Defector mammonism? Pot calls
kettle black By Aidan
Foster-Carter
There's a guy in Portland,
Oregon called Michael Munk who sends me stuff.
He'll send it to you too; just sign up. [1]
Michael's interests are political and
wide-ranging; they include Korea. As his e-mail
moniker attests (lastmarx), he's an unrepentant
radical. That's an endangered species in today's
United States, whose entire political spectrum has
lurched far to the right in recent years. His
politics are not mine, but I'm glad he's out
there. [2]
Anyway, it's him I must thank
for passing on a truly bizarre article which I had
missed in the Chosun Ilbo, one of South Korea's
leading conservative daily papers. Published on
June 15, this was
headlined: "Defectors'
Material Obsessions Raising Concern in Seoul." [3]
Dunno about you, but I spend a lot of time
thinking about North Korean defectors. Thinking
about them, but also and in the first instance
feeling for them. What a life! First, you have the
misfortune to be born North Korean. Then terrible
things happen to you: watching family members die
of hunger, arbitrary cruel punishment, and so on.
(Barbara Demick's brilliant book Nothing to
Envy gives several heart-breaking, terrifying
stories.)
So you decide there has to be
more than life to this. That plunges you into
fresh nightmares. First you must get into China,
even if that means being sold into marriage or
worse. (Most defectors these days are women.) Then
you have to duck out and make your way all across
China, hoping no one will finger you and send you
back to Kim Jong-il's tender mercies. (Beijing, to
its shame, refuses to recognize any North Koreans
as refugees.) Finally you cross into Laos, Myanmar
or Vietnam - none of which is easy, or fully safe
- before pitching up at the South Korean Embassy
in Thailand. Free at last!
A new
beginning, but no happy ending. Unsurprisingly,
North Koreans who make it to the South are few.
For decades a tiny trickle, the cumulative total
since 1953 is about 23,000, most of whom have come
since 2005. Arrivals are now running at just under
3,000 annually.
Given the way Koreans
often bang on about unification, you might think
that South Koreans would embrace these suffering
long-lost brethren (or sistren). But you'd be
wrong. The South Korean state has grown ever less
generous, while most ordinary South Koreans
couldn't care less.
So life is tough for
the newcomers. Most have little education and few
skills. They share a language, sort of, but are
totally out of their depth at first in the
fast-paced, high-tech South.
There's more.
Koreans are a clannish lot: You look after your
own, and who you know is crucial. Defectors by
definition know nobody. In a society where
connections count, they don't have any. (One of
Demick's samples did have family in the South: a
rare exception.) All in all they are ill-equipped
to succeed in South Korea's highly competitive
hothouse.
So they survive, but few
flourish. Defectors' unemployment is above
average, and so is their crime rate. Their plight
is both a reproach and a warning. If Seoul can't
absorb even these 23,000, how on earth will it
handle all 23 million North Koreans when
unification dawns?
Personally, living a
comfortable life in the West I feel very uneasy
criticizing people who have been through hell on
earth. The US scholar Marcus Noland, whose
prodigious output on North Korea includes a major
recent survey of refugees (with Stephan Haggard),
[4] in January told the Wall Street Journal's Evan
Ramstad that "most of these people, in a clinical
setting, would probably be diagnosed with
post-traumatic stress disorder". [5]
Others by contrast are happy to trash
defectors. Worst are those who refuse to believe
them. No sociologist needs telling that refugees
are not a random sample, but there are tried and
tested ways to deal with that (like cross-checking
where possible). What is unwarranted is to extend
this caveat into a blanket skepticism towards
defectors as tellers of tall tales. Now who would
do that? You guessed. It's the same doves who'd
shoot the messenger, of whom I wrote recently. [6]
The Chosun Ilbo article is equally
offensive, but takes a different tack. It reports
a seminar on defectors, hosted by the Institute
for Modern Korea (IMK) at the Academy of Korean
Studies (AMK). The AKS is highly prestigious, but
I wasn't aware of its IMK as having defector
expertise.
The press could have slanted
what may in reality have been a more balanced and
nuanced discussion. But as reported, the so-called
experts seem more concerned with criticizing
defectors than understanding their situation.
As the Chosun put it: "North Korean
defectors who have relocated to the South to build
new lives for themselves and their families tend
to obsessively pursue money and remain alienated
from their communities." Or again: "Many have
become overrun with unhealthy ideas of
materialism, or 'distorted mammonism'."
