Category: North Korean refugee

North Korean refugees struggle in South Korean schools

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With the increase in North Korean defectors reaching the South, the number of North Korean refugees in elementary and junior high schools in Seoul nearly doubled from 1992 to 2012. In fact, more than half of North Korean refugees are “school-aged.”

According to 2004 Unification Ministry data, it takes roughly three years for North Korean refugees to get to South Korea after leaving North Korea. Their experiences during this period can have a profound effect on the psychological and emotional state of North Korean children and adolescents.

Migrating from North Korea is hard: there isn’t a wide range understanding and tolerance about North Koreans in South Korean society. Many defectors feel that they will be discriminated against because they came from North Korea, and many hide their true background. However, 81.8% polled were outed as defectors through a teacher’s introduction as soon as they entered school, with only 18.2% of the respondents saying they voluntarily revealed their background.

Stress in hiding one’s identity can act as a psychological block in making friends, with anxiety that his or her true identity will be revealed. As a result, it can be very difficult for North Korean teens to form relationships with peers in South Korea. Since they have difficulty studying and making friends in school, many teenage North Korean refugees drop out of school.

According to data from the Ministry of Education, the defector enrollment rate for middle school is 57.9%, while the enrollment rate for high school is only 10.9%. (For South Koreans, high school enrollment rate is 98%, and the university admission rate is close to 80%.)

Given that South Korea is such a scholastically centered society, the low educational status of North Korean defectors will become a big obstacle to their future social life. Read more

South Korea addressing North Korean defectors’ school problems

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The South Korea government has established a number of alternative schools as a new policy project to help North Korean teenagers who have difficulty in adapting to school.

The most well-known of these is the Hankyoreh High School, a high school specializing in helping North Korean adolescents, founded in 2006 by the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development. The Hankyoreh School teaches the national common curriculum, but individual classes are conducted according to the level of each student.

One North Korean settler whom we spoke with is now in college in Seoul. He escaped from North Korea in his mid-teens, was caught by Chinese police and sent back to North Korea, lived in a detention camp, and escaped again in five years. It then took him about three years to make it to South Korea through China and Central Asia. When he arrived, it was difficult to start regular school.

He studied for two years at the GED Academy and later entered one of the well-known colleges in Korea and studies Political Science.

For North Korean refugee students, the GED route is sometimes a more efficient approach in preparation for college admission than public school.

[NK News]

Diplomat defector confirms North Korean Army Chief executed after wiretap

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A high-profile North Korean defector has offered support for theories that a former North Korean military chief, missing since 2012, was executed after being wiretapped.

Vice Marshal Ri Yong-ho was chief of the general staff of the North Korean army from 2009 to July 2012, when he was suddenly stripped of his North Korean Worker’s Party duties, ostensibly due to an unspecified “illness.” South Korean and Western media later reported that Ri was likely under house arrest; then that he had been executed.

Thae Yong-ho, a former North Korean diplomat, has told the Yonhap news agency that Ri was executed in 2012 — though there has been no official announcement.

The former army chief Vice Marshal Ri Yong-ho was caught on tape complaining about North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, in particular criticizing Kim’s promises to reform and liberalize the country. Kim’s father, Kim Jong-il, also knew reforms would help the country, but wasn’t able to implement them; the younger Kim was foolish to think he could, Ri is thought to have said, Thae reported.

There appears to be a pattern of executing army chiefs under Kim Jong-un. Though none have been confirmed, the past three army chiefs have been sacked and killed: Ri in 2012; his successor, Hyon Yong-chol, in 2015; and Hyon’s successor, Ri Yong-gil, in February 2016.

None of the executions have been confirmed by the North, however.

[Sputnik]

Witnessing a public execution in North Korea

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As a young child in the capital of North Korea, Sungju Lee lived a pampered life. But by the time he was a teenager, he was starving and fighting for survival in a street gang. It was one of many twists of fate on a journey that has led him to postgraduate studies at a British university.

In the early 1990s, Sungju Lee was living comfortably with his parents in a three-bedroom apartment in Pyongyang. Although Sungju did not know it at the time, his own father, who had been working as a bodyguard, had fallen out of favor with the regime.

