North Koreans defectors describe different lives in South Korea

Thirty college students, all defectors living in Seoul, sat in a classroom working on personal narratives, participants in a writing program run by the North Korea Strategy Center, a nonprofit that aims to increase awareness about them and what their experience is like.

Ga Eul, a peppy, English-speaking 23-year-old with dyed brown hair and purple glasses, began her essay this way: ” Until [I defected], my education consisted of learning how to worship Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jung-Il.” As a middle-schooler, Ga Eul dreamed of becoming a math teacher. But when Ga Eul’s extended relatives were caught trying to escape from North Korea, she wrote, “My dream of becoming a math teacher was not possible anymore. My family members were branded enemies of the state.” Ga Eul was told that she wouldn’t be able to join the military—a key step to getting good jobs in North Korea—and neither would her children.

Another defector explains, “In North Korea, people tend to sleep early due to electricity shortages. In the evening, the whole town turns into a jet-black night without a single light.”

A female defector says that when she arrived in South Korea, she assumed that the heaps of rice and hard-boiled eggs that greeted her at the defector integration center were some sort of propagandistic joke.

Another student wrote about his first time on Seoul’s gleaming subway: “I didn’t know where to direct my eyes! There were girls in hot shorts seemingly no different than panties. My cheeks flushed red and my eyes lost focus.”

[Mother Jones]

North Korean defectors share their experiences with South Korean high school students

Jae, a 23-year-old North Korean defector, stands nervously in front of the crowd of South Korean high schoolers. “Do North Korean students often date each other?” one student wants to know. Jae, a tall North Korean defector, grins. They do, he says, but secretly. Because students are reprimanded for showing affection, he explains, “if you like someone you often say, ‘Let’s become friends,’ which is basically the same thing as ‘Will you go out with me?'”

When asked about food shortages, Jae explains he became so hungry as a child that he had taken to eating tree bark.

Jae grew up in a North Korean town that bordered the DMZ separating the countries; once in a while, thick balloons from South Korea would drift through the sky and land on the ground. They were sent by human rights activists in the south and filled with USB drives and pamphlets condemning the dictatorial regime in Pyongyang. The police would snatch them up as soon as they reached the ground. But when Jae went into the mountains, away from people, he would see dozens of balloons snagged in bushes and trees.

The questions keep coming, among them, “Do you want to go back?” Jae responds to the question diplomatically. He wants to visit his extended family, but he probably wouldn’t want to live in North Korea again “because of the bad memories.”

Jae has found that many South Korean high schoolers remain fascinated by the prospect of meeting a defector from the north, but have no clue that 25,000 of them now live in their country.

[Mother Jones]

Devastation from floods in North Korea

North Koreans living along the Tumen River border with China described a hellish ordeal as the river rose swiftly, leaving many people scrambling for safety in a flood that has claimed at least 200 lives and devastated a wide swath of country’s poorest region.

“The floods came through with such force that the Tumen River, which borders China, swelled rapidly,” Dong Nam Kim, a North Korean defector and representative of the Free North Korea Global Network, told RFA’s Korean Service as he relayed descriptions of the disaster from inside the country.

The floods ripped through the area as Typhoon Lionrock lashed Northeast Asia from August 29 to September 2. The floods may have hit the provinces in the north harder after North Korean authorities opened up the floodgates in the hydroelectric facilities upstream. It’s unclear why the North Korean government decided to open up the floodgates, but the North Korean defector said that with the rain falling at nearly four inches per hour caused the authorities to fear that the dams would burst, causing even more damage.

At least 140,000 people are in urgent need of assistance, the OCHA said in a statement. It estimated 100,000 people have been displaced and water supplies to about 600,000 people have been cut.

Of the more than 35,500 houses that were damaged, nearly two-thirds were destroyed. A further 8,700 buildings, including schools and public buildings, were damaged, and 16,000 hectares (39,540 acres) of arable land inundated, the OCHA said.

The government of North Korea, which called the deadly natural disaster the “the strongest storm and heaviest downpour” the country has experienced in decades, issued an unusual appeal for international help.

North Korea’s appeal for help could not have come at a worse time, coming after the country conducted its second nuclear test in eight months on September 9, that was widely condemned and is expected to draw more economic sanctions from the international community.

[Radio Free Asia]