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Παρασκευή, 29 Μαρτίου, 2024
ΑρχικήEnglish EditionPOV: You’re a North Korean Defector Running for His/Her Life

POV: You’re a North Korean Defector Running for His/Her Life


By Venia Kontogianni,

North Korea’s regime resembles a communistic one, but instead of establishing a “dictatorship of the proletariat”, the Kim dynasty would have stopped reading after the first half of this sentence. After all, it cannot endorse the true communist spirit if everything, from food to technology, is accessible to Pyongyang’s elite; yet the general masses live off scraps. What follows is a second person point-of-view text that will try to take a glimpse into the everyday struggles of North Korean natives, who could be described as prisoners inside the four walls of a 120,540 km² region.

Imagine you were born in North Korea and growing up in social distress. You may have lost family members due to the famine of the 1990s. If you live in the capital, you are awakened by the deafening alarm coming from the city speakers, notifying your compatriots and you to wake up and go to labor camps. If you are a man, you most likely work at farms or factories. If you are a woman, you usually go to the black market and try to sell things in order to earn any semblance of an income. Occasionally, you get raped by officers for “illegal trade activities” and, in a true patriarchal manner, you are expected to be on top of everything, household-wise. You listen to music designed and created for you by the government on the only operating radio station, read the one newspaper available and watch the one operating tv channel, where the propaganda being broadcast is only intermitted by upbeat songs that glorify the leader and his entire bloodline. You choose a haircut from the government-approved preselected list and, unless you live in Pyongyang, you lack electricity at night. No internet is available and smartphones are as scarce as medicine or sanitary products. All sense of justice is condensed in the saying “your fist is closer than authorities”, which basically means “take matters into your own hands”. Your ideals, beliefs and goals have to be in unison with the regime’s agenda, albeit not being privy to what that even entails. Unalignment with the “hermit kingdom’s” regime frequently results in internment or public executions and the sound of “re-education institutions” reaches your ears echoing “torture camps”.

Hence, many a reason urge you to draft a clandestine escape plan to flee the authoritarian rule. You opt to defy the odds, leave your family behind and make the arduous journey to freedom. Firstly, at the north, you could cross Yalu river, which freezes over during winter, into China, where you could either seek refuge in another country’s embassy or be sold by human traffickers as a sex slave to bereft Chinese men. The prospect of getting caught in China and being repatriated is ever-looming, as is the range of barbaric repercussions that await you back home for attempted defection. The word of mouth is others have crossed en masse the Gobi Desert to get to Mongolia and plead with authorities there to have them be relocated to South Korea. Assuming you survive the either frigid or scorching temperatures of Gobi Desert, Mongolia’s policies for defectors are volatile; sometimes border patrollers shoot on sight or deport refugees like you back to North Korea, although there have been cases where Mongolia has spared people and sent them to South Korea.

Resembling your entire “prison break” journey thus far, the Mongolian sentiment is unpredictable, so you decide it would be best to make your way to Laos, Cambodia or Thailand on a wobbly banana boat across the treacherous, crocodile-infested waters of Mekong river, all the while traveling undetected by the police; once you set foot there, these southeastern countries generally assist your cohort of runaways to reach safer destinations, like South Korea or the U.S. If you reside at the southern part of the country, the quickest way to escape is through the Demilitarized Zone, a heavily fortified, 248km-long line dividing the peninsula at the South Korean border, or under it, through the sewage system. This method, though, often proves to be fruitless, since the North Korean government is kept abreast of its citizens’ intentions and has lined the borders with electrified fences, minefields and a shoot-on-sight order to prevent escapes. You could try swimming to Russia or boating to Japan, but no means of escape is a surefire success. People are usually tortured, condemned to forced labor or executed for trying to defect.

Now, imagine, despite all the hardships, you have safely made it to South Korea. The government grants you citizenship and resettlement funds. However, no one has prepared you for the consecutive culture shocks you are about to experience first-hand: from bustling streets to grandiose buildings and food delivery service. You feel at sea and constantly look over your shoulder: you live in fear of the bowibu, the North Korean secret police that could track you down in South Korea and coerce you to return by threating harm upon family members you have left behind. Furthermore, you get strange looks from locals for your vernacular and some look down on your poor origin, making you consider lying about your descent and trying to pass off as a South Korean. For you, freedom was not bestowed upon birth, it was an uphill battle and a luxury for the few. Among the estimated 33,000 North Korean defectors living in South Korea, you wonder how many have actually healed from the mental burden of escaping and integrating into a new society.

North Korea is the poster boy for modern-day dictatorship and human rights violations. This is further bolstered by the testimonies of defectors and photojournalists, which shed a light into the inhumane conditions taking place at the upper half of the peninsula. Its citizens lack basic things to survive and fear the “dear leader” and those who take a leap of faith beyond the borders often spend years trying to adjust to the new world they have found.


References 
  • Chung, Byung-Ho,“North Korean Refugees As Penetrant Transnational Migrants.” Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development 43, no. 4 (2014): 329-61, The Institute, Inc.Available here.
  • Kim, Sung Kyung,“”Defector,” “Refugee,” or “Migrant”? North Korean Settlers in South Korea’s Changing Social Discourse.”, North Korean Review 8, no. 2 (2012): 94-110, McFarland & Company. Available here.
  • Kang, Jin Woong,“Human Rights and Refugee Status of the North Korean Diaspora.”, North Korean Review 9, no. 2 (2013): 4-17, McFarland & Company.Available here.
  • Ernst, Maximilian, and Roman Jurowetzki,“Satellite Data, Women Defectors and Black Markets in North Korea: A Quantitative Study of the North Korean Informal Sector Using Night-Time Lights Satellite Imagery.”, North Korean Review 12, no. 2 (2016): 64-83, McFarland & Company. Available here.
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  • Upstream Journal, The Trafficking in North Korean Women. Available here.
  • BBC, North Korea defectors: Meet young people who have fled from North to South Korea. Available here.
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  • U.S. News & World Report, Pyongyang’s China Connection Beijing enforces some U.N. sanctions, but Chinese business still helps to preserve North Korea’s government. Available here.
  • 38 North, The North Korean Economy, August 2019: Why China Will Continue to Dominate. Available here.
  • NK News, ‘Tired out of our minds’: North Korean defectors recall grueling work marathons. Available here.
  • NPR, North Korean Former Gymnast Fled To South Korea By Jumping Fence. Available here.
  • DW, North Korean ‘defector’ triggers border security concerns in South Korea. Available here.
  • NBC News, North Korea’s Head of Secret Police Is Purged. Available here.
  • TED, “What I learned about freedom after escaping North Korea” by Yeonmi Park (speech). Available here.

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Venia Kontogianni
Venia Kontogianni
Venia Kontogianni studied in Panteion University in the Department of International, European and Regional Studies. She is currently a trainee at the Greek Embassy in Ljubljana, Slovenia and volunteers as a translator in the League for Women's Rights.