His family moved into a tiny, unheated house in the north-western town of Gyeong-seong.

One morning his teachers marched the children to an outside arena where they were told to sit and watch. Three police officers with guns appeared and a man and woman were led out and tied to wooden poles. The crowd was told the man had been caught stealing and the woman had tried to escape into China. They had both been convicted of high treason, and this was a public execution.

“Each of the police officers shot three bullets for each person. Bang, bang, bang,” Sungju says. “Blood came out. There was a hole in their forehead, and at the back of their head there was nothing left.”

[Read more about Sungju Lee]

North Korea ‘racing ahead’ on nuclear plan, diplomat defector says

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Political uncertainty in the United States and in South Korea could give North Korean leader Kim Jong-un “an apt time” to develop nuclear weapons “at all costs by the end of 2017,” a high-profile North Korean diplomat who recently defected to South Korea said Tuesday.

“Due to domestic political procedures, North Korea calculates that South Korea and the US will not be able to take physical or military actions to deter North Korea’s nuclear development,” Thae Yong-ho, formerly No. 2 at the North Korean Embassy in London, said in a news briefing, according to the Yonhap News Agency.

Thae said Kim has no plans to give up the country’s nukes even if he is offered huge sums of money, saying the leader is “racing ahead with nuclear development after setting up a plan to develop it (nuclear weapons) at all costs by the end of 2017.”

Pyongyang will then try to open dialogue with Seoul and Washington’s new administrations as a nuclear-possessing state, Thae predicted of the North’s strategy to obtain a nuclear power status.

Until then, North Korea will continue to launch military provocations and conduct nuclear tests in a bid to frustrate Seoul and Washington’s sanctions-concentrated policy towards Pyongyang, Thae said.

Tuesday was the 55-year-old Thae’s first appearance to the media since he escaped his post in London to take refuge in South Korea along with his wife and two sons in July.

[CNN]

Alternative schools help young North Korean defectors reach their dreams

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Kim Jung-hyang, a 20-year-old North Korean defector, had never attended school in the North. So she had to work extra hours to catch up with her South Korean high school classmates..

Her relentless efforts, coupled with benefits from special admission programs available for North Korean defectors, have paid off and now she is preparing to study at a prestigious college next year.

All of this, however, might not have been possible if she had not made a decision to move to an alternative school dedicated to educating students like her. Nestled on a hillside of Mount Nam in central Seoul, Yeomyung is an alternative school launched in 2004 to help young North Korean defectors find hope and dreams in the South through education. Around 30 students, including Kim, will graduate from the school early next year.

Yeomyung is one of nine such major alternative schools whose main objective is to provide “tailored” education for those with “unique” experience and needs. They do provide Korean, English, math, science, history and other major subjects needed for the college entrance exam, but it is done not in a “one-size-fits-all” manner as seen in many other ordinary Korean schools but in a way that fits the level of each group by capitalizing on a relatively small number of students.

Demand is now growing for alternative school programs as the number of North Korean defectors and their kids is on the steady rise. Though exact figures are not available, some estimates put the school-aged North Korean defectors at around 3,500.

[Yonhap]

North Korea accuses the South of luring its diplomats to defect

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North Korea’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday accused South Korea of committing “political terror” by stepping up efforts to encourage defections by North Koreans overseas, especially diplomats.

Ju Wang Hwan, a ministry official working in its Institute for Disarmament and Peace, said North Korean diplomats around the world have received emails with attachments containing articles that look like they are from North Korean state media. He said the articles have been changed to confuse and influence their intended readers by “viciously slandering our supreme leader and our socialist system.”

“This is clearly political terror, trying to cause social chaos and bloodshed inside a sovereign state,” Ju said in an interview in Pyongyang.

In a long statement released by North Korea’s state news agency Thursday, the North’s Foreign Ministry also accused South Korean agents of calling and following its diplomats in attempts to encourage them to defect.

Several high-profile North Korean defections have occurred this year. A group of North Korean women working at a restaurant in China defected in April, but Pyongyang authorities insisted they were abducted against their will.

