In early November, North
Korean TV viewers were exposed to an unusual
sight: official North Korean TV (admittedly, the
only TV North Korea has) broadcast a press
conference in which a young man and young woman
confessed their former misdeeds and begged for
forgiveness.
In 2008, Kim Kywang-hyok and
Ko Chong-nam escaped from North Korea to the
South. They met and married in the South, but a
few months ago they chose to flee the capitalist
hell of the South and return to loving bosom of
the Dear Leader.
That is more or less
literally what they said during their press
conference - the couple claimed that they decided
to move back
after they were moved by the
sight of Young Marshall Kim Jong-eun visiting a
kindergarten. Facing such a moving sight, they
realized that their child should not face any more
of the living hell of the South and returned
forthwith to the great fatherly love of Kim
Jong-eun.
This press conference is just
another sign of the rather dramatic reversal of
North Korea's attitude towards refugee-related
issues.
Until the mid-1990s, only a
handful of North Koreans fled the country and
moved to the South (a dozen persons a years at
most). However, in the mid-1990s, North Korea was
struck by a disastrous famine, and around the same
time the domestic surveillance and border control
systems collapsed. As a result, at times of
famine, a large number of North Koreans left the
country and crossed the porous border to China in
search of food and work.
In 1999, an
estimated 200,000 North Koreans illegally resided
in China - largely doing poorly paid unskilled
work. In subsequent years the number went down,
but still remained considerable - now there are
some 30,000 North Koreans hiding in China and a
comparable number of North Korean citizens who
stay there officially.
Some of these
people have eventually managed to find their way
to the South. As a result, from around 2000 the
hitherto statistically insignificant community of
North Korean refugees in the South