North Korean refugees arrive with illness and debt

Two-thirds of North Korean defectors in South Korea have come from one mountainous province in the northeast of North Korea, just across the Tumen River from China. Since the 1960s, the province has been a kind of holding pen for forcibly relocated citizens deemed to be wavering in their loyalty to the government.

North Hamgyong province endured the worst of the famine that in the mid-1990s killed at least a million North Koreans. North Koreans flee into China for reasons that are largely economic. Few of them have college degrees, and fewer still are outspoken about politics.

When these North Korean refugees arrive in South Korea, it is with a cluster of medical and stress-related problems, including hepatitis B and drug-resistant tuberculosis. Many women have chronic gynecological infections.

Long journeys in the sometimes abusive care of broker-guides leave many defectors with anger that they have trouble controlling. Mothers, obsessed with debts owed to brokers, sometimes take out their frustrations on their children. Fistfights are common among defectors who feel that they were "sold out" during their travels.

Identity win for North Korea refugees

North Korean refugees now living in the South have won the right to avoid identification as such in their official papers. It had previously been possible to infer someone's origin from the number.

The Unification Ministry in Seoul, which handles inter-Korean affairs, said they would now be allowed to change their social security numbers.

In a survey carried out three years ago, two thirds of North Korean defectors said they had faced workplace discrimination over their background.

South Korean-born citizens are given numbers associated with their birthplace. But North Korean refugees have until now been allocated numbers based on the area code of the heavily-guarded Hanawon resettlement centre near Seoul. The centre is used to educate North Koreans about life in the South and help them to integrate into South Korean society.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported that the change in law also made settlement grants available to defectors who have stayed abroad for more than 10 years after leaving North Korea.

More than 15,000 defectors have arrived in South Korea since the Korean war of 1950-53, said Yonhap.

[BBC]

North Korean defectors struggle to build a new life in South Korea

Building a new life in South Korea has become harder for North Korean refugees since the government cut cash grants paid to help the settlement process from 28 million won ($24,000) to 10 million won in 2004. They were cut again to 6 million won last year.

Reverend Kim Sung Won, who runs the Great Vision School for North Koreans outside Seoul, said one student left for the U.K. last year, explaining he wanted to live in a place where he wouldn't be discriminated against.

"I thought all I had to do was bring them to South Korea and things would all be okay," said Kim, who helped more than 400 North Koreans escape to the south before he opened the school with seven teenagers in 2004. Kim may be forced to close the school because of dwindling public and private financial support.

The young North Koreans in the south "are the future of a unified Korea, who will help bridge the gap between the two countries," Kim said. "People's brutal treatment of these youngsters just goes to show how South Korea is so not ready for unification."

[Bloomberg]

Spy arrest worries genuine North Korean refugees

The arrest of a North Korean woman who posed as a defector to the South in order to spy for Pyongyang has made defectors and officials with North Korean refugee organizations uneasy.

Many North Korean refugees are concerned. South Korean distrust of North Korean refugees living here is likely to grow. Currently, some 14,000 refugees live in the South.

Lee Hae-Young, secretary general of the Association of the North Korean Defectors, said, "The most difficult problem facing North Korean refugees in South Korea is how to find jobs. In the wake of the spy case, we're worried that South Koreans will lose all trust in the refugees.” He added most refugees are “victims of the Kim Jong-il regime's tyranny. It's wrong to blame the entire community of North Korean refugees just because of some North Korean agents.”

Cha Sung-joo, secretary general of the Committee for Democratization of North Korea, said, "North Korea's Ministry of Public Security and the State Security Department control North Korean society by instigating a sense of fear. It turns one of every three North Korean residents into a spy and makes people afraid to speak even with their friends.”

[Chosun Ilbo]