Ji Seong-ho knew there was no turning back as he pulled himself out of the water and onto the banks of the Chinese side of the Tumen River. He wiped tears from his eyes and quickly glanced at what he had just left behind.

“I knew from that point, the next time I go to North Korea will be when reunification finally happens,” he said.

Ji is a North Korean refugee who has lived in Seoul since 2006.

The 30-year-old now runs a human rights group and studies law at a local university. He is one of about 23,500 North Korean defectors who have resettled here, but Ji’s journey was perhaps more challenging than for any other.

The typical escape route that runs from the Tumen River, through China and all the way to Southeast Asia is physically and emotionally demanding. Ji completed the journey, however, after having lost a hand and foot in an accident in North Korea.

He may be one of the only North Korean defectors with a disability to escape. Like all other refugees, Ji was given free medical treatment upon arriving in Korea. He says the doctors were shocked when they saw his body.

“They said that of all the North Koreans that make it here, someone with such disabilities was rare to see,” Ji said.

Ji was not born with disabilities, but lost his left hand and foot in an accident as a teenager during North Korea’s famine in 1996.

“I used to help my family make money by stealing coal and selling it in the market. I climbed aboard moving trains and took it,” Ji recalls.

But one of those routine scavenging trips did not go as planned. Ji got dizzy, lost his balance and fell off of the train, which then crushed his left hand and foot. North Korean hospitals were ill-equipped to save his appendages, so the only solution was amputation.

“There wasn’t even medicine available in the hospital to stop the infection,” Ji said. “The only way I was healed was by my mother and father rubbing salt water onto my wounds.”

Ji says back then he could have never dreamed of the kind of medical support he has received since defecting. He now wears a prosthetic left hand and foot, which he says have given him back a “normal life.”

Very little is known about how Pyongyang treats its disabled citizens, but their absence within the refugee community in South Korea concerns some advocates.

“Even though the road is difficult, there should be some percentage of refugees with disabilities here,” said Joanna Hosaniak, a program officer at the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights in Seoul. “This could show that there is something going on there (in North Korea).”

In 2006, a defector named Ri Kwang-chol offered a possible explanation.

“There are no people with physical defects in North Korea,” said the former physician, who was quoted by Reuters. Ri said the practice of killing disabled newborns was widespread throughout the country.

In that same year, Vitit Muntarbhorn, the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on North Korean Human Rights, wrote in a report, “Those with disabilities are sent away from the capital city and particularly those with mental disabilities are detained in areas or camps known as ‘Ward 49’ with harsh and subhuman conditions.”

Free North Korea Radio, a broadcaster staffed by defectors here in Seoul, backed up the U.N. findings in 2011. A report citing inside sources revealed that North Korean law forbids disabled people from living in Pyongyang.

“We have no way to confirm these stories,” says Lee Seok-young, a defector working for Free North Korea Radio. “But we hear rumors that doctors or parents kill their disabled children rather than move out of Pyongyang.”

Ji Seong-ho isn’t sure about these rumors, either, but doesn’t put such a policy past the North Korean government. He says based on his own experience as a disabled person in North Korea, he’s inclined to believe the worst.

Four years after the accident, Ji, using a pair of makeshift crutches, illegally traveled to China with some friends, knowing that if found by guards they would be immediately arrested if not shot on the spot. They were in search of food, money or whatever they could carry with them to help their families.

After crossing back over the border, Ji was almost home when he was caught red-handed by North Korean police. He believes the authorities dealt him an even harsher punishment because of his disability.

“For one week, they beat me more than the others I had crossed the border with,” he said. “They told me I had brought shame on North Korea because I was disabled and that a person with only one foot should not leave his home.”

It was that incident in which Ji lost all trust in the North Korean state. His family plotted their escape. It took six more years, but Ji, his brother, sister and mother now all live in South Korea.

“The North Korean government wants to hide us from other people,” Ji said. “Our existence is a humiliation to them.”

This week, at least one disabled North Korean will become visible to the entire world. For the first time, Pyongyang is sending an athlete to the Paralympic Games in London. (Yonhap News)