First though, to the fascinating but ideologically divided Korean Peninsula. This year is actually the 60^th anniversary of the Korean War – but the divisions between the politically odd north and the pro western south remain as stark as they ever were... That said, probably no one is better equipped to understand those differences than defectors who have managed to make it from one half of the peninsula to the other. Amos Roberts recently spent time with some of those former North Koreans, what he found was that they are really struggling to make the transition from the totalitarian pariah state in the North to the free-wheeling capitalism of the South... They have survived the famine – but can they survive the free market? Here's Amos...

 

REPORTER:  Amos Roberts

The students at this boarding school are slaves to a punishing routine. They’re woken for exercise just after six - and apart from a couple of free hours, they’re studying till nine at night. It’s lights out at eleven – and seven hours later it starts all over again. The students here are all defectors from North Korea – and they have a lot of catching up to do.

 

GWAK JONG-MOON, PRINCIPAL (Translation):  Everything is a challenge. 

 

Gwak Jong-Moon is the Principal of Hangyeore Middle and High School.

 

GWAK JONG-MOON (Translation): There’s psychological confusion.  There are physical ailments which are due to malnourishment.  For example, the osteoporosis rate is 64%.  Students are about 14cm shorter than in South Korea and they’re too skinny. Poverty… All they have are the clothes they stand up in.

 

Most of the students here didn’t want to be identified. They still have family in North Korea who could be punished if they were exposed as defectors.  But those with nothing to fear agreed to show their faces.

 

SHIN HO-RAE, SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHER (Translation): Do you know how many defectors there are in South Korea?

 

STUDENT (Translation):  A thousand.

 

STUDENT (Translation):  5000.

 

STUDENT (Translation):   20,000.

 

SHIN HO-RAE (Translation):  Yes, 20,000.  Currently there are 20,000 defectors in South Korea.

 

Ten years ago there were less than a thousand North Koreans here, but since the late nineties famine has driven many to flee.

 

SHIN HO-RAE (Translation):  Is there anybody who left North Korea in 2007?

 

STUDENT (Translation):  Not me.

 

SHIN HO-RAE (Translation): In 2007?  Put up your hand.

 

Just last year more than 3,000 arrived in the south.  Many of the children who come have missed out on years of education, and have difficulty adjusting.  The government is worried about the long-term costs if these students fall through the cracks. So it set up the Hangyeore school four years ago – despite strong opposition from local residents.

 

SHIN HO-RAE (Translation): They lived all their lives with anti-communist ideologies and it wasn’t easy for them to change. When it was announced that the school will be built here there was a huge commotion because they said a communist school was being built, in their eyes… We think of communists as having horns or being scary… They were worried that there would be a lot of criminals. They thought of this school as a kind of prison.

 

With state-of-the art facilities, a wide range of classes and devoted teachers, Hangyeore is far from a prison.  But there’s no doubt many of the students need to “unlearn” their childhood indoctrination.  A collection of school textbooks from North Korea gives some idea of what they’ve been taught.

 

BOOK TITLES (Translation): “The Childhood of the Great Leader Kim Jung-il.” and “Preparing for War.”

 

The little tank is going.

Away goes our tank.

Shooting the American bastards.

Away goes our tank.

  

SHIN HO-RAE (Translation):  Do you learn social studies?

 

STUDENT (Translation):  About communism and socialism.

 

SHIN HO-RAE (Translation): Did you lean about history? …

 

STUDENT (Translation):  Yes, world history.  Kim Jung-il’s history.

 

SHIN HO-RAE (Translation): Kim Jung-il’s history? Kim Jong-il’s birthday is..…Feb 16.

 

STUDENT (Translation):  Yes.  The day we get gifts.

 

SHIN HO-RAE (Translation): You get presents on his birthday?

 

STUDENT (Translation):  Yes.

 

GWAK JONG-MOON (Translation):  They let go of the brainwashing and the ideological education they’d internalised as soon as they arrive in South Korea because they themselves realise how useless all that brainwashing and ideological education is.

 

SHIN HO-RAE (Translation): Does anyone come from Musan?

 

Shin Ho-Rae is the school’s social studies teacher.  He thinks that while these kids have a lot to learn, they also have a lot to teach South Koreans.

 

SHIN HO-RAE (Translation): I gather that some of you have actually seen public executions.

 

STUDENT (Translation):  I have.

 

SHIN HO-RAE (Translation):  Have you really?

 

STUDENT (Translation):  At a market.

 

SHIN HO-RAE (Translation):  Weren’t you scared?

 

STUDENT (Translation):  It was OK.

 

SHIN HO-RAE (Translation):  OK?

 

GWAK JONG-MOON (Translation):  The number who have witnessed public executions… is around 70% to 80%   And the number who have seen family and relatives starve to death is in the vicinity of 82%. What they’ve experienced in North Korea exceeds anything we can imagine.

