Boarding school for children of North Korean defectors

A boarding school for children of North Korean defectors will open in Seoul next week, aimed at offering Korean language lessons to those from low-income households. 

Some defector children have difficulty adapting to general local schools. Among other things, they cannot speak the Korean language well due to their long stay in other countries such as China before entering South Korea.

In consideration of the fact that their parents usually return home late after work, the school will be operated as a boarding school. Tuition fees and boarding expenses will be offered free of charge. According to North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity (NKIS), the Samheung School will start its first semester on February 25. 

“We will help them gain a basic academic background and offer cultural and sports activities so that they can attend a local school and better adapt to society,” said Kim Myung-sung, director general of NKIS, which is composed of defectors who have graduated from North Korean universities.

The school’s first principal is Chae Kyoung-hee, 41, former mathematics teachers at a middle school in North Hamkyoung Province in the North. She also taught in Hanawon, a resettlement center for defectors here.

Attempted assassin of top North Korean defector Hwang Jang-yop jailed

A South Korean court has jailed a North Korean spy for 10 years for plotting to assassinate North Korea’s high-ranking defector. 

The 46-year-old would-be assassin, identified only as Lee, admitted he was sent to murder Hwang Jang-yop. Lee says he was trained by Pyongyang's top espionage unit and posed as a defector to enter the South with the mission to kill Mr Hwang.

But he was arrested during routine questioning given to all defectors by South Korean authorities.

Hwang Jang-yop was a former tutor to North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il. Mr Hwang, 87, defected to the South 14 years ago. He died late last year in Seoul from natural causes.

19 % North Korean defectors want to go to US

Nearly one-fifth of North Korean defectors aspire to move to the United States, despite relentless anti-US propaganda in North Korea. A survey also found 64 per cent of defectors hoped to move to South Korea.

Economist Marcus Noland and associates surveyed more than 1,300 North Koreans in China and 300 others in South Korea in hopes of learning more about their lives in the hardline communist state and their reasons for leaving.

Only one per cent wanted to return to North Korea, with another one per cent aspiring to other destinations. Mr Noland, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the United States attracted younger, better educated North Koreans.

He said the findings showed that foreign media such as US government-backed Radio Free Asia were gradually penetrating North Korea, though most North Koreans decided to flee due to word of mouth as they desperately seek a way out of extreme poverty and malnutrition.

'What is remarkable when you talk about these people is the almost entire lack of knowledge about the outside world on which they made this fundamental decision to leave the country,' Mr Noland said.

AFP