Fleeing to Culture Shock

Kim Kang Chul steered past the clutter of fast-food restaurants that make up the bustling streetscape of this Seoul suburb. There are KFC restaurants and Dunkin’ Donuts, and towering above them billboards advertising mobile telephones and yet more fast food.

Kim hasn’t stopped marveling at the incongruity of it all: that he, having fled a small North Korean town where you’re counted rich for eating rice instead of corn, should be living amid this 21st century capitalist bounty, driving his own car, albeit a snub-nosed subcompact Hyundai purchased with installment payments.

“I can’t believe I’m driving myself around. There are no private cars in North Korea,” said Kim, deftly braking at a red light, yet another novelty. There isn’t enough electricity in the North to power traffic signals.

One of a new breed of North Korean defectors, the 42-year-old Kim settled in Bucheon a year and a half ago and brought his children south last summer. Now they are working hard to assimilate, trying to lose their telltale Northern accents and recover from what can only be diagnosed as an epic case of culture shock.

Until recently, only a handful of North Koreans managed to escape to the South. Most were border guards or members of the elite who had unique opportunities to defect. That has changed as North Koreans find new routes out, usually slipping first across the border into China and then making their way to South Korea through third countries.

A record 583 defectors came south last year, nearly double the number who arrived in 2000, according to South Korean statistics. So far this year, at least 88 have arrived--including a soldier who braved the land mines of the demilitarized zone last month near where President Bush just hours later urged that North Koreans be given their freedom.

Few observers are forecasting a mass exodus, but the numbers are expected to climb as more North Koreans flee the chronic food shortages and extraordinary isolation that make life so difficult at home.

The trend puts the South Korean government in a delicate position. Any perception that it is encouraging defectors would pique the North, which classifies them as traitors, and further undermine South Korean President Kim Dae Jung’s efforts to maintain a dialogue with his nation’s Communist neighbor. Too many new arrivals also could breed resentment among his people, who already fear that impoverished North Korea will one day become an economic burden for them.

At the same time, the government is well aware that a successful resettlement effort would be a dress rehearsal for the possible reunification of the Koreas after more than half a century of estrangement.

“If this relatively small group of North Korean defectors fails to adjust, our prospects for reunification are gloomy,” said Yoon In Jin, a sociologist with Korea University who has written extensively about the subject. “If they succeed in making a new life here, we have hope of integrating. For that reason, we have to make every effort to help them so we can learn from their trials and their errors.”

Extensive research is underway in South Korean academia about resettling the defectors. The government Unification Ministry has studied models ranging from Israel’s airlift and resettlement of Yemeni Jews in the 1940s and ‘50s to German reunification in 1990.

It is generally assumed that integrating North and South Korea would be even more difficult than Germany’s costly effort. While West Germans were about four times richer than East Germans just before reunification, the income disparity between South and North Koreans is 16 to 1. South Koreans throw away 4 million tons of food each year, more than North Korea, which has about half the population, produces in food staples annually, according to a report last week by the South Korean government.

“They lived under a totalitarian system. They are very ignorant about the outside world. They don’t know how to open a bank account, how to drive, how to use a mobile telephone,” said Jo Sang Ho, an official with the Assn. of Supporters for Defecting North Korean Residents, a government-supported foundation.

In a survey published by the association in December, defectors complained of difficulties finding jobs, combating prejudice and adapting to the radically different life in the South.

“They are like newborns. They have to forget everything they learned in North Korea and start fresh,”’ said Lee Jung Kuk, who defected in 1995. Now a successful businessman in Seoul, he volunteers to work with newcomers.

Jeon Woo Taek, a psychiatrist at Yonsei University who works with defectors, said psychological problems handicap their adjustment to new lives. They often suffer guilt over family members left behind and live under assumed names in fear that the North Korean government might punish their relatives.

“I think their main obstacle to life in South Korea is that they are suspicious and paranoid,” said Jeon. “It makes it hard for them to get close to South Koreans or to each other.”

Defectors receive government payments of roughly $28,000 to get started. The amount used to be higher but was reduced because of the growing number of new arrivals. For about two months, they are housed in Hanawon, a resettlement center about 30 miles south of Seoul, which serves a dual purpose: It is both a training facility and a detention center while the defectors are investigated by intelligence services, which try to determine if they are spies.

Hanawon was opened in 1998, a year when there were only 71 defectors. The increasing numbers are forcing the government to expand the center.

