
Chinese authorities arrested Kwon the same year and sentenced him to 18 months in prison in 2017 for “inciting subversion of state power,” a charge frequently levelled against dissidents and human rights lawyers.
After his release in 2018, police tapped his communications, tracked his movements and regularly interrogated him, he said, adding that state agents were alarmed by his contacts with leaders of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, including Wang Dan, once one of China’s most wanted fugitives.
“I couldn’t live a normal life,” he said.
China’s Ministry of Public Security did not respond to a request for comment.
As police investigated his family and friends, Kwon became desperate to leave the country. His plan to leave China by sea was inspired in part by the 1994 film “The Shawshank Redemption” and Lindsay Warner, an explorer who circumnavigated Australia on a jet ski. South Korea, he decided, was his only viable option.
He leaves behind his e-commerce and cryptocurrency businesses, as well as friends, family and a loved one.
After his rescue from the mudflats, Kwon said, investigators appeared confused by his story, interrogated him, threatened to torture him and denied him access to a lawyer. Incheon Coast Guard, which led the investigation, said in a statement that “no human rights violations occurred” during the investigation.
Kwon argued in court that he was a political refugee and had intended to arrive legally at the port of Incheon, less than a mile from the tidal flats, on a tourist visa. A judge found him guilty of illegal entry in November and gave him a suspended sentence of one year in prison and two years of probation.
The ruling freed Kwon from detention but not from legal custody: Immigration authorities issued a travel ban on him after prosecutors appealed the judge’s decision.
While living at his family’s home in Ansan, south of Seoul, Kwon said he went to the gym, read books about crypto-trading, volunteered at an English school for adults and joined a soccer club where he made friends with a group of Nigerian refugees.
But he didn’t let his guard down, continuing to use the habits he’d picked up in China: constantly checking security cameras, using encrypted text messaging apps and a signal-blocking Faraday bag.
Lee Dae-sung, a South Korean activist who has supported Kwon, said he had warned him about the dangers of China’s overseas police operations, known as “operations fox hunts,” to forcibly deport Chinese dissidents living abroad.
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service confirmed to Lee that he and Kwon were targets of the operation, Lee said. The NIS did not respond to requests for comment.
“It is not safe for him to continue living in South Korea,” Lee said.
In May, an appeals court rejected an appeal by prosecutors and a request by Kwon’s defense team for a reduced sentence. Kwon decided not to pursue further charges in order to leave the country sooner, and prosecutors lifted the travel ban, his lawyer, Kim Se-jin, said.
At the mudflats, Kwon said he was excited to get out and start his new business. He said some of his friends and relatives live in the United States and Canada. He traveled to the U.S. on a tourist visa.
“I want to start a second life,” he said.
Immigration law experts said the case for seeking asylum in the U.S. looks strong, but a decision could take years. Yael Schacher, an expert with Refugees International, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit, said Kwon would have to prove a “well-founded fear” of further persecution if deported to China.
He said goodbye to his parents and friends in South Korea at Incheon airport on Sunday, saying he will be barred from returning to South Korea for the next five years because of his criminal record.
He grabbed his ticket for seat 17A, stuffed his Chinese passport and South Korean deportation order into the black tactical backpack he’d brought with him when he fled China, and disappeared through the security line. He confirmed by phone that he’d boarded the plane.
“I’m happy and sad at the same time,” he said minutes before the plane took off, “and angry that it took me so long to leave South Korea,” he added.
Shortly before 10pm, the flight status display showed the plane had departed.
John Liu Contributed report.
