Chinese 'snakehead' gangs offer only escape for North Korea's defectors

Lee rubs his chin with his forefinger; his face obscured by a blue baseball cap. We sit together in the back of a taxi beside a frigid river near China's bleak northeastern border with North Korea.

He's traveling with Chinese smuggling gangs or "snakeheads." They fed and clothed him when he escaped.
Lee speaks in staccato sentences.

"I was a soldier," he says, "I did something on the base and I had to flee."
Lee won't say what he did and we can't give his real name for his own safety. He wants to protect his wife and child in North Korea. Whatever the reason, it compelled him to flee like thousands before him.