Kim Kang Chul, who, like most defectors, changed his name when he arrived, is a relative success story amid the new crop. He is one of the few who can operate a car, having been a driver during his military service in the North. He managed to bring his son, daughter and mother south. Still, the family’s travails illustrate how difficult the adjustment is.

They live in a government-subsidized, 13th-floor apartment crammed with an impressive collection of donated appliances--computer, television, VCR, stereo, rice cooker, water purifier--but so tiny that there isn’t enough room for a chair in the space that remains.

With a thick accent and slightly mismatched clothing, Kim seems just enough out of step to be spotted as a Northerner. He looks older than his 42 years, probably the result of poor nutrition and the stress of years on the run.

In 1997, Kim escaped from his home in North Hamgyong province by swimming across the narrow Tumen River into China. He worked as a laborer on Chinese farms, hoping to raise enough money to smuggle out his family. But his wife died three months after his defection, succumbing to a combination of malnutrition and tuberculosis.

“She sacrificed herself for the children,” he said. “She was living on one meal a day so she could give them all the food, and she just wasted away.”

Kim made it to South Korea two years ago and paid a smuggler to bring out his mother and children last year. His son, now 15, and daughter, 12, look younger than their ages; the poor Northern diet has left them smaller than their South Korean peers. They also have been held back a year in school because so much of their early education was devoted to studying the works of North Korean founder Kim Il Sung and his son, current leader Kim Jong Il.

“Emotionally, it has been a great shock for the children. They grew up believing that Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il were heroes. Now they believe they are tyrants,” their father said.

There is much about South Korea that the children like--mostly their computer and the abundant food--but they complain of loneliness.

“If it weren’t that we were always hungry, I would rather be in the North. The people are more human,” said the boy.

He identified himself by a nickname, Tae Hwan, because he wants his Northern roots kept from classmates. “They are too shallow and frivolous. They wouldn’t understand.”

Kim has found the adjustment difficult as well. He has tried various businesses, including a matchmaking service. A writer by profession, he also has tried selling essays and articles about his experiences in the North, only to find that South Koreans aren’t all that interested.

“People here are indifferent mostly,” he said. “I think they have lost interest, or maybe they have become a little apprehensive that there will be so many defectors that they become a burden on the economy.”

There are now close to 2,000 North Korean defectors living in South Korea. Although a handful have had striking success writing books or starting businesses, the vast majority struggle to reinvent themselves. About 28% are unemployed, living entirely on government assistance.

At a conference on North Korean human rights last month in Tokyo, Hong Seong Phil, a professor at Ewha Woman’s University in Seoul and an expert on North Korea, predicted that about 1,000 defectors will come south this year.

“Nothing can deter them from coming out in search of food and human rights, and it is up to us to help them,” Hong said.

It is almost impossible for North Koreans to escape directly to the South. Until the 22-year-old soldier appeared near the Dorasan train station last month, no defector had made it across the demilitarized zone since September 1999.

Escaping to China is easier, especially in winter when the Tumen River is frozen over. It is estimated that between 100,000 and 200,000 North Koreans have fled to China. But they live there illegally in fear of being sent home, where they would face harsh treatment in labor camps or even execution. China has a treaty with North Korea requiring that defectors be deported if caught.

Only a few of those in China make it to South Korea, as the latter’s embassy in Beijing will not issue them visas for fear of endangering its diplomatic relations with the Chinese government. Defectors must go to a third country--often Mongolia--where the South Korean Embassy screens them, grants visas and gives them plane tickets. All this is done in great secrecy to avoid angering the North Korean government.

“It used to be that every defector coming out was very special and unique, people who had great bravery or luck, money or connections, because it was so difficult to get out of North Korea,” said Jeon, the psychiatrist. “But now you are seeing ordinary people, families with children.”

Jeon said the food situation has improved somewhat since the height of the crisis, in 1997, but that the famine weakened social controls, making it easier for North Koreans to leave home.

“The society is crumbling. The old virtues of taking care of your elderly relatives are disappearing because there is not enough food,” agreed defector Kim Pyong Il, a 38-year-old doctor who lives in Seoul. “People leave their children, their families.”

Kim Chul Young, a 29-year-old actor who defected last year after his 18-month-old son died during the famine, agreed.

“People are desperate,” he said. “They feel they will die anyway if they stay, so why not take the chance?”

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Lim Kyung Hee and Chi Jung Nam of The Times’ Seoul Bureau contributed to this report.