S. Korea’s Defector Dilemma

B. G. Bae thought he was home free after he made the perilous 16-hour swim to escape the forbidding Communist regime of North Korea. He was pulled from a river by South Korean guards, who hailed him in 1981 as a “brave defector.” They gave him meat. They offered comfort and care during the 18 lonely months he spent in their custody as they painstakingly debriefed one of North Korea’s first defectors.

But when Bae was finally freed to fend for himself, he discovered how deeply almost four decades of division into a Communist North and a capitalist South had splintered 4,000 years of a singular Korean history. The culture, values and even language had diverged in ways beyond his understanding.

Untrained to think for himself, Bae was paralyzed his first day on the job when asked to come up with company safety guidelines. Unaccustomed to capitalistic connivance, he was swindled out of almost $60,000. He couldn’t even understand the language completely, because South Koreans use some Chinese characters and have absorbed a range of foreign words, from “shampoo” to “soccer.”

Other defectors tell of encountering similar problems--being stymied by modern wonders such as cash machines, stressed by South Korea’s competitive society and plagued by guilt over leaving loved ones behind.

Their experiences illustrate the hardships that defectors face in the free but bewildering South--and the formidable tasks facing Seoul as it braces for hundreds or even thousands more escapees. With the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il tottering because of severe shortages of food and fuel, some elite officials have defected this year and raised expectations that many more will follow.

The North’s shaky status will be a topic during President Clinton’s meeting Tuesday in South Korea with President Kim Young Sam.

Many Northerners find that life in the South is a checkered landscape of con artists and fierce competition, a confusion of modern conveniences and a frenetic pace that leaves less time for deep friendships and family life.

“South Korea is a capitalistic society. People are busy and don’t have time to explain things,” Bae said.

Bae, a former radio operator in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, plotted his escape after secretly monitoring South Korean broadcasts and hearing freewheeling discussions of religion, politics and business--and the nation’s spectacular climb as an industrial power.

“In North Korea, they tell you exactly what to do and how to do it. It took me 10 years to learn the free-market system, and even now I have problems,” added Bae, who now owns a successful broadcast equipment manufacturing firm.

Yet he says his experience, however trying, was probably better than those of more recent defectors. A rarity at the time, defector Bae was showered with government money--100 times his monthly salary in the North--and gifts from the public. He was provided with 24-hour guards for two years; they became like brothers and helped him ease into his new life. He also had a marketable skill, having been trained as an engineer in North Korea and having accumulated two years of work experience in Moscow.

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But defectors today get less money, virtually no job training and no orientation about capitalist fixtures such as competitive pricing. According to two recent academic surveys, more than two-thirds say they have not adapted to jobs; equal numbers report stress, largely stemming from feelings of guilt and loneliness over leaving loved ones behind.

Their limited numbers have, until now, kept the problem manageable--but that stands to change. South Korean leader Kim recently said that at least 700 people are waiting to defect to Seoul, while some media reports estimate that more than 1,000 North Koreans are hiding in China. According to government figures, 759 defectors now live in the South.

More are predicted to flee, as North Korea’s economy, strapped by famine and flood, continues to nose-dive and force further hardships on people reportedly surviving on little more than a few bowls of corn gruel a day. With Pyongyang having recently conducted a series of incursions into the demilitarized zone between the two countries, experts point out that North Korea has a total of more than 1 million troops and weapons arrayed near the DMZ.

“As we watch . . . the severe food shortage develop, the question is not, ‘Will this country disintegrate?’ but rather, ‘How will it disintegrate--by implosion or explosion? And when?’ ” Gen. Gary E. Luck, commander of U.S. forces in South Korea, recently testified before a congressional subcommittee. “We worry that in a very short period, this country will collapse or take aggressive actions against the South in a desperate attempt to divert attention from its internal situation.”

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Either scenario could push a flood of refugees out of North Korea--there are 10 million families divided by the 38th Parallel--and experts say the stream has already begun.

Several conspicuous defections this year have shaken Pyongyang and raised questions of just how secure Kim Jong Il is. The defections have also prompted Seoul to begin grappling with the tricky--and largely unaddressed--problem of how to absorb potentially thousands of people needing jobs, housing, welfare and education.

Unlike earlier defectors, who tended to be soldiers, fishermen or farmers, many of the current escapees represent North Korea’s elite.

The most notable departure involved Sung Hye Rim, 59, Kim Jong Il’s former wife. She left a villa in Geneva in February to seek asylum in the West with her sister and niece.

In January, at least seven people defected to Seoul--including Hyon Song Il, a diplomat in the North Korean Embassy in Zambia and son of a high-ranking official of the Korean Workers’ Party.

Since then, Pyongyang has reportedly sealed its borders even more tightly and stepped up its control over civilians.

But Seoul is hedging its bets. “The government’s policy is based on a phased, peaceful unification, but we can’t absolutely rule out the possibility of total collapse in North Korea,” said Kim Kyung Woong, spokesman for South Korea’s National Unification Board.

He danced around questions about whether the government is preparing plans for massive arrivals of refugees: “I can only say, if we weren’t preparing anything, we’d be an irresponsible government.”

