Jun Heo had been so brainwashed that he questioned his own sanity the moment he finally stepped out of North Korea and saw the real world.

Mr Heo, now 27, had grown up in the coastal city of Chongjin and had been led to believe by its leaders that he lived in the best country in the world. In fact, the reality was a stark contrast, a miserable existence with no electricity, little food and few things to do.

His mother was painfully aware of this, however, and had started planning an escape to China in 2004. The following year she managed to reach South Korea, however Mr Heo wasn’t as lucky.

She had sent two Chinese brokers for him to follow across the Tumen River and, while he managed to make it across, it wasn’t long before his attempt backfired.

A week later he found himself hiding in a broker’s house along with 10 other defectors when armed police arrived to take them away. It turned out the broker had been a spy.

During his brief time in China, he was shocked at the sights that awaited him — particularly the huge buildings and hustle and bustle of traffic.

“I was seeing that for the first time in my life. On North Korea’s roads, there are no cars. In fact, there is hardly anything,” Mr Heo said in an interview with VICE.

“All my life prior to that day, I was taught there was no richer country than North Korea. I believed that my country was the best in the world. We had no idea what the outside world looked like. Then I realised — when I saw the cars and the high buildings. At this moment, everything I thought I knew collapsed.”

Mr Heo, a teenager at the time, was sent to a concentration camp in North Korea where he claims he was tortured and starved. He slept on the floor of a jail cell where there were often 20 people crammed in. Internees were forced to work hard labour. At midnight, it’s claimed that “secret police” took the women to be raped, Fox News reports. Screams and cries often echoed through the jail.

Mr Heo was told that what he saw in China wasn’t real. A few months later he was sent back to his hometown to live with his father, and life changed forever.

“The secret police were following me. Every morning and every night, I had to report to them.”

Banned from school, there was little to do except plan his next escape attempt.

“I remember climbing the same mountain every day for nearly three years. It was one of the only things I was allowed to do.”

In December 2008, he managed to cross the Tumen River again and hid in the city of Yanji, China.

“I was in danger because I was still so close to North Korea. There are a lot of North Korean spies in Yanji trying to catch defectors.”

Three months later, he reached the much safer location of Shanghai where he got a job at a restaurant, pretended to be South Korean and found his mother. Two years later, his mother had saved enough money to send someone to help get him to South Korea, where he remains as a refugee.

Now, he’s enjoying studying, using a mobile phone and using electricity.

“Where I live, I can turn on and off the lights. It’s like living in paradise or in the future.”

Now undergoing a degree in political science, he is determined to keep working hard.

“I didn’t want to go back to misery. I didn’t want to go back to wandering all day without any goal. I had taken too many risks to be where I was.”

Unfortunately, escape is even harder for North Koreans these days, with border control a lot stricter. Mr Heo wants people to look past the extensive media coverage of Kim Jong-un and his nuclear program, and focus on the locals.

“What about North Korean people?” he asks. “What about the true victims of Kim Jong-un ... Every day, human rights are violated. Every day, people are starving to death ... Every day, people without a roof are sleeping on the ground in train stations. This is common in North Korea.”

Around 18 million North Koreans — a staggering 70 per cent of the population — go hungry, according to the United Nations.

What about the future for Mr Heo?

“I think of my hometown as the worst and the best place in the world. I want to go back there more than anything. One day, I want to be the leader of my hometown and help my people out of poverty.”