YANJI, China -- When Eun-byol crossed the Tumen River from North Korea into China three years ago, she was nearly bald from malnutrition after subsisting on a diet of grass and bark mixed with an occasional spoonful of rice.
The 27-year-old woman had nowhere to go in a land where the Chinese police arrest North Korean refugees and return them, she says. So she allowed a marriage broker to sell her to Young-shik, an ethnic Korean farmer in search of a wife. Though her hair has since grown back and she had borne a child who rides around tied to her back with a blanket, the couple hardly feel settled: They have moved four times in the last three years to avoid the Chinese police.
Like many here in China's Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, Eun-byol might seem like someone who would eagerly watch for signs of a thaw between North and South Korea as a historic summit approaches. The presidents of the Stalinist North and democratic South plan to meet June 12 to 14 in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, to discuss economic cooperation, reunification of separated families and political reconciliation. The talks could eventually lead to a peace treaty between two nations that have been formally at war for 50 years.