South Korean authorities have begun identifying schools and public halls that could be used as refugee shelters. Spokesman Kim said officials are also scrambling to improve their orientation programs for defectors, which have until now mainly focused on showcasing South Korea’s economic might through tours of industrial facilities. Seoul has also provided jobs, rental assistance and a settlement fund that has ranged from $20,000 for the average defector to $260,000 to a pilot who escaped in a MIG-19 jet in 1983.

As the number of defectors grows, along with mounting evidence of their adjustment difficulties, officials have asked psychologists, economists and political scientists to create a more extensive training program, spokesman Kim said.

The government began an experimental effort in June with 20 defectors to teach them about South Korean society, the economic system and work culture, as well as practical skills such as shipbuilding and computer use and theoretical training aimed at helping them obtain licenses in fields such as electronics.

“I have to admit our past programs were minimum and superficial, because of the small number of defectors,” the spokesman said. “We didn’t think of the cultural shock they must have felt.”

But Han Seung Sun of the Korea Labor Institute said it was difficult to keep the trainees’ attention; one, for instance, would leave class often to drink and fall into a weepy stupor. Officials have not yet decided whether to repeat the program this year--but Han said it should be made mandatory.

In a recent survey of 85 defectors, Han found that 71% faced economic difficulties and 67% could not adapt to their new jobs. Although the government finds jobs for most, the positions are often unrelated to their skills or interests, Han said.

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One man, a lumberjack, received a white-collar banking job although he had no knowledge of capitalist financial practices or the English and Chinese characters used in official documents. Eventually, he was moved to a blue-collar job at Daewoo Heavy Industries.

Kim Man Chul, who fled with 12 family members five years ago, invested the group’s entire $290,000 of resettlement aid in a welfare home for the needy and elderly. Unschooled in such ventures, he lost it all.

Having failed in business and marriage, a few defectors have committed suicide. One former soldier recently tried to flee back to the North but was stopped under a South Korean policy that generally prohibits repatriation--to guard against spies, currency smugglers and other security threats.

Other defectors have apparently turned to crime: One sergeant in the North Korean army crossed the DMZ in 1990 and settled down with a new wife and $39,000 in aid but soon frittered away his fortune by drinking and gambling, according to South Korean media. Last year, he was arrested in an attempted robbery case.

Not all defectors find themselves in such dire straits. Jeon Chul Woo, 29, who fled as a scholarship student in then-East Germany in 1989, graduated in engineering from a South Korean university this year. He now appears in TV comedies. Still others have carved out careers in the military, medicine and international trade.

But these cases are, by all accounts, exceptional. Even defectors who come to Seoul with skills, overseas experience and higher education say they face countless problems--from big anxieties about the future to others involving the smallest details of daily life.

Koh Young Hwan, for instance, had lived away from North Korea--in Switzerland, Zaire and the Congo--for most of the 12 years before his defection in 1991. The 42-year-old former diplomat said former Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s transformation of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall were “a great shock” that convinced him socialism could not last--and as he watched television with fellow diplomats abroad, he remarked that North Korea should learn a lesson. Someone reported his comment to the government, and Koh decided to flee when he learned that a Pyongyang intelligence team had been dispatched to bring him home.

Kim Myong Se, 34, defected when, as a geophysics student in Russia, he watched televised accounts of the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul and was stunned to find that a nation he had been taught to pity as a poor lackey of the United States was far more advanced than his own.

The reason that Kim Ji Il, 31, defected was simple: He fell in love with a Russian woman while studying mathematics at a Ukrainian university and had a daughter with her. But since international marriages are not allowed in North Korea without special government permission, he chose to flee.

All three men have found life in Seoul full of fits and starts.

Kim Myong Se, now a theology student who hopes to preach to North Koreans someday, was baffled by competitive pricing, because products cost the same in the North wherever they are sold. He was also confused by investment options and inadvertently put his money into a five-year CD account without realizing he would be penalized if he withdrew it early.

Kim Ji Il, whose fluency in Russian landed him a lucrative job at a trading company here, said the cutthroat competition has been a strain.

“In North Korea, they wait for you and help you out, but here no one teaches you how to do things,” he said. “It’s your responsibility, and if you don’t do it, you’ll be left behind.”

Kim Ji Il and others said the government should teach defectors practical skills. They also recommended a consulting center staffed by older defectors who could give newcomers advice and refer them to lawyers, financial consultants and other specialists.

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South Korea’s more efficient economy, all three said, has bred a harsher social environment that fills them with a longing for the slower pace and greater intimacy of the North.

“Human relations in North Korea are much more humane, warm and untainted,” said Koh, now a research fellow in North Korean affairs. “Although they guard each other ideologically, everyone is like family. In Seoul, you don’t know who is living next door.”

Few dare imagine the fate of their families after they fled: The Pyongyang regime reportedly hauls relatives of defectors into concentration camps and subjects them to backbreaking labor, physical abuse and near-starvation.

When asked about his family--his mother, two brothers and two sisters--the otherwise animated Koh fell silent and turned his eyes down.

“I heard they were all taken to a concentration camp,” he said. “Sometimes I can’t sleep at night.”

But as they steadfastly plug ahead, every day mastering a new bit of South Korean life, it is thoughts of their families that continue to drive the defectors.

“I live in the hope that someday we’ll all be reunited,” Kim Ji Il said. “And I want to live in a way to be proud of for the day we finally meet.”

Chi Jung Nam of The Times’ Seoul Bureau contributed to this report.