[Column] Reform needed for North defector foundation

The Korea Hana Foundation — set up to help defectors settle here but now being operated in a closed and bureaucratic manner and abused by politicians — should be reformed.

Lee Ae-ranThe author is a former standing representative of the North Korean Human Rights Union. Han Seong-ok and her son, who defected from North Korea by risking their lives to escape from deadly poverty, starved to death in South Korea. When their bodies were found two months after their deaths in July 2019, it shocked our society. Is it understandable that a person starved to death in a country that produces over 10-trillion-won ($7.9-billion) worth of food trash each year? At the sad news about their deaths, 30,000 North Korean defectors in the South were heartbroken. In frustration, they even staged hunger strikes for months at Gwanghwamun Square in central Seoul.

After bones of a North Korean defector woman who had lived alone in a public rental apartment were found in October last year, defectors were deeply saddened by the news again. As the period of social isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic grew protracted, more and more defectors were isolated further from our society and died.

What is the fundamental cause of the defectors’ repeated failures to settle into our society? I believe the reason can be found by analyzing the process of my settlement in the South. I escaped from the North in 1997 and entered the South the following year. I have lived as a citizen of South Korea for 25 years. When I came to South Korea, there were less than 1,000 defectors here.

After the Asian financial crisis hit South Korea in 1997, massive layoffs took place and it was impossible to find a job. Sitting in an empty apartment alone, I realized that if I die here alone, no one would ever know when and why I had died. My body was shaking with the feeling of loneliness.

North Korea is a regime whose priority is the organization over individuals. It is a totalitarian state where all individuals live under the control of organizations. In the North, an individual must join an organization whether he or she wants to or not.

In contrast, no organizational participation is mandatory here as freedom of individuals is guaranteed. No one compels anyone. You only have to pick and choose according to your own needs. In order for someone to call others, information and trust must be offered. But to North Korean defectors, information, trust and credit are the things they lack the most. This is why North Korean defectors are living in very barren soil in South Korean society.

Many talk about the success stories of some displaced North Koreans who came to the South before and during the 1950-53 Korean War. But the social environments and positions of North Korean defectors and displaced people are very different. Because the displaced North Koreans came to the South en masse, they could create a community here. As their social and economic conditions were similar, their organizations also were similar. As many of them were neighbors or relatives in North Korea, their social, economic and cultural environments were quite different from those defectors.

Defectors had lived in a country where their freedom to relocate and travel was completely banned. They defected to South Korea sporadically over decades instead of coming to the South en masse at the same time. As they do not know one another, they have to confront a structural limit that they cannot trust each other.

Most of the defectors were used to a passive and compulsory organizational life rather than an autonomous organizational life. They largely lack the active and autonomous organizational skills to live in a liberal democracy, market economy and an individualistic society. As they lived in the South, they realized that the most important thing is trust.

A series of defectors’ failures to settle in South Korea — such as deaths by starvation, suicide, lonely death and return to the North — resulted from their failure to build a community here where they can build trust in one another. For the defectors to settle here successfully, they must be able to communicate with South Korean society through a community of their own. An autonomous and self-sustainable community of defectors, by defectors and for defectors — not a community of defectors built by the government and for the government — is desperately needed.

The Korea Hana Foundation — set up to help defectors settle here but now being operated in a closed and bureaucratic manner and abused by politicians — should be reformed. We want a structural reform so that defectors can play a role in building a healthy community for all rather than remaining as a group of isolated and maladjusted people. Defectors must realize that the success of their community — not their individual successes — will help them make a bigger success and work together to create a harmonious community here.

Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.