Obsessively pursue money? That's rich. If
true, it suggests the newcomers are learning fast.
Few societies anywhere are as obsessed as today's
South Korea with money, not to mention status and
generally getting on. It's a rat race. The right
school, the latest app: gotta have it!
So
if defectors follow suit, who can blame them? Yet
on closer inspection the case studies given don't
even support this. Take Ms Han, aged 45, who
arrived three years ago. Always tired from working
at several jobs late into the night, she says:
"The only idea I have in my head is that I have to
make money to bring my younger sister's family
over from the North."
This the snooty
Southerners dub mammonism? Apparently so.
According to the Chosun, "many expressed concern
that money-worshipping has become a new trend
among the North Koreans, as they squirrel away
funds to bring their relatives over".
Hold
on. It might be money-worship if the defectors
selfishly ignored the families they left behind in
North Korea. But on the contrary, their first
thought is to save up so their kin can come and
share in their new good fortune So let's give this
fine behavior its proper name: altruism,
self-sacrifice and family loyalty. These are
virtues, not vices. Yet the seminar for some
reason seemed hell-bent on trashing this, and also
on setting up a false dichotomy:
"Instead
of chasing the kind of 'wholesome individualism'
encouraged by a free democratic society, many of
the refugees tend of [sic] alienate their fellow
defectors due to feelings of shame, the
participants said. They also found that the North
Koreans suffer from having too little time to
adjust to a capitalist system, and mainly end up
as work horses."
The second sentence is
more realistic, but the first is both obscure and
deeply ironic. South Korea itself is hardly a
paragon of individualism, wholesome or otherwise.
To the contrary, many in Seoul bemoan the almost
instinctive groupthink that holds sway in
everything from education to corporate life: a
trait which enforces social conformism while
stifling creativity. If a defector wanted to
pursue individualism, where would she find a role
model exactly?
Yet these stupid strictures
add insult to injury. It's not as if defectors
want to toil from dawn till past dusk; they just
have little choice. Ms Han again: "I want to learn
something new, but I have no time." She'd like to
better herself. What she lacks is not attitude but
opportunity.
Not according to Joseph Cho,
chief of research at the Police Science Institute
and the only scholar the Chosun quotes by name. He
speaks of "an ironic situation that has North
Koreans becoming more materialistic than their
South Korean counterparts: 'Defectors are obsessed
with the mistaken belief that they must make money
at all costs in order to survive in a capitalist
society. This is the wrong way to look at things,
and it make their attempt to settle in South Korea
that much more difficult'."
Has Dr Cho
never heard of Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of
needs? To oversimplify, this states what is surely
obvious: that we have to satisfy basic needs for
food and shelter first and foremost. Esteem and
self-actualization are all very well, but they
come later. First things first.
As already
noted, I'm astonished at the suggestion that
defectors are more materialistic even than South
Koreans. Isn't it rather that the latter can enjoy
the luxury of being able to ponder the meaning of
life and wider goals, because their basic material
needs are taken care of? I bet older South
Koreans, who worked like fury so their ingrate
children could enjoy today's affluent lifestyles,
would understand North Koreans who do the same now
for their kinsfolk. Let's hope that the blame
here lies with lousy journalism. If Joseph Cho
actually has a more balanced view, I'd be
delighted to hear it. Some at the seminar
evidently did, as the Chosun writes: "Others
blamed South Koreans for seeing the defectors as
cheap laborers rather than making greater efforts
to embrace them and understand their
difficulties." Amen to that.
Blaming the
victim is a cheap shot, and North Korean defectors
are victims twice over. It's high time South
Koreans embraced them fully. They don't need
lectures about materialism from a smug yet deeply
uncaring if not hostile host society. They need
help to stand on their own feet and space to learn
new skills, so they can compete and achieve in
their own right.
Defectors are the future:
the first harbingers of tomorrow's reunified
Korea. They deserve respect and understanding, not
pompous finger-wagging and hand-wringing. Bah
humbug.
Aidan
Foster-Carter is honorary senior research
fellow in sociology and modern Korea at Leeds
University, and a freelance consultant, writer and
broadcaster on Korean affairs. A regular visitor
to the peninsula, he has followed North Korea for
over 40 years.
(Copyright 2011 Asia
Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please contact us about sales, syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
