You never know what you might find in your truck:
A North Korean soldier was found near the inter-Korean land border early Friday morning, while two North Koreans crossed the sea border off the west coast hours later, the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
The soldier was found hiding in a lorry parked at a vacant lot in Cheorwon, a town on the central portion of the demilitarized zone bisecting the two Koreas, the JCS said in a statement.
After an initial investigation, the JCS said it identified the North Korean soldier as Yi Yong-su, a 20-year-old private who has been serving an anti-air artillery unit in Pyeonggang, north of the border.
According to the Chosun Ilbo report, the young man wasn’t alone — along with Yi was of a large stash of instant noodles and Choco Pies. Welcome to the Free World, kid.
Of course, some might find it disturbing that a starving 20-year-old kid in a tattered North Korean military uniform complete with Kim Jong-il badge could make his way through the DMZ, getting past three rather imposing barbed-wire fences and a shit load of mines in the process, and camp around in the Land of Shin Ramyeon and Choco Pies without anyone seeming to notice.
What was interesting — aside from the mental picture of some farmer waking up one morning and going to his truck only to find it occupied by a skinny North Korean kid in his Inmingun best hoarding a supply of noodles and Choco Pies — was the young man’s motivation for coming South (other than the obvious one that he was hungry and has something of a sweet tooth):
“Yi said he defected to the South because he was hungry and his life was hard. He said he yearned for South Korean society after watching South Korean television programs,” Won told reporters.
This is something DEFINITELY worth watching in the future.
24 Comments
Wonder where he got access to watch South Korea TV shows?
Oh man, this is big news these days. Andrei Lankov and various western journalists filing stories out of Dandong (across the border from Siniju) have heard from various sources that smuggled videos and even DVDs now of South Korean dramas are all the rage in the North. They are, of course, illegal, and the authorities do not take the phenomenon lightly. One tactic to catch people watching them has been to surround a neighbourhood in the evening, suddenly cut off the power without warning, and then go house to house, looking for illicit tapes or DVDs stuck in players. There are blog articles at NK Zone and GI Korea, based on stories in Newsweek and the New York Times respectively, with links.
The influence of South Korean TV shows may also have been behind last year’s crackdown on long hair.
Information seems to be flowing more freely now both in and out of the North than in presumably a very, very long time. I was gobsmacked (to use a British term) when these stories first started coming out a few months agothis is serious stuff.
gobsmacked: “utterly astonished, astounded.”
I’m a little confused by this quote in the yonghap article:
Nearly 6,700 North Koreans have defected to South Korea since the three-year Korean war ended in 1953, including 1,894 last year alone. Seoul expects the number of defectors to exceed 10,000 this year.
Huh? They expect at least 3,300 defectors to come this year? Didn’t they say they were turning off the ‘pipeline’ and discouraging defections?
Does anyone know how many defectors have arrived this year so far? (Perhaps there have been some and the government is making sure they aren’t getting reported).
His desire for choco-pies makes me wonder if he managed to see ‘JSA’…There’s that scene where, in anger, Song Kang-ho’s (North Korean) character pulls a half eaten choco-pie from his mouth and says “One day, we’ll make chocopies that are just as good as yours!”
I guess that day hasn’t come yet.
I was wondering how he learned about Choco-Pies. I don’t recall seeing them in too many TV shows; but, as bulgasari wrote, maybe he saw JSA!
What the South Korean government needs to do is to set up something like the Aliyah Israel agency to help North Koreans get out of the country and into South Korea by arranging logistics and bribing (and cajoling) both North Korean and Chinese officials to grease the path. South Korea is a rich country. It can take in much more than 10,000 North Koreans a year.
That’s a bit amusing but sad all the same.
I would give Chung Dong-young a whole case of choco pie just to disappear . . .
This seems to indicate South Korean TV programs are undermining the influence of the NK regime over its people and therefore a threat to stability. Will Pres Roh take action against the South Korean TV industry?
Is this another sign that the regime up there might just implode (thanks to more information being available up there)? Living in Seoul, I sure hope they go out with a fizzle, not a major explostion with lots of shrapnel.
bulgasari (what’s that mean? it sounds familiar),
i haven’t seen the movie, but the line from JSA that you quoted was so poignant. i’m gonna have to chase it down and take a look.
It’s a good movie, the one that brought Park Chan-wook (Oldboy) to the fore when it was released in 2000.
Bulgasari was a mythical monster during the koryeo dynasty who was created by a blacksmith and which ate iron and grew to a massive size. He was immortalized in the 1985 North Korean film Bulgasari, directed by South Korean director Shin Sang-ok, who was kidnapped and forced to make movies by Kim Jong-Il. The full story of his kidnapping is here.
There are screenshots of the film here, here, and here.
It’s pure cheese - definitely something that fits into the ’so bad it’s good’ category. If you use emule, just do a search for ‘pulgasari’ to find it (the only dvd release was a Japanese one with no subtitles)
You’ve got to keep an eye on those pesky anti-aircraft artillery soldiers. They’ll do just about anything for ramyon noodles.
thanks, bulgasari.
I doubt anyone will read my late post, but my 2 pennies:
“Yi Yong-su” (if that’s his real name) managed to dodge BOTH north AND south korean patrols AND was lucky enough not to step on any mines.
This reminds me of the time when my highschool biology teacher was telling me that she freaked out when she found a white cockroach in her kitchen—because white cockroaches must be a rare mutant variety, ergo, by statistical deduction, there must be a horde of regular cockroaches hiding behind her walls, pipes, etc etc.
One must wonder exactly how many NK refugees tried to make the perilous flight through the DMZ…
Also one must wonder if this only made the news because a civillian found the defector. I wonder how many more defectors SK government has that went unreported to the public…
Okay, that white cockroach story is spooky, but a good analogy.
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