According to the Ministry of Unification, 62 percent of South Koreans disapprove of efforts by civic groups to arrange North Koreans’ defection to the South:
A survey released by the government on Thursday showed 62 percent of South Koreans disapproved of efforts by civic groups to arrange North Koreans’ defection to the South.
Only 32 percent of the 1,500 respondents over 20 years of age agreed with the non-governmental groups’ attempts to help the refugees seeking asylum in South Korea, the Unification Ministry said.
A total of 1,890 North Koreans, including 468 people who were airlifted from Vietnam in July, have defected to the South this year, up nearly 50 percent from last year. More than 6,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea since the 1950-53 Korean War.
Neocons would be wise to check out some of the other findings of the ministry’s survey before they throw their lot in with the South Korean public.
OhMyNews (English) ran an interesting piece on one of the defectors who was airlifted to Seoul in July from Vietnam along with 468 other lucky North Koreans:
A 14-year-old female North Korean boxing hopeful, Choi Hyun Mi, came to Seoul along with her father and 468 other North Korean defectors in July — the biggest single arrival of North Korean defectors into South Korea. She has resumed her training in Seoul after an extended layoff while waiting for authorization to come to South Korea.
Choi is determined to represent the South at the Asian games in 2006 and then at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Great photos with the article. Of course, if South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young had it to do all over again, she’d still be in North Korea.
PS: This is not to say the assisted defection business is 100 percent clean, either, as Sejong at Dog Stew points out:
The economic trade in defectors is well known among those willing to seriously examine the complex reasons for the rise in North Korean refugees, but widely underreported in mainstream press. And of course, no one knows it better than the refugees who find themselves viewed as commodities.
Read the rest on your own.
2 Comments
Holy shiite! They used the word Percentage! This is proof that the Unification Ministry is an organization that acts on facts and scientific method! Thank heavens they have discovered the secrets of random sampling and survey questions that don’t lead answers. I wonder if No Administration is receiving technical advice from the Kim Chaek University.
Today I bought the KT, and discovered that in the paper copy a part about defection was cut down. Exactly the part quoted above by Marmot. At least, this was a case with a copy I bought on Myongdong at 14:45 (there might be minor differencies in content between different issue of the newspaper).