[Seattle Post-Intelligencer]

High-level North Korean defector exposes life among elites

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When Thae Yong-ho, North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom, defected to South Korea in August, he and his family were immediately taken into protective custody. They were grilled by South Korea’s intelligence service not only to glean all the information they could from them about North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, the ruling class, and the political situation there, but also to determine that he wasn’t a spy. After all, he’d fooled both Kim and the Brits into thinking he was the real deal — a dyed-in-the-wool hard-core communist — ever since 2004.

On Monday, South Korea sources announced that the months-long interrogation was complete and that, effective on this coming Friday, Thae will be free to go, to begin his new life in South Korea. He says he will spend the rest of his life “freeing the North Korean people from repression and persecution.” “I will engage in public activities even if it threatens my own safety,” he said.

He provided some insights into the personal life of Kim’s ruling class, including their highly insecure tenure in office. He said it was “perfectly normal” for their homes to be bugged and monitored for any hint of disloyalty to the regime. For instance, when North Korea’s defense minister Hyon Yong-Choi was executed in 2015, the international media said it might have been because he made the gross mistake of falling asleep during one of Kim’s long and endlessly boring speeches. Not so, said Thae: It was “because he said the wrong things at home.”

He noted that life among the elites is far from luxurious. Most high-level members are paid so little that they are “encouraged” to make some extra money “on the side,” referring to a black market that exists in North Korea despite sanctions against any form of “capitalism.”

[New American]

Former diplomat Thae Yong Ho vows to fight to free North Koreans from “slavery”

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The former number two at North Korea’s embassy in London has said he fled because he was disillusioned with the “tyrannical reign of terror” in Pyongyang.

Thae Yong Ho told officials in South Korea he escaped with his family because he was disgusted with his homeland. Mr Thae, who has been guarded by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service since his defection in August, met South Korean officials on Monday, according to lawmaker Lee Cheol Woo.

Lee said Mr Thae learned about democracy by watching South Korean dramas and feature films. Thae said North Koreans are suffering “slavery” under Kim Jong-Un’s dictatorship and higher-level officials are subject to more intense state surveillance.

Mr Thae has said he will now work towards “freeing the North Korean people from repression and persecution,” Mr Lee told the Yonhap news agency. “I will engage in public activities even if it threatens my own safety,” he quoted Thae as saying.

South Korean media said that Mr Thae will be under a police protection program. He is the most senior North Korean diplomat to defect to South Korea. (In 1997, the North Korean ambassador to Egypt fled but he resettled in the United States.)

[Sky News]

Defectors lift curtain on North Korea’s information blackout

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The Kim regime has maintained its grip on North Korea by imprisoning its enemies and by controlling and censoring the mass media — newspapers, TV, radio, with only a privileged few getting access to the internet.

TV shows on state-run media tout the achievements of North Koreans and their leader. During the last few years, North Korean defectors based in in South Korea have been undermining the country’s information blackout.

One of those activists is Kang Chol-Hwan, a North Korean defector. Today, he’s the director of a non-profit called the North Korea Strategy Center based in Seoul, South Korea’s capital. Formed in 2007, his group pays Chinese smugglers to send USB drives filled with prohibited, outside media into North Korea. He says, even though North Koreans lack internet connections, they can watch smuggled movies and TV shows on their computers or on Chinese video players with USB ports, like these, called “Notels.”

KANG CHOL-HWAN: We send various content from stories on human rights, general information on South Korea, to images depicting the average American…. It helps them to realize that in the outside world, even the criminals have rights.

KARLA MURTHY: Your strategy of sending these USB sticks over there, how do you know that strategy is working?

KANG CHOL-HWAN: We regularly monitor the response through those who are able to move across the China-North Korea border more easily. If we find that a television drama that we sent has been banned, we know that it has been impactful.

KARLA MURTHY: Would have happened if you were caught listening to foreign broadcasts?

KANG CHOL-HWAN: You would have been branded as an anti-revolutionary. Then, you would be sent to an internment camp, but if you were repeatedly caught, you would be executed…

[Read transcript of full PBS interview]