The dissident’s only regret after his 200-mile escape across the Yellow Sea was not taking night vision goggles.
Nearing the end of his jet ski trip from China last summer, Kwon Pyong peered into the darkness off the coast of South Korea. As he neared the shore, the seagulls seemed to hover as if floating. He ran ahead, then ran aground: The birds sat in the mud.
“I had everything – sunscreen, spare batteries, a knife to cut the buoy lines,” he recalled in an interview. He was prepared to mark his location with a laser pen if he got stuck and burn his notes with a lighter if he was captured. He also had a visa to enter South Korea and intended to arrive at a port of entry, he said, not get stuck in a slough.
It wasn’t enough.
Mr Kwon, 36 and a Korean, had mocked China’s powerful leader and criticized how the ruling Communist Party persecuted hundreds of pro-democracy activists at home and abroad. In response, he said, he faced a curfew and years of detention, imprisonment and surveillance.
But fleeing to South Korea did not provide the relief he expected. He was still being persecuted by the Chinese state, he said, and spent time in detention. Even after release, he was in a legal limbo: neither wanted nor allowed to leave.
It will take another 10 months before Mr Kwon is allowed to leave South Korea. Days before flying out on Sunday, he returned to the mudflat where he unfortunately ran aground off Incheon last summer and publicly recounted the details of his meticulously planned journey for the first time.
Court records from his criminal case in South Korea, previous interviews with his friends and family and a statement from the Incheon Coast Guard last year confirmed many of the details in his account.
On a Yamaha WaveRunner bought with the equivalent of $25,000 in cash, taken over by several banks to avoid informing the police, Mr. Kwon set off on the morning of August 16 from the misty coast of the Shandong Peninsula.
He said he wore a black life jacket and motorcycle helmet for the trip, where he crashed into 10-foot waves and dodged floating bottles of rice wine. As his skin burned from the summer sun, he fell into the sea twice, losing his sunglasses.
He refueled using the five gas barrels he had strapped to the WaveRunner. For himself, he had five bottles of water and five ham and tuna sandwiches. He navigated using a marine compass and a smartphone he had acquired from someone else.
His first glimpse of land came as the setting sun gave the islands off South Korea a warm glow. What was supposed to take eight hours became 14. By the time Mr. Kwon arrived in Incheon, the pink sky he had stopped to admire had faded to black.
He saw no boats or ships on the lookout, he said, even as he entered a heavily militarized area the navy monitors for activity, including by North Korean defectors.
Mr Kwon — who speaks Chinese, English and some Korean — called the local police for help. For an hour, he waited trying to ward off mosquitoes by walking around his boat in beige Crocs.
That night, he said, the Incheon Coast Guard and the South Korean Marine Corps rescued him, detained him and began investigating him along with South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.
South Korea rarely accepts refugees and authorities have issued a deportation order. However, in the following months, he was barred from leaving the country as he faced a criminal charge of illegal entry, punishable by up to five years in prison.
He said he wondered how things might have turned out if his arrival had gone as planned.
South Korean prosecutors did not lift the travel ban they imposed on Mr. Kwon until his criminal case was completed this month. He said he plans to apply for asylum in the United States or Canada. His flight on Sunday was bound for Newark.
“I want to live my own life,” he said. “I want to live in peace for a while.”
Mr Kwon, whose Chinese name is Quan Ping, is from a city in northeastern China’s Jilin province, near the border with North Korea. He visited South Korea, his grandfather’s birthplace, regularly since childhood. He spent his college years in the United States, where he moved alongside Johnny, joined the University of Iowa’s Army ROTC program and took flying lessons, he said.
He studied aerospace engineering at university for a few years and returned in 2012 to China, where he ran an online clothing brand and traded cryptocurrencies. He continued to travel widely, touring Lebanon and Syria as an aspiring photojournalist, he said.
He first drew the ire of Chinese authorities when he began criticizing the Communist Party on the Internet. In 2016, he posted on social media about anti-government protests he had attended in Hong Kong, a Chinese territory. He wore a T-shirt that called China’s leader, Xi Jinping, “Hitler.”
Chinese authorities arrested Mr. Kwon that year and sentenced him in 2017 to 18 months in prison for “inciting to undermine state authority,” a charge often brought against dissidents and human rights lawyers.
After his release in 2018, police monitored his communications, tracked his movements and periodically questioned him, he said. Government agents, he added, were alarmed by his contact with the leaders of the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising, including Wang Dan, once one of China’s most wanted men.
“I couldn’t live a normal life,” she said.
China’s Ministry of Public Security did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr Kwon was desperate to leave as police searched his family and friends. He said his plans to leave China by sea were partly inspired by the 1994 movie “The Shawshank Redemption” and by Lindsay Warner, an explorer who circumnavigated Australia on a jet ski. He decided that South Korea was his only viable option.
He left behind his e-commerce and crypto activities, as well as his friends, family members and a girlfriend.
After being rescued from the mudflat, Mr. Kwon said, investigators appeared confused by his story and questioned him, threatened to torture him and denied his request for a lawyer. The Incheon Coast Guard, which led the investigation, said in a statement that “there were no human rights violations” during the investigation.
In court, Mr. Kwon argued that he was a political refugee and intended to arrive legally at the port of Incheon, less than a mile from the mudflat, on a tourist visa. A judge found him guilty of trespassing in November, imposing a one-year prison sentence suspended with two years of probation.
The verdict freed Mr. Kwon from detention but not from the legal vacuum. Immigration officials imposed an exit ban as prosecutors appealed the judge’s ruling.
While living at his parents’ home in Ansan, south of Seoul, Mr. Kwon went to the gym, read books on crypto trading and volunteered at an English-language school for adults. He also said he befriended a group of Nigerian refugees by signing up for their soccer team.
But he didn’t let his guard down. He stuck to the routines he had developed in China: constantly checking for security cameras and using encrypted texting apps and signal-blocking Faraday bags.
Lee Dae-seon, a South Korean activist who has helped Mr. Kwon, said he had warned Mr. Kwon about the dangers of China’s foreign police effort, known as Operation Fox Hunt, in which Chinese dissidents living in abroad were forcibly repatriated.
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service confirmed with Mr. Lee that he and Mr. Kwon were targets of the operation, Mr. Lee said. NIS did not respond to a request for comment.
“It is not safe for him to continue living in South Korea,” Mr Lee said.
In May, an appeals court rejected an appeal by prosecutors, as well as efforts by Mr. Kwon’s lawyers to reduce his sentence. Mr. Kwon decided not to pursue the case further so he could leave the country quickly, and prosecutors lifted the travel ban, said Sejin Kim, his lawyer.
In the mud, Mr Kwon said he was looking forward to leaving and starting a new business venture. He said some of his friends and relatives live in the United States and Canada. He is traveling to the United States on a visitor visa.
“I want to start my second life,” he said.
An immigration law expert said that while the case for seeking asylum in the United States appears to be strong, a decision could take years. Mr. Kwon would also have to show a “well-founded fear” of additional persecution if deported to China, said expert Yael Schacher of Refugees International, a nonprofit organization in Washington.
At Incheon Airport on Sunday, he said goodbye to his parents and friends in South Korea, where he would be barred from returning for five years because of his criminal record.
He disappeared through the security line, a ticket for seat 17A in hand, and his Chinese passport and South Korean deportation order in the black tactical backpack he had brought on his escape from China. He confirmed that he had boarded his plane by phone.
“I’m happy, I’m sad,” he said minutes before his flight took off. “And angry,” he added, “that it took me so long to leave South Korea.”
Just before 10 p.m., the flight status indicator showed his plane had departed.
John Lew contributed to the report.
