The Hidden People of North Korea (45 page)

Repatriated defectors are imprisoned in a North Korean jail at the closest border town until police from their hometown can come to get them, which can be a matter of weeks. Prison conditions are harsh, and food is scarce, resulting in a few prisoner deaths, which saves the local police the trouble of having to come and pick them up. On the other hand, prison officials hate for too many prisoners to die in their jails, so they urge the local police to come as soon as possible.

Defector interrogations are routinely accompanied by beatings and often torture. Defectors are asked four key questions: Did you meet any South Koreans? Did you meet any members of religious organizations? Did you watch South Korean TV or videotapes or listen to South Korean radio? Were you trying to defect to South Korea? Women are also asked if they had sexual relations with Chinese men. Those defectors who manage to convince their interrogators that the answer to every question is no will receive only a few months of hard labor as punishment. A yes answer to any one of them generally earns the defector a sentence in a political prison camp for one or more years on the charge of being a traitor or a spy. Interrogators are lenient with those they believe crossed the border simply to get food or earn a little money, as long as the border crossing is not frequently repeated.

The applicable laws on defection provide authorities with considerable latitude in meting out punishment. The mildest punishment for defection is stipulated by Article 233 of the 2004 revision of North Korea’s Criminal Code: “Whoever crosses the border out of or into the country illegally shall be sentenced to two years or less of labor discipline.” Article 62 stipulates the harshest sentence for defectors who have associated with South Koreans or Americans: “In case a citizen commits such traitorous acts as an escape, surrendering to foreign countries, treachery, [or] handing over secrets to them by betraying the fatherland, he shall be sentenced to more than five years of labor correction. In case the circumstances are serious, he shall be sentenced to an indefinite term of labor correction, death, and confiscation of property.” If they are so inclined, the authorities can also add a variety of other charges, including smuggling and “bringing in or spreading decadent culture.”

A bribe consistent in size with the seriousness of the alleged crime will usually enable a defector to secure release without serving a prison sentence, with the amount ranging from tens to thousands of dollars. Many defectors repatriated from China make one or more subsequent attempts to defect, even though they risk severer punishment if captured after the first escape attempt. Once the crime of defection has been placed in a person’s record, he or she is branded for life as politically unreliable and is subject to closer surveillance than ordinary citizens.

Life in South Korea

Against long odds, some defectors finally make it to South Korea, arriving at a rate of about fifty a week (in 2008). It is difficult to imagine what they face in the new society in which they find themselves, where fellow Koreans speak a different dialect and use many foreign words. Even people who grow up in their own culture usually find the first years of adulthood challenging as they search for a job, take on adult responsibilities, and form long-term adult relationships, but they can at least benefit from the examples provided by their parents, older peers, and the media. Coming from a different culture, North Korean defectors have little to guide them.

As soon as they arrive in South Korea, defectors are taken into custody by the NIS and housed in a special facility in Seoul. Over a period of one week to several months, NIS agents conduct an interrogation in which the defectors are required to write out detailed accounts of their lives. The dual purpose of this interrogation is to verify that they are legitimate defectors (rather than North Korean spies or Chinese Koreans) and to gather fresh intelligence about North Korea. During this period the defectors eat well, watch television, and read newspapers, thus beginning their acclimation to South Korean society.

Before the 1990s, the ROK government classified defectors into several categories according to the value of the information and political capital their defection provided. Ironically, this meant that former members of the North Korean ruling class, who were in part responsible for the oppression of the North Korean people, received greater rewards for defecting than those whom they had oppressed. The ROK government provided former secretary Hwang Jang-yop, the architect of North Korea’s
Juche
theory, years of special protection and employment after he defected, although he later clashed with the government over its North Korea policy and the restrictions placed on his movements. Today the treatment of defectors is more egalitarian.

When the NIS is convinced that an individual is a genuine defector, he or she is transferred to Hanawon (“one community”), a government halfway house located in the vicinity of Seoul. Established in 1999 and put under the authority of the Ministry of Unification, Hanawon has been expanded as more defectors arrive, and as of 2008 it could accommodate six hundred people for a three-month period of orientation and education. The three broad goals of the Hanawon program are to provide emotional and psychological support for the new arrivals, to teach them about South Korean and Western capitalist culture, and to provide job training and contacts. The task of acculturation is immense, and a few months at Hanawon can hardly counter a lifetime of indoctrination and experience in a totalitarian socialist state. Most North Koreans have never driven a car, used a computer, or made a call on a cell phone. They have never even imagined a supermarket or a Western-style department store. They do not know how to earn, save, or invest money. Defectors who need further assistance can spend a few additional weeks at one of several Hanawon satellite centers located around the country, and school-age defectors can enroll in the unification ministry’s Hangyoreh middle and high schools.

Defectors usually want to live and work in the capital city of Seoul because, in North Korea, the capital of Pyongyang is the city of the privileged class. The unification ministry runs a lottery to determine who gets to live in Seoul and who must begin life in one of the other cities, which, contrary to what most defectors think, may well provide a more pleasant and welcoming environment. To help them get started, defectors receive a grant of $20,000 (the amount changes from year to year) paid in installments over two years; families receive $37,000.
²³
Individuals can receive up to $15,000 in additional payments for completing educational and job-training programs, and additional monies are granted for special needs such as medicine and apartment down payments. To help defectors find employment, the government also subsidizes half of their wages for two years. Special monetary compensation and research positions in government think tanks are provided to a few defectors whom the government believes may have something special to offer in terms of intelligence on North Korea.

