Over 1,000 North Korean defectors attended a job fair organised by South Korea's Unification Ministry, with 141 companies and government agencies taking part in recruiting job seekers. Among them is Kim, who had loaded his family into his home-made wooden boat and sailed away from North Korea, hoping to give his children a life of freedom. Defecting by sea is extremely rare and seen as far more dangerous than land routes, but the 31-year-old fisherman who asked that AFP use only his surname for security reasons, pulled it off after two failed attempts and got his family of nine to the South in May. "It feels like I was born a second time," Kim says, describing his feeling of making it to South Korea. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES