The dissident’s only regret after escaping 200 miles across the Yellow Sea was that he didn’t have night-vision goggles.
Last summer, as Kwon Pyong’s motorboat trip from China was coming to an end, he looked out through the darkness at the South Korean coast. As he neared the shore, seagulls appeared to be floating. He drives forward and then grounds: the bird sits on the mud.
“I had everything — sunscreen, extra batteries, a knife to cut the buoy lines,” he recalled in an interview. If he was trapped, he was prepared to mark his location with a laser pen; if he was captured, he used a lighter to burn his notes. He said he still had a visa to enter South Korea and intended to arrive at the port of entry rather than strand himself on the mudflats.
This is not enough.
Mr. Kwon, 36, a North Korean, has mocked China’s powerful leaders and criticized how the ruling Communist Party persecutes hundreds of pro-democracy activists at home and abroad. In response, he said, he faced an exit ban and years of detention, imprisonment and surveillance.
But fleeing to South Korea didn’t bring him the relief he expected. He said he was still being pursued by the Chinese government and was detained for a period of time. Even after being released, he remained in a legal limbo: neither wanting nor being allowed to leave.
It will take another 10 months for Mr. Kwon to be allowed to leave South Korea. Days before his flight on Sunday, he returned to the mudflats where he tragically came ashore near Incheon last summer and spoke publicly for the first time about the details of his carefully planned journey.
Court documents from his criminal case in South Korea, past interviews with his friends and family and a statement from the Incheon Coast Guard last year corroborate many of the details in his account.
On the morning of August 16, Mr. Quan withdrew the equivalent of $25,000 in cash from several banks to purchase the Yamaha WaveRunner to avoid reporting it to the police.
He said he raced into 10-foot waves and dodged floating rice wine bottles while wearing a black life jacket and motorcycle helmet during the trip. He fell into the sea twice and lost his sunglasses as the summer sun burned his skin.
He refueled with five barrels of gasoline strapped to the WaveRunner. He brought five bottles of water and five ham and tuna sandwiches. He navigates using a nautical compass he got from someone else and a smartphone.
As the setting sun casts a warm glow over the islands near Korea, he saw land for the first time. What was supposed to be 8 hours turned into 14 hours.
He said that even as he entered the highly militarized area monitored by the Navy, which includes defectors from North Korea, he did not see any ships on alert.
Mr. Kwon, who speaks Chinese, English and some Korean, asked local police for help. He waited an hour while walking around his boat in beige Crocs, trying to ward off mosquitoes.
That night, he said, the Incheon Coast Guard and South Korean Marines rescued him, detained him and began investigating him with South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.
South Korea rarely accepts refugees, and authorities issued him a deportation order. But he was also banned from leaving the country for the next few months as he faced criminal charges of illegal entry, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
He said he wondered how things would have turned out had he arrived as planned.
South Korean prosecutors did not lift the exit ban imposed on Mr. Kwon until the end of his criminal case this month. He said he planned to apply for asylum in the United States or Canada. His flight on Sunday was to Newark.
“I want to live my own life,” he said. “I want to live in peace for a while.”
Mr. Quan, whose Chinese name is Quanping, comes from a city in Jilin Province in northeastern China, near the border with North Korea. He has been regularly visiting South Korea, his grandfather’s birthplace, since he was a child. He said he spent his college years in the United States, where his name was Johnny, attending Iowa State University’s Army ROTC program and taking flying lessons.
He studied aerospace engineering at university for several years and returned to China in 2012, where he ran an online clothing brand and traded cryptocurrencies. He said he continued to travel extensively, touring Lebanon and Syria as an aspiring photojournalist.
He first drew the ire of Chinese authorities when he began criticizing the Communist Party online. In 2016, he posted on social media about his participation in anti-government protests in the Chinese territory of Hong Kong. He wore a T-shirt that called Chinese leader Xi Jinping “Sitler.”
Chinese authorities arrested Mr. Quan that year and sentenced him to 18 months in prison in 2017 for “inciting subversion of state power,” a charge often targeted against dissidents and human rights lawyers.
He said that after his release in 2018, police tapped his communications, tracked his movements and interrogated him regularly. He added that state agents were alarmed by his contacts with leaders of the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising, including Wang Dan, once one of China’s most wanted fugitives.
“I can’t live a normal life,” he said.
China’s Ministry of Public Security did not respond to a request for comment.
While police investigated his family and friends, Mr. Quan was eager to leave. He said his plan to leave China by sea was partly inspired by the 1994 film “The Shawshank Redemption” and explorer Lindsay Warner, who traveled around Australia by motorboat. He considered South Korea to be his only viable option.
He leaves behind his e-commerce and cryptocurrency businesses, as well as his friends, family and girlfriend.
Mr. Quan said that after being rescued from the mudflat, investigators seemed confused by his story and interrogated him, threatened to torture him and refused his requests for a lawyer. The Incheon Coast Guard, which is leading the investigation, said in a statement that “there were no human rights violations” during the investigation.
In court, Mr. Kwon argued that he was a political refugee and intended to arrive legally at the port of Incheon, less than a mile from the mudflats, on a tourist visa. A judge found him guilty of illegal entry last November and sentenced him to one year in prison, suspended for two years.
The verdict freed Mr. Quan but not his legal troubles. Immigration officials imposed the exit ban as prosecutors appealed the judge’s decision.
While Mr. Kwon lived at his parents’ house in Ansan, south of Seoul, he went to the gym, read books about cryptocurrency trading and volunteered at an English school for adults. He said he also joined a football club belonging to a group of Nigerian refugees and made friends with them.
But he didn’t let down his guard. He sticks to the habits he picked up in China: constantly checking security cameras, using encrypted messaging apps and signal-blocking Faraday bags.
Lee Dae-seon, a South Korean activist who has helped Mr. Kwon, said he had warned Mr. Kwon of the dangers of China’s overseas police operations, known as “Operation Fox Hunt,” in which people living overseas of Chinese dissidents were forcibly deported.
Mr Lee said South Korea’s National Intelligence Service confirmed to Mr Lee that he and Mr Kwon were targets of the operation. The National Intelligence Service did not respond to a request for comment.
“It is not safe for him to continue living in South Korea,” Mr. Lee said.
In May, the appeals court rejected prosecutors’ appeals and efforts by Mr. Kwon’s lawyers to reduce his sentence. Kwon’s lawyer, Sejin Kim, said Kwon decided not to pursue the case further so that he could leave the country as soon as possible and prosecutors lifted the travel ban.
On the mudflats, Mr Quan said he was looking forward to leaving and starting a new business venture. He said some of his friends and relatives live in the United States and Canada. He traveled to the United States on a tourist visa.
“I want to start my second life,” he said.
An immigration law expert said that while the case for seeking asylum in the United States appears to be strong, a decision could take years. Yael Schacher, an expert with Refugees International, a nonprofit group in Washington, D.C., said Mr. Quan must also show a “well-founded fear” that he will suffer more persecution if he is deported to China.
On Sunday, he said goodbye to his parents and friends in South Korea at Incheon Airport, where he will not be allowed to return for five years due to his criminal record.
He disappeared into the security line, holding a ticket for seat 17A in his hand, his Chinese passport and the Korean deportation order in the black tactical backpack he brought when fleeing China. He confirmed via phone that he had boarded the plane.
“I’m happy and sad,” he said minutes before the flight took off. “I’m angry,” he added, “that it took me so long to leave Korea.”
Shortly before 10 p.m., the flight status display showed his plane had taken off.
John Liu Contributed reporting.