In most cases a local police officer is assigned as a defector’s case officer. In the past, the police officer accompanied the defector almost everywhere, providing both cultural guidance and protection from confidence tricksters and other criminals—and in some cases from North Korean secret agents. These days, a police officer is simply on call, although defectors considered to be at greater risk from North Korean agents receive more protection, and a few are even housed in the NIS compound outside of Seoul. It is not known how many defectors have actually been threatened by North Korean agents, although it is not unusual for them to receive threatening telephone calls, some of which may come from South Koreans who, for one reason or another, object to their presence. The only known case of assassination was the death of Yi Han-yong (mentioned earlier in chapter 2), a distant relative of Kim Jong-il. Yi came to South Korea in 1982 and published his memoirs in Korean (the English title is
Kim Jong-il’s Royal Family
). He was murdered in February 1997, presumably by North Korean agents, perhaps as a warning to Secretary Hwang Jang-yop, who had just defected to the South.

After they arrive in South Korea, defectors expect life to get easier, although they do experience some apprehension based on the stories they have been told since childhood about South Korea being a dog-eat-dog world where only the strong survive. They quickly learn that money is a primary value in South Korean society, and their desire to get rich makes them vulnerable to all sorts of swindles. Because their lives in North Korea were so controlled, they look for freedom in their employment, for example, by becoming entrepreneurs, but they do not realize what a high failure rate new businesses face in a capitalist economy. Often their only area of expertise is their knowledge of North Korea (or rather, their own experiences in North Korea), which they can put to use by giving lectures, but with thousands of defectors already in the South, competition on the lecture circuit is stiff, and only a few defectors can make any money from speaking or writing.

As in all Asian cultures, personal and family connections count for a lot in South Korean society, putting North Koreans at a disadvantage, and employment surveys paint a bleak picture of their chances of finding a job. A 2006 survey of 451 defectors found a 67 percent unemployment rate, and those with jobs were earning only about half the legal minimum wage.
²⁴
Part of the employment problem is that defectors do not want to take the more difficult, less desirable jobs, for example, in manual labor, even though they may be the best entry-level jobs for them.

The annual job turnover rate for defectors has been estimated at 60 percent.
²⁵
Low wages seem to be the biggest complaint, with one poll finding that only 17 percent were satisfied with their income.
²⁶
Rather than consider their jobs the first step up the occupational ladder, many defectors feel that they have already paid their vocational dues in North Korea and deserve a job comparable to the one they had there, even if they gained and kept it by the grace of the party rather than through open competition. In South Korea’s relatively hierarchical society, defectors’ lack of job seniority within a company also works against them. After several job failures, defectors become discouraged; many simply quit looking for work and fall into poverty. A 2004 unification ministry study found that 70 percent of defectors were receiving government welfare payments.
²⁷

Success on the job requires personal as well as job skills. Defectors often encounter social and job-related situations in which they do not know how to behave, leading to misunderstandings and awkward relations with other workers. A 2005 survey of five hundred defectors found that 67 percent believed they were treated unfairly in their workplaces, and 40 percent said they felt ostracized by their colleagues.
²⁸

Defectors suffer from a variety of adjustment problems on and off the job. They have a somewhat different dialect and vocabulary from South Koreans. For example, they are not familiar with words borrowed from other languages because the Kim regime has decreed that only “pure” Korean expressions should be used, although the younger generation is beginning to adopt foreign loan words like “menu,” “diet,” “music video,” “single,” “wife,” and “fast food”—all commonly used in South Korea as well. Reading can also be a problem. Older South Koreans can read several thousand Chinese characters, some of which appear in newspaper and magazine articles and books, but
Juche
theory has banned the use of these characters in North Korea. In public, the defectors’ dialect immediately identifies them as North Koreans. South Koreans tend to keep their distance simply because the defectors are considered different—perhaps like poor relatives whom one is not eager to meet. Their complexion is often slightly darker than that of South Korean city dwellers, making them look like country bumpkins. Their clothes may be too flashy, and their body language somewhat diffident. In short, at least in the first years after they arrive, defectors are viewed by many South Koreans as coming from an inferior culture.

Defectors have trouble making new friends. Life in North Korea is lived in groups: work groups, school groups, neighborhood groups, and party-affiliated social and political groups; individuals who spend time alone immediately fall under suspicion. This communitarian culture puts pressure on individuals to conform, but it also provides social support. South Korean society is far more individualistic. With no restrictions on communication or travel, South Koreans have geographically broader friendship networks than North Koreans. Defectors with distant relatives in South Korea are often disappointed that the relatives do not seem interested in them, which is hardly surprising because in most cases they have not met since before the Korean War. When the Southern relatives become aware that some of their kin have come down from the North, they may not want to get too close for fear of incurring a financial responsibility. For lack of friends and relatives, many former North Koreans join a church, which provides the same kind of complete social environment they were accustomed to in North Korea, and the religious teachings are similar in form to the worship of Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, and Kim Jong-suk—the father, son, and mother.

And then there is the problem of marriage. Although the practice of arranged marriages has disappeared in South Korean society, it is still not uncommon in the North, where personal connections are stronger. As outsiders, defectors are somewhat limited in their choice of marriage partners. Imagine, for example, what South Korean parents would say if their child proposed to marry a defector. Some defectors marry other defectors, but most eventually marry a native South Korean. Once married, the new partners must cope with the difficulties that arise from their different backgrounds and experiences, along with the marital strains caused by defectors’ low self-esteem and employment problems.