North Korean defectors taught farming in South Korea

South Korea has begun a class to help North Korean defectors become farmers and find similar jobs in the country's rural areas, Yonhap news agency reported.

The two-day course comes as many North Koreans are still struggling to find decent jobs and adjust to new lives in the capitalist South, though they undergo three months of mandatory resettlement training and receive some financial aid.

This past Tuesday, some 30 defectors attended the class at the Rural Development Administration in Suwon, south of Seoul, to learn about the agricultural industry and basic methods of cultivating crops, said Park Sun-yong of the administration. The two-day course was jointly organized by the Rural Development Administration and the Gyeonggi Provincial Police Agency. 

Instructors take the defectors to nearby farms and an agricultural equipment exhibition to give them opportunities of learning from local farmers, officials noted.

Latest North Korean defectors

Four members of a group of 31 North Koreans who accidentally crossed over into South Korean waters on a fishing boat, have decided to defect to the South, despite Pyongyang's demands that they all be repatriated to the North, the South Korean Red Cross said.

The defection of the four North Koreans could spark tensions on the peninsula, where joint U.S.-South Korea military drills have kicked off this week. North Korea had threatened to engulf Seoul in a "sea of flames," a day before the opening of the exercise.

The South will return the remaining 27 members of the group through Panmunjom, a truce village on the ground border between the two sides, and send the fishing boat back through the waters in the West Sea on Friday, the Red Cross said.

Defectors Send $10 Million a Year to North Korea

North Korean defectors settled in South Korea are sending secretly some US$10 million a year to their families in the North.

Some 3,000 to 5,000 of 20,000 defectors settled in South Korea are sending cash each to their families back home through middlemen every year, the government and defectors' organizations believe. Defectors organization said middlemen take commissions of about 30 percent.

The money is believed to be a mainstay of the North Korean underground economy. A security official said the defectors' money has created a lively economy in the North Korea-China border area.

Chosun Ilbo

North Koreans arrive by boat in South Korea in possible defection

Thirty-one North Korean people crossed the tense Yellow Sea border by boat and arrived in South Korea two days ago, but they have not expressed any wishes to defect to the South, a military official said Monday.

The North Koreans, consisting of 11 men and 20 women, arrived on Yeonpyeong Island in a wooden fishing boat amidst thick fog.

Officials said they were not immediately clear on whether those aboard were fleeing the communist North for the South or whether they had simply drifted across the border unintentionally.

There are no children among the North Koreans, and they were believed to have left North Korea's western port city of Nampo, about 60 kilometers southwest of Pyongyang, according to the military official.

Yonhap News

Inside the heart of a North Korean defector

Despite the increase in the number of North Korean defectors in South Korea, there are few films or television programs that show what their lives are like once they arrive. 

So when “The Journals of Musan” - which tells the story of a North Korean defector’s escape and resettlement in South Korea - was screened at film festivals earlier this year, it drew attention. The film focuses on how defectors deal with living in a capitalist society and their struggle to fit in.

The film, which is film director’s, Park Jung-bumm, first full-length feature has been making the rounds on the festival circuit and has already won several awards.

The film is based on Park’s year-long relationship with a close friend named Jeon Seung-chul. Jang defected from the North with his mother and older brother but died from stomach cancer in 2008 at age of 30, just six years after his escape.

In meeting people from the North, Park said he began to see how their lives had changed as a result of their escape. “They come here to be happy but when they arrive they become the poorest people in the society. I wanted to shed light on their lives, which are almost like those of orphans.”

All of the stories in the film are based on Park’s experiences with the defectors he’s met, including one who betrays another for money and another who confesses to having killed a friend out of extreme hunger.

[JoongAng Ilbo]

More North Korean defectors despite the risk

“I risked everything to come here”. So says Park Cheol-hwan, a North Korean defector now living in the South Korean capital. After crossing the border into China, as most defectors do, he spent nearly a year working in atrocious conditions to pay off his debt to the snakehead who got him there, living under the constant threat of arrest.

The risks of defection are enormous. Family members left behind in North Korea face brutal recrimination, while defectors face repatriation by China.

All the same, the number of North Koreans ready to take the risks is rising fast. It took over half a century for the total of successful defectors to the South to reach 10,000. But in just the past three years, a further 10,000 have followed.