 

SHIN HO-RAE (Translation):  What education did you get in primary school there?

 

STUDENT (Translation):  I didn’t go to school.

 

SHIN HO-RAE (Translation):  So what did you do instead?

 

STUDENT (Translation):  I was just working.

 

SHIN HO-RAE (Translation):  Just working… Where was that and what kind of job did you do?

 

STUDENT (Translation):  It was farming work.

 

SHIN HO-RAE (Translation):   Oh, farming. Did you make a lot of money?

 

STUDENT (Translation):  No, just money for food.

 

SHIN HO-RAE (Translation): Is there a need for food in North Korea?

 

STUDENT (Translation):  Yes.

 

SHIN HO-RAE (Translation):  So it’s quite common for people starve to death in North Korea?

 

STUDENT (Translation):  Yes, many.  Where I was, many people died.

 

SHIN HO-RAE (Translation):  No grass to eat?

 

STUDENT (Translation):  There isn’t even any grass to eat? You pick some up and put it in a pot with lots of water and you add a little flour and boil it, like a soup.  You use plenty of water to make it seem like a lot.  Your stomach fills up right away but very soon you’re hungry again.

 

It was hunger that drove tens of thousands of North Koreans to escape. They ended up in China – sometimes begging for money and food.  This Dateline story from 2000 provides clues to what life was like for some of the kids from Hangyeore.

 

Defectors escaped to China by sneaking across the Tumen River, which marks North Korea’s northern border. They lived in hiding from the police – terrified of being returned.

 

OLD STORY (Translation):  Though we don’t have a house, living like this in hiding, at least we eat rice, which is rarely available in North Korea, even for well-off families.  We just hope we don’t get caught.

 

Everything else is fine, except for the fear and distress.

  

Those sent back were labelled traitors and ended up in a labour camp - some were even executed. In order to survive, the refugees were forced to make unbearable decisions. These parents had already put their two daughters in an orphanage and here they’re filmed giving up their son as well.

 

OLD STORY (Translation):  It wouldn’t be so bad if we’d parted without crying.  When the girls left, I knew it was for their own good.  I walked away without crying but this is so painful. 

 

Soo-hwee and her husband had left their young daughter in North Korea when they fled.

 

OLD STORY (Translation):   What did you tell your child when you left? 

 

SOO-HWEE (Translation):  I just put her to bed….

 

Soo-hwee lived on the run, hiding from suspicious neighbours. Still, she wanted to pay people smugglers to bring her daughter to China.

 

SOO-HWEE (Translation):  I believe that some day in the future, the hardship will be justified.  My family will be together some day and we’ll talk about the hardship we endured.  I cling to that hope.

 

This is Soo-hwee now. Ten years later she’s living in South Korea – with her second husband and three new children. Getting here wasn’t easy. In 2002 she was arrested and sent back to a North Korean prison; but she bribed her way out – and took her daughter with her when she fled back to China. A year later she flew to South Korea.

 

SOO-HWEE (Translation):  I was so anxious. Then, when I heard, “We are nearly there, we’re now over Korean territory” I was told to look down. The moment I looked down I cried. It’s hard to describe that feeling. Now I feel safe.

When I first came, even when I heard the wail of the police sirens I was frightened and I had to ask myself, “Am I really in Korea?” I was like that. Sometimes even when sleeping I’d wake up when I heard a strange noise.  Then I’d say, “Ah, I’m in Korea.”

 

In order to reach South Korea from China, most defectors need to first make their way to another country where they can claim asylum. The students at Hangyeore have travelled through much of Asia – sometimes without their families - in a single-minded search for safety.

 

SHIN HO-RAE (Translation):  When you came to Mongolia did you use a car or walk?

 

STUDENT (Translation):  I walked.

 

SHIN HO-RAE (Translation):  What did you find most difficult?

 

STUDENT (Translation):  There were fences. We had to get past those.

 

SHIN HO-RAE (Translation):   Did you climb over them or cut through them?

 

STUDENT (Translation):  We climbed.  It was painful trying to hang on.  It was so hard climbing over and holding on tightly.  And if you can’t find your way, you get caught and killed. Some of the fences are curved and it’s dark so you get confused and end up climbing the same fence.  I went over one three times. 

 

SHIN HO-RAE (Translation):  Three times?

 

STUDENT (Translation):  But I got there in the end.

 

SHIN HO-RAE (Translation):  You made it.

 

STUDENT (Translation):  Yes.

 

After they arrive in South Korea all defectors are brought here – the Hanawon resettlement centre. The government built this place in 1999 in order to deal with the large numbers of defectors who’d started arriving.  After studying what happened in Germany when the Berlin Wall came down, the government wanted to be ready, just in case.

