In 2008, underwear was among the essential items in short supply in North Korea, and Han, then an army lieutenant colonel, was looking to buy underwear for his 20-something daughter, Han Ock.

At that time, Han was assigned to a military enterprise in Kaesong Industrial Park, where Korean companies recruited workers from North Korea.

Han on the land where he lives with his family in Seosan district, southern Korea.

`At first, we followed the rules and stayed away from people from the south. But we are all human and as time passed, we naturally became close to each other,`

The parents of some of Han’s soldiers worked in the famous ginseng fields in Kaesong.

At first, Han only exchanged the ginseng for a few sets of underwear to send back to his daughter in Pyongyang, but later, he increased the amount to several boxes.

`My daughter was fascinated by the beautiful, sophisticated underwear designs in Korea and she showed them off to her friends. Gradually, she started selling underwear to her friends, earning very good profits.`

But not long after, Han Ock, then working as a nurse at a military hospital, began to realize she was being followed by authorities in Pyongyang.

Border guards let them through security checkpoints because they thought the vehicle contained the division commander’s family.

Han’s family went to Yunnan province, southern China, crossed the border into Laos, and finally arrived in Thailand.

A few months later, Han received a phone call from Han Ock telling him that the whole family was still alive and well in Seoul.

`We all know that Korea is very prosperous and I also intend to go there. My daughter’s call was decisive. It motivated me to give up my 38-year military career in North Korea to defect to South Korea.`

At the time he received the call from his daughter, Han was supervising North Korean workers at a logging project in Russia.

Han sought asylum at the Korean Embassy in Bangkok.

After arriving at Incheon airport, he was briefly allowed to reunite with his family before being interrogated for seven months by intelligence agencies.

Han revealed that North Korea built six cross-border tunnels before 1998 to penetrate South Korea if war broke out.

With the money he received, Han bought a 9,000 square meter piece of land in Seosan district, southern Korea, where he and his family settled and started a business.

Han now works at a window factory in Seosan, while also tending gardens growing cabbage, tobacco, corn and sesame.

The case of the Han family is special in that their entire family arrived in South Korea together and successfully settled into life in the new land, unlike many other North Korean defectors.

Han and his relatives inside the family’s factory making sausage casings from beans.

Many of the 33,000 North Korean defectors living in South Korea complain of poverty, illness as well as loneliness and homesickness.

Han’s daughter, now 32 years old, said the decision to defect to South Korea was `right`.

In a corner of the factory, Han’s two grandchildren, aged 7 and 3, sat around the fireplace, watching cartoons on their mobile phones.

`However, things here are still very different. They speak with many different accents. I feel uncomfortable when some Koreans have prejudice against North Koreans living in Korea,` Han shared.

Han Ock said she had to spend a large amount of money to send her children to math and English cram schools.