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Choi Minkyeong escaped from North Korea five times, was caught by Chinese authorities and deported back to the brutally repressive nation four times, and finally reached freedom in South Korea 12 years ago.

Entering Canada proved to be another daunting challenge.

The defector was effectively barred from entering the country on Friday for a visit to raise awareness of North Korea’s human rights abuses after attending a United Nations forum in Geneva.

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Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) failed to grant her the electronic travel authorization (eTA) she requested on November 4, saying it must first provide police records related to her forced repatriation from China to North Korea .

Choi, who heads a human rights organization in the South, explained in a letter that obtaining such records would be impossible given North Korea’s totalitarian system and its “unique circumstances.”

As a Liberal lawmaker’s office lobbied IRCC on Thursday and Friday, the department said it would review her case, but she had to cancel her flight to Toronto from Paris on Friday, returning to Seoul instead. He finally got his permit on Monday.

“I understand that this ridiculous event occurred due to the oversight and indiscretion of (IRCC) frontline officials,” Choi said in a letter to Immigration Minister Marc Miller. “But if I may say so, I was terribly embarrassed and deeply, deeply disappointed when I was denied boarding on the scheduled flight … I was, in fact, considered a person with a criminal record.”

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Choi’s visit was to include a community event, a meeting with Toronto MP Ali Ehsassi and an interview with the National Post. Kyung Lee, who organized the trip as North Korea head of the Toronto Human Rights Council, said he was stunned by her inability to get an eTA in time.

“She was the victim, not the murderer,” he said of the request to record her arrests. “This is a very important matter, a serious matter — how to treat (defectors) in Canada. If this news were known to Korean society… they would be very upset.”

Federal offices were closed on Memorial Day Monday, and IRCC could not be reached for comment, although it typically does not discuss individual cases for confidentiality reasons. Ehsassi’s office could not be reached either.

Choi’s story is, like that of many others who have escaped North Korea, a remarkable one. Beginning in the late 1990s, she repeatedly fled the country to neighboring China, in one case marrying and having a child, only to be eventually snatched up by Chinese authorities and sent back, according to a profile in this year of the Central Taiwan News Agency. She was imprisoned in North Korean re-education camps and subjected to torture and other horrific conditions, the article said. At one point, Choi was left for dead in a warehouse full of corpses of prisoners, but managed to crawl back out. The fifth time he managed to reach South Korea, and later founded the Association of Families of Imprisoned Victims of North Korea.

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She has previously visited countries such as Taiwan and Britain to talk about her experiences and traveled to Geneva last week as part of the UN Human Rights Council’s “periodic review” of North Korea.

As a South Korean citizen, Choi does not need a visa per se to enter Canada, but he must obtain an eTA. For a $7 fee, they are usually confirmed by email “within minutes,” the IRCC website says, though it can take “a few days” in some cases.

The online form asks if the applicant has been arrested, charged or convicted of a crime. It appears that at some point IRCC requested documents regarding her detention in China and North Korea. James Hwang, assistant to MP Ehsassi, informed Lee on Thursday that “I was told that he will need to provide a police certificate/criminal record or police report to complete his eTA.”

With the help of an English-speaking assistant, Choi provided a one-page letter explaining why that wouldn’t be possible.

“Any legal proceedings or police files from my time in North Korea are completely inaccessible to me as a civilian,” the letter said. “(North Korea) operates under an authoritarian system where arrests, detentions and judicial proceedings frequently occur without due process of law.”

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By mid-day Friday, as her flight from Paris to Toronto neared, the eTA still hadn’t arrived. Hwang told Lee that after “several calls and emails” she was able to get her application approved by the Canada Border Services Agency, but that IRCC was “reviewing the case” and working with the Canadian embassy in Paris.

Hwang said officials recommended Choi visit the embassy to expedite the matter. Instead, he got on the plane to Seoul.

Ironically, the deserter’s honesty sabotaged his chances of reaching Canada in time.

Lee said he has brought several North Korean defectors to Canada in the past, but if any of them were arrested during the escapes, he suspects he did not mention it.

Meanwhile, the activist said it was crucial to continue to hear from such refugees so that the cruelty of the North Korean regime would not be forgotten.

Choi and others have also pointed to what appears to be an intense effort by China to find and return defectors to North Korea. However, international human rights law prohibits countries from deporting people who would face torture or other cruel or inhumane treatment.

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