As the rubber boat he was on rocked through choppy waves, fear washed over Chinese dissident Dong Guangping, who had gone without sleep for two days.
The 68-year-old knew he was taking a huge risk trying to flee China by sea, but even then, he had underestimated the challenges of this journey.
He was badly sunburned, his phone was running out of battery, and his portable charger had gone flat. Apart from the sky and the sea, there were no landmarks around him. He could only hope that the digital compass would get him to South Korea before his phone went flat.
“Not being able to navigate would have been terrifying. I could have drifted back towards China,” Dong told BBC Chinese nearly two months after his perilous escape.
Forty hours after setting out from China’s eastern Shandong province, Dong was rescued by the coast guard and fishermen in Korean waters on the night of 27 May.
He was briefly detained in South Korea but has since resettled in Canada, where his family had been living.
“I can never survive in China,” said Dong, who spoke to BBC Chinese in a video call from Toronto.
“If I didn’t leave, I will never be at peace for the rest of my life. I had to show the Chinese Communist Party I was capable of leaving. They cannot stop me, they cannot control me.”
When asked for comment, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry told the BBC that the Chinese government “handles the entry and exit of its citizens in accordance with the law and that Chinese citizens must abide by the Constitution and the law”.
Dong, a police officer-turned-human rights activist, has been jailed in China several times for his activism.
In 1999, Dong was fired from the police force after 13 years because he signed a petition to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the brutal Tiananmen crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.
Then in 2001, he was imprisoned for three years for “inciting subversion of state power”. He was jailed again in 2014 for participating in another Tiananmen commemoration event, according to Amnesty International.
Dong had fled China four times previously but was sent back each time. “But I have always held fast to one conviction: I must get out into the free world,” he tells BBC Chinese.
In September 2015, he travelled to Bangkok with his wife and daughter, where they were granted refugee status by the United Nations and approved for resettlement in Canada.
But days before they were scheduled to leave for Canada, Thai authorities deported Dong to China, where he was jailed for “inciting subversion” and “crossing the national border illegally”. He was sentenced to three and a half years in jail.
When he was released in 2019, he tried again to escape, by swimming towards Kinmen, a small Taiwanese island, but was picked up by Chinese fishermen who handed him back to police – and he was barred from leaving the country.
In 2020, he managed to flee China and entered Vietnam. He lived in hiding for two years in Hanoi, but was eventually deported back to China, where he was sentenced to jail for almost a year.
In 2023, he was released from prison again.
These failed attempts only strengthened Dong’s resolve. He came up with a bolder, riskier plan – to travel more than 300km (186mi) across the Yellow Sea, then along the South Korean coast to get to Japan.
“This is a very dangerous route, the risks are extremely high, I knew I’d be putting my life on the line,” he said.
In May this year, with just a few hours of sailing practice, Dong started his journey in Weihai, Shandong, in a 3.3m long rubber dinghy equipped with an engine.
The poor weather conditions at sea prompted him to reroute and head towards South Korea, which is a closer destination.
The long hours at sea also left him dizzy and exhausted. He dozed off at one point and woke up only to realise his boat had just bobbed past a large cargo ship.
“I would have crashed into it if I stayed asleep for 20 more seconds,” he said.
At about 20:30 local time on 25 May, he spotted a fishing boat nearby and shouted at it: “Help me, help me! Call police, call police!” He was eventually pulled ashore in the South Korean county of Taean.
Dong was sent to a refugee centre in Incheon and later granted political asylum in Canada.
He is not the first Chinese dissident to flee across the sea to South Korea.
In 2023, another Chinese activist Kwon Pyong fled to South Korea on a jet ski. He was initially detained on immigration charges but later resettled in the US.
Speaking about the moment when he found out his flight to Toronto was confirmed, Dong said he was “overcome with emotion holding the air ticket”.
Dong, who celebrated his mother’s 95th birthday just days before fleeing China, said he did not tell her about his plan to leave.
“Not being able to fulfil my filial duties towards my mother will remain my greatest, greatest regret,” he said.
