The escape of 35-year-old Kwon Pyong by jet ski from China to South Korea has a long history. The North Chinese man with Korean roots from the Jilin province had spent over a decade advocating for civil rights in his homeland and regularly protested against the political rule of Party leader Xi Jinping. His activism led to his imprisonment for a year and a half at the end of 2016 on charges of „undermining state power and insulting the socialist system“.