The Marmot’s Hole

Another 241 North Korean defectors arrived in the land of Freedom and Choco Pies today, making it a two day total of 468. Apon their arrival at Seoul Airport, the group was loaded onto buses and sent to a training center somewhere near Seoul for debriefing. The defectors were brought to South Korea from an undisclosed Southeast Asian nation (that may very well be Cambodia, given the importance its leaders place on its relations with North Korea) aboard two specially chartered flights. Stewardesses on the flights say many of the defectors had the runs, apparently from nerves. No word if booze was served on the “Freedom Flights,” but you figure if they were able to get out of North Korea, treck across China, bear hanging around Southeast Asia waiting for South Korean diplomats to figure out what to do with them, and last but not least survive a Korean Air flight, the least the airline could do is give ‘em a drink.

Right now, the most important thing is to help these defectors adjust to South Korean society. Apparently, 70 percent of the newly arrived batch are women, and 20 percent are children. Younger defectors have found adjusting to South Korea difficult, with many experiencing ostracism and depression. The government is apparently opening a new school for defectors, which is good, but faced with an increasing number of defectors coming South, it also decided to cut back on defector settlement funds, which is bad (but perhaps unavoidable). Anyway, the Chosun Ilbo’s U Tae-yeong penned a column today on the difficulties facing defectors and the need to give them hope and confidence — read the translation before.

Give Hope and Confidence to Defectors

Not so long ago, I got the opportunity to lecture to some defectors, and I asked what was the most difficult thing they faced living in South Korea. Their answers were generally like this:

“If I want to borrow money, I don’t know people, and I’m short of information, so I can’t.”

“No matter what I want to do, I can’t because I have no money.”

“I can’t use the skills and theories I learned in the North here in the South.”

“I have problems understanding because I don’t know English.”

“I feel bewildered because I came from North Korea, where our view [of the world] is quite narrow.”

“[South] Koreans think defectors can’t work as well as foreign laborers.”

“It’s burdensome that everyone always looks at defectors like we’re charity cases.”

“If you live in the South for about a year, you can’t get a job, and even if you do, it seems like there’s a big difference in wages with South Korean workers, so there are many cases in which defectors get disappointed.”

One defector said, “Making money to live is too difficult,” and this pretty much summed up everyone’s complaints.

Indeed, nowadays with lots of young people out of famous universities without jobs and such terms like “Itaebaek” (20 somethings without jobs) and “Saojeong” (middle-aged men without jobs), it’s not easy for defectors to get decent jobs in South Korea. Defectors who risked their lives to come here may not be inclined to devote themselves to “3D” (dirty, difficult and dangerous) jobs often avoided by their fellow Koreans.

In the Cold War, we warmly treated defectors, calling them “Brave defectors who have come for freedom.” Yet as North-South reconciliation progresses and the number of defectors skyrockets, we cannot deny that the image of defectors as brave people looking for freedom has greatly lost its luster.

One defector said, “As time passes, people’s views of defectors is cooling,” and this seems to be because he was aware of these changes.

The fact is that to defectors, South Korea is a very different society. In North Korea’s socialist system, jobs are provided to the citizens. There are no cases in North Korea of people facing one-against-several hundred competition for jobs.

It’s also extremely rare to have an individual exert efforts on his own to obtain a good job. This is because no matter what the position, the salaries are similar. Most of the defectors [to whom I lectured] were provided jobs by the [South Korean] state.

With North Korea going financially insolvent, however, it could no longer provide jobs or food, and this, too, is a reason why so many defectors are appearing.

In North Korea, all the inhabitants are real poor. Defectors, who have never seen serious gaps between rich and poor, can respond sensitively to differences in the living standards [between rich and poor] in South Korea.

Perhaps because of this, one defector said, “Out of disappointment about lack of jobs and low wages and discrimination, there are many defectors who are planning to go to either the U.S. or China.”

On Monday and Tuesday, a mass of defectors entered South Korea from Southeast Asia. In the days ahead, many more will come. When they see South Korean society, they see it is clearly unequal.

They find it difficult to get good jobs with the skills they learned in North Korea. For defectors to cultivate materially comfortable lives, they must continue to lead exhausting lives.

It requires individual sacrifice, and is something that can just barely happen only after a lot of time and perhaps several generations. If you have hope and work hard, however, you can succeed.

Through defector education, I hope our government is able to plant in the hearts of defectors hope that if they work hard, they can live well in this society. I hope it informs citizens that it is their responsibility to light the flame of hope for a happy life in each and every defector.

The most important thing is to give defectors the confidence that if they were able to escape from North Korea’s harsh society and make use of that bravery, they can economically succeed in South Korean society.

U Tae-yeong (tywoo@chosun.com)