In Seoul the manager of one support group says that part of the reason for the increased numbers is the surprisingly easy access that North Koreans have to South Korean films and television programs. In recent years, illegally copied DVDs from China have flooded the country, enabling citizens of the world’s most repressive state to see how sumptuously their southern cousins live.

Because family members left behind are persecuted, whole-family defections are also becoming more common. Two-fifths of new arrivals come with at least one other member of the family, while relatives back in North Korea nervously wait for their chance to follow. More than two-thirds of defectors are women, who also happen to make up the major part of the North’s black economy, on which much of the population depends.

The Economist

Defectors born in the Rip Van Winkle state of North Korea

They wear the unofficial uniform of a billion other young people: jeans, T-shirts and sneakers. But until recently, these Seoul students had never heard rap music, eaten a burger or watched David Beckham dribble a ball. 

Born in the Rip Van Winkle state of North Korea, where Western clothes and culture are restricted or banned, they are now struggling to adapt to life in the noisy, capitalist South says Cho Myung-sook, the vice-president of one of the few schools in the South for Northern defectors. 

"They often have a hard time here. They have to be taught to begin again from scratch. Many people don't understand that they are so pure," says Ms Cho. "They have so much sympathy for people who are weaker or in trouble. They often end up in jobs helping others." 

Their plight is one of the lesser-known modern tragedies, says Rev Tim Peters, the founder of the Seoul-based humanitarian group Helping Hands Korea. Many have been refugees for months or years. They have no rights. Some have been caught and sent back to prison only to escape again. 

Peters says that North Korean agents in the border areas around China co-operate with Chinese security forces to hunt for defectors. Some disguise themselves as refugees or work undercover as employers. If caught and repatriated, North Koreans face prison or worse. Amnesty International says some have been tortured and executed. 

[The Independent]

Status of North Koreans in China less than a stray dog

The 20,000 North Korean defectors who have escaped to South Korea offer the most graphic and grim glimpses of life in austere, impoverished and isolated North Korea.

They talk of hunger and deprivation; of torture and fear; of constant suspicion and endless surveillance, and of their enduring desire to escape.

Kim Mi-ran, a 50-year-old mother of three children who are still in North Korea, says she first fled to China in 1998 when famine gripped the country and her family was starving. There, she was sold for about $1,000 as the bride of a disabled and mentally retarded Korean-Chinese man, 20 years her elder.

"North Korean women live like a bird in a cage in China," she told a conference on North Korean human rights in Toronto. "They don't even have the status of a stray dog. Some are sold into marriage because they want a bowl of rice. Others are forced into prostitution or become sex slaves or are simply taken advantage of."

[National Post]

From North Korean defector to Honor Student

Ri Il-shim, now 15, is an honor student in Seoul. Back in November 2005, a 12-year-old Ri shivered as she crossed the frozen Duman River dividing China and North Korea. The bitter cold only partially explained why she was trembling. She was making her third attempt to escape from North Korea. After crossing the river with her two brothers, she hid and waited for the sun to rise. 

When Ri was 8, her mother disappeared and her father forced her to quit school and took her to a remote mountain village to do farm work. When autumn came, her father crossed the Duman River with his three children. A week later, they were caught and sent back to North Korea. The family spent 80 days in prison.

Her father disappeared a year later, and Ri and her brothers were put in solitary confinement. Unidentified people came to their cells and beat them until they bled, but Ri and her siblings said nothing about their father. A year later, they were told that their father was in South Korea.

In October 2004, they crossed the Duman River for the second time. She and her brothers stayed in a strange room for several days. Other North Korean defectors also began gathering in the room and their number almost reached 100. A man took the money he received from the defectors and ran away. Worse, he reported them to Chinese police. Despite enduring more beatings, Ri was determined to escape again.

Eventually, Ri and her brothers made their third attempt. The three siblings and eight other North Koreans reached the border between China and Mongolia, and walked and walked in the middle of the vast desert.

After eventually arriving in South Korea, Ri was placed in fourth grade at an elementary school. Since Ri had had no chance to study in North Korea, she could only read and solve simple math problems at the time. She stayed up all night trying to memorize everything she learned at school. Because she never forgot the hardship she endured, she quickly improved her grades and emerged as one of the school’s top students.

Less Defectors Amid Heightened North Korean Crackdown

The number of North Korean defectors arriving in South Korea is plummeting because of the North’s stronger surveillance against would-be escapees amid tense inter-Korean ties. Until now, the figure had steadily increased since the mid-1990s. 

