Dong Guangping, a 68-year-old former policeman, has been a thorn in Beijing's side for advocating political reform and human rights, and served multiple prison stints over the years.

After several failed attempts to flee China, the longtime critic of the ruling Communist Party initially made it to South Korea, where he was briefly detained before authorities let him leave.

"I'm very happy," Dong said after his arrival in Toronto late Friday. "Sitting here now, it feels like I've come home."

He recounted to the Times his journey across the Yellow Sea from the Chinese city of Weihai to South Korea aboard a 3.3-meter (11-foot) rubber boat with a 9.9-horsepower engine.

He initially intended to head to Japan but quickly lost his bearings, saying, "The sea and sky are just a vast expanse of white, and you can't tell which way is which."

His cell phone died and the boat's engine started to fail, so he adjusted his course for South Korea.

A South Korean fisherman ultimately picked him up, he said.

It was not immediately clear how he was able to secure his release.

Chinese-Canadian journalist and human rights activist Sheng Xue posted on X that Dong was "walking around the neighborhood, so excited that he took a photo with the Canadian flag."

The picture was included in the post.

Dong was dismissed from his work as a policeman after signing a petition a decade after Beijing's 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, according to US-based advocacy group Human Rights in China.

He later spent about three years in prison from 2001 for "inciting subversion of state power," United Nations experts said, and was detained again in 2014 over Tiananmen-related activities.

Dong fled to Thailand with his family, who later resettled in Canada as refugees, but Thai authorities handed him over to Chinese police in 2015 despite his UN-recognized refugee status.

In 2019, Dong unsuccessfully tried to swim to the Taiwanese territory of Kinmen. On a 2020 trip to Vietnam, he was detained by local police.