Is South Korea a sweeter home?

By Ahn Mi-Young

SEOUL: Lee Soon-ok says mingling with South Koreans who are "too self-centered" is just one among the many problems, ranging from loneliness and difficulty finding a job, that defectors from North Korea like her face every day.

"In the North, we were poor, but at least we were emotionally tied with others, sharing feelings," rued 50-year-old Lee, who defected to South Korea with her 20-year old son in 1995.

They were paid some $9,000 in settlement money from the South Korean government, most of which was spent to pay rental for their apartment. But two years after settling in the South, Lee, like the hundreds of North Korean defectors here, are finding out that life amid political freedom and capitalism has its own problems.

She added: "Here people are too self-centered. At first they showed sympathy and interest in us, but with time, they turned cool, leaving us to deal alone with the harsh reality of earning money."

Her sentiments reflect the adjustment pains that defectors from the North undergo to fit into life in the South. After all, living in the new world of capitalism often comes across as harsh for North Koreans accustomed to the communist way of rationing and state-run enterprises that guarantee employment.

Some are unable to cope with the loneliness of living in political and economic freedom, but without the social support and network they had at home.

In May, 26-year-old Choi Yu-lia, wife of a former North Korean worker in Russia who defected to Seoul in May 1994, killed herself along with her six-month-old daughter in Seoul. Reports said she was "depressed by cultural differences that deepened her homesickness".

"South Korea could be a harsh place for North Korean defectors who have come with a false fantasy about life in the South and without positive mindsets to give up the old ways and turn to the new ways," said one analyst.

Until the 1980s there was a trickle of defectors leaving the Stalinist nation, who were treated as heroes upon arrival in the South. But this has become a steady stream in the nineties, with officials putting the current number of defectors at 788.

In June, South Korea said an average of 50 North Koreans arrived here annually between 1994 and 1996. But 46 have already fled to the South this year, which means the number of defectors could reach 100 by year's end.

Expecting a "rapid rise" of people fleeing famine-stricken North Korea, Seoul is building a refugee center to process and house such defectors to be ready next year. Thus far, the South Korean government has yet to decide which legal status to grant North Korean defectors, whether to classify them as refugees or to view them as having Korean nationality.

And as the ranks of defectors swelled, Seoul has begun to show signs of financial problems with supporting them. Many defectors, especially those who are ordinary citizens, are often left living on minimum subsidies, even as a number of South Koreans are expressing less sympathy for their comrades from the North.

North Korean defectors are now paid 30 or 100 times of minimum wage subsidies as settlement money, most of which are used up in buying or renting houses and furniture. Many defectors also find Seoul's treatment of them "unfairly tilted towards the former North Korean elites", as one put it.

The South Korean government's treatment of defectors varies according to the status they held in the North, a policy that analysts say divides the "nobodies" and "high-risers". Among the elites are former North Korean students in Eastern Europe who defected to the South, many of whom have achieved fame and fortune here with generous pay and publicity and have made a smooth transition to new lives.

Many of them are subsidized by the government when they study in Seoul's universities. South Korean conglomerates venturing into Eastern Europe and Russia compete to hire them, finding their experience in the languages and culture of Eastern Europe too good to miss.

Some young defectors have become television stars or best- selling writers by relating stories of life inside North Korea's closed society. Kim Hyun-hee, who did espionage work in connection with the explosion of a Korean Air plane in 1983, now writes bestsellers. Lee Woong-pyong, a North Korean lieutenant who fled to the South aboard a MiG-19 in 1983, is now a rich man with 1.46 million dollars in subsidies.

Former students in Eastern Europe like Lee Yong and Chung Song San are now entrepreneurs, running theater troupes and a restaurant called "Pyongyang", named after North Korea's capital.

But these success stories do not apply to everyone. Most of the "ordinary" North Korean defectors have difficulty finding jobs because they cannot speak English, Chinese and other languages that boost their employment potential. Often, they are unfamiliar with computers and have very little skills.

The cultural gap between North and South is another source of anguish for those who left the world's last bastion of Stalinism in search of a better life and freedom in the South.

"At first I was shocked and envied the ways here," said Ko Young-hwa, who graduated from Pyongyang's foreign language university and worked in the North's embassies in Africa.

"But with time, my view is changing. People drink too much, and young people are squandering their freedom," said Ko, who defected in 1991 and is now a researcher at the North Korea Institute in Seoul.

-- IPS