Approach to resettling North Korean defectors criticized

The Hanawon resettlement center for North Korean defectors is located in Anseong, Gyeonggi outside Seoul. The Hanawon center, which was opened on July 8, 1999, has served as the gateway for a new life in South Korea. The center, built on 16.6 acres of land, provides defectors from North Korea with a basic education of how South Korean society functions, along with medical treatment and vocational training.

After three months, Hanawon discharges the defectors and provides them with subsidies for housing and assists them in finding a job.

“Some North Korean defectors seem to become so dependent on the government subsidies that they are unable to function normally,” said Kim Hyang-sun (an alias), a 34-year-old defector from Yanggang Province in the North.

However, Ha Tae-kyung, head of Open Radio for North Korea, a North Korean human rights group, said structural problems, including the government’s role in processing defectors, are to blame. Ha said the government should cooperate more with private organizations to provide more tailored and sustainable help for North Koreans instead of relying solely on Hanawon.

Sarah Kohls, a senior researcher at the Hanns-Seidel Foundation in Korea, part of a German NGO that promotes democracy andcivil society development, said that the South Korean public needs to play a role. She blamed the “closed minds” of South Koreans toward North Koreans for creating problems for the defectors. “I think ordinary South Koreans have a lot of resentment and prejudice [against the North Korean refugees],” Kohls said. “They don’t really know about refugees.”

Last year, 2,952 North Koreans came to the South. Based on current trends, the total number of North Korean defectors is set to exceed 20,000 this year.

[JoongAng Ilbo]

North Koreans struggle in new lives in South Korea

The South Korean government's Hanawon resettlement center, ringed with fences and tightly guarded by police, is the first stop for North Koreans who have fled their impoverished hardline communist homeland.

At the center southeast of Seoul, the refugees — more than 60 percent of whom are women — learn how to survive in an affluent capitalist democracy which often looks down on them as troublesome poor relations.

Sometimes they even struggle to understand what Southerners — with a different accent and many borrowed foreign words — are saying.

“They are all sick, mentally and physically,” Hanawon chief Ko Gyoung-Bin said at the center, which provides two months of basic job training, information on South Korea and lessons in survival skills — such as buying a subway ticket, opening a bank account and using a credit card.

Hanawon spends half its medical expenses on false teeth because many refugees have lost molars to malnutrition, Ko told AFP in a rare media interview. About 10 percent of new arrivals suffer from contagious diseases such as tuberculosis, he said.

They are also mentally vulnerable, worried about relatives left behind and debts to brokers who arranged their escape. Ko said about 20 percent need psychological treatment after graduating from their mandatory stay at Hanawon.

Finding stable jobs is the toughest part of adjusting to life in South Korea where discrimination against defectors is widespread, he said.

[The China Post]

Financials for North Koreans in Seoul

Hanawon, the government-run institution that helps defectors settle in South Korea, celebrated its 10th anniversary on Wednesday. 16,513 North Koreans have arrived in South Korea as of June this year. And a further 3,000 North Koreans are expected this year, which will bring the total close to 20,000 living in South Korea.

Oddly, 58.4 percent of defectors who have settled in the South still consider themselves North Koreans, and only 6.3 percent think of themselves as South Koreans.

When they arrive in Seoul, North Korean defectors undergo a three-month adjustment period at Hanawon and are given a rented apartment equivalent to W13 million ($10,164) in housing support and another W6 million ($4,691). to help them settle.

Despite this administrative support, defectors continue to feel like outsiders in South Korea, one major reason being the difficulty finding good jobs. The average monthly salary is W937,000 ( $732). Day labor jobs account for 42.6 percent, according to the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights. By comparison, only 9.2 percent of South Koreans eke out a living from day labor.

[Chosun Ilbo]