Watch: The Story Of An Incredible Escape From North Korea-TED Talk

A total stranger helped Hyeonseo Lee pay her mother and brother's way out of jail as they fled from North Korea. Now, four years later, Lee has been reunited with that stranger, getting the chance to thank him in person. In Lee's heart-wrenching TED2013 talk, "My escape from North Korea," she describes defecting from North Korea in the late '90s. But as she describes in the second half of her talk, after years of hiding she returned to China to help her family make their own escape. When her mother and brother were captured in Vientiane, Laos, and jailed for illegal border crossing, Lee describes how, out of money and desperate for a solution, she was approached by a foreigner. After hearing Lee's story, this stranger withdrew a large sum of cash -- £645 to be exact -- from an ATM. With the money to use as a bribe, Lee's family was able to escape.