In the first half of this year though, the ministry said the number of North Koreans who arrived in the South was 42.3 percent of last year’s figure. And the number for the second half is expected to decline further.

The drop is largely due to the North’s stepped-up crackdown on defectors. The Stalinist country set up layered surveillance networks in border areas early this year shortly after its major security agencies issued their first joint statement declaring war on defectors in February.

The North is known to have significantly strengthened its crackdown also after its disastrous currency revaluation in December last year.

[Dong-a Ilbo]

Media distorts North Korean defectors’ outlook of the South

After she defected to South Korea from North Korea in 2006, Ahn Mi Ock was shocked to learn that most South Koreans lived in small apartments. Ahn, 44, had fully expected that once in the South she would enjoy the same luxurious lifestyle portrayed in the television dramas she had watched on smuggled DVDs. It had not occurred to her that the fashionably dressed characters sipping Champagne in the gardens of stylishly furnished houses were not, well, average South Koreans.

In their first 6 to 12 months in South Korea, North Korean defectors tend to spend at least three hours a day watching television: talk shows, reality shows, quiz shows. They said they paid closest attention to news and dramas, because they thought these provided the most useful portrayals of South Korean society. The hope was that by using television to study the differences between the two countries before daring to face actual South Koreans, they could reduce the chances of embarrassment.

"But I stopped watching television dramas, because it was getting in the way of my relating to the South Korean people," says defector Kim Heung Kwang.

[IHT]

When North Korean defectors finally reach South Korea

Nothing prepares North Koreans for the impact of Seoul, the hypercompetitive, prosperous, fast-paced life, a world more complex and foreign than any the refugees had encountered.

A North Korean who had been living in Seoul for two years summed up the culture shock: "The difference between North and South is like jumping ahead a century."

After being debriefed to make sure they're not spies, defectors are sent to Hanawon, a high-security facility south of Seoul, where for two months they receive mandatory instruction in South Korean culture and practical matters such as taking the subway and opening a bank account. They're granted South Korean citizenship, paid a settlement bonus of roughly $5,000, with small monthly installments to follow, and provided a housing allowance and employment incentives.

In the mid-1990s the few dozen defectors arriving each year were elite members of the military or Communist Party from Pyongyang who brought valuable intelligence. With rare exceptions, today's defectors are farm laborers, factory workers, and low-level soldiers and clerks from impoverished regions. What they bring mostly are problems. Compared with the average South Korean, they are markedly less educated and skilled. Having experienced years of malnutrition and the pain of seeing family members die of starvation, many suffer from serious physical and mental illnesses.

Because of these handicaps, says Andrei Lankov, a North Korean expert at Kookmin University in Seoul, the defector population is in danger of "becoming a permanent underclass." Their life in the South is immeasurably richer and freer, but they crave a sense of belonging. "Most South Koreans are indifferent to their plight," Lankov said. "And to not have your suffering recognized is an almost unbearable form of violence."


[Excerpt of an article by Tom O'Neill, National Geographic]

Defectors tell of North Korea abuses

Offenses meriting banishment to a North Korean prison camp include everything from disparaging North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to trying to flee the country, defectors say.

Former prisoner Jung said he spent three years in Camp No. 15 in Yodok, about 110km northeast of the capital, Pyongyang , on charges of spying for South Korea . Jung, who was working for a state-run trading company, claims the charges were fabricated by security agents seeking promotion. After months of torture, Jung said he acknowledged the charge. By then he had lost nearly 36kg.

At Yodok, Jung said, the 400 inmates in his section subsisted on 0.5kg of corn each — the equivalent of one medium-size can daily — while toiling at mines, farms and factories for 13 to 15 hours a day. Many died of hunger and diseases brought on by malnutrition, he said. Some managed to trap vermin and insects.

“People eat rats and snakes. They were the best food to recover our health,” said Jung, 46, adding he still suffers from ulcers, headaches and back pain.

One inmate, Choe Kwang-ho, sneaked away from his work for 15 minutes to pick fruit. He was executed, his mouth stuffed full of gravel to stop him protesting, Jung recalled. “I still can’t forget his emotionless face,” he said.

Life at the four other camps was even worse, Jung said. A former North Korean prison guard said only two inmates have ever escaped from the camps known as “total control zones.”

[ Taipei Times]