 

PROFESSOR YOON IN-JIN, SOCIOLOGIST:  We learned that we needed to prepare for the cost of national reunification.

 

Yoon In-Jin is a sociology professor who advises the government on its resettlement program.

 

PROFESSOR YOON IN-JIN:   The small number of North Korean defectors in Korea can be a litmus test of our ability to achieve social and psychological integration after national unification.

 

Security at Hanawon is tight, and I wasn’t permitted to film the residents’ faces. During their three-month stay here, they’re given a crash course on life in the south, and equipped with some of the skills they’ll need to survive. The centre’s Director-General, Youn Miryang, says it’s never enough.

 

YOUN MIRYANG, HANAWON DIRECTOR (Translation):  No matter how much we educate them the difference between north and south is too great and what they have learned all their lives really doesn’t help here in the South.  Culture shock… you can’t even call it that.  Because the difference is so vast they don’t even realize it and they just fall into culture shock.

 

South Korea might share a language, culture and border with it is northern neighbour – but it’s hard to imagine two more different worlds. Plagued with shortages of food and fuel, North Korea is a closed and repressive regime, where the state trumps the individual every time. South Korea is a high-tech  wonderland – and one of the most fiercely competitive societies in the world.

 

YOUN MIRYANG (Translation):  The biggest challenge for them is adjusting to the competitive society. Everything is new to them. We even have to teach them how to vote in Korea.  They expect the state to provide for them but in South Korea one has to compete. It’s not the government, but it’s up to individual to make ends meet and this is what is difficult for them.

 

Defectors do receive generous financial support form the government, but they still struggle.

 

SOO-HWEE (Translation):  In the early days, when I was in Hanawon, I thought I wanted to get away from there quickly. But once I came out of Hanawon, people who would come out of Hanawon before told me that “you’d wish you were back there again.”

 

After 60 years of separation there are big differences in language and culture between the two Koreas. Defectors say they’re discriminated against and often have trouble finding and holding down a job.

 

SOO-HWEE (Translation):  It was hard. It was very difficult for two or three years. I felt a bit lost.  I thought about going back.  “What if I was in China? Maybe life in China was better.”

 

Young defectors find it especially hard because of the South Korean obsession with education.  Success here is measured by how you perform in your exams and what university you get into.

 

STUDENT (Translation):   Studying is a big headache. It’s too hard. Not only is studying tough but adapting to life here is very hard. I’ve thought many times that I might go back to China. Go back to China and enjoy an easy life. I think we’re studying too much here.

 

STUDENT 2 (Translation):   I came out of Hanawon about 2 months ago. I don’t know anything. Whenever I go to my father’s house he keeps lecturing me, “This country is a hard nut to crack.” And the way I feel here, I agree.

 

It often seems daunting, but these young defectors know that if they apply themselves here they can achieve more than they ever dreamed of in the north.

 

STUDENT 2 (Translation): In North Korea there is limit to how successful you can become. Children of senior officials, they naturally think that 80 – 90% will become senior officials. The children of labourers, they can only get up to their parents’ level. The limit is already set.

 

Today’s the last day at school before the Autumn harvest festival, Chuseok - and the students are making traditional rice cakes.   Chuseok’s one of the most important holidays on the Korean calendar, celebrated in both the north and south.  It’s a poignant time for the defectors, because traditionally this is when families come together and visit the graves of their ancestors.

 

SOO-HWEE (Translation):  During the festive season like Chuseok or New Year’s Day, I used to cry. I’d have a drink at home and feel nostalgic.  We’d get drunk at Hanawon and reminisce about the old days. We’d just get more homesick and say, “I miss my mum” or “I miss my dad”. We used to cry and carry on.

 

It’s taken her almost 8 years - but Soo-hwee finally feels like she belongs in South Korea.  She has big ambitions for her children – and they’re ambitions she has in common with many South Korean parents.

 

SOO-HWEE (Translation):  I hope this one becomes a doctor. That’s what I hope. I have big expectations for my fourth child. I hope… she becomes a celebrity or someone famous. I hope she’ll benefit us.

 

GEORGE NEGUS: Amos Roberts reporting from that troubled and divided peninsula... There's more on our website, including fact files on North and South Korea, and you can see in full that award-winning Dateline story from 2000, and a follow-up from 2001, on the refugees struggling to escape from North Korea. That's at sbs.com.au/dateline.

 

 

 

Reporter/Camera

AMOS ROBERTS

 

Producer

VICTORIA STROBL

 

Fixer

Jason Jongwook Hong

 

Editors

NICK O’BRIEN

DAVID POTTS

KERRIE-ANN WALLACH

 

Translation/Subtitling

SUE GOLAFSHAN

Jung-eun Kim

 

Original Music composed by

VICKI HANSEN 

 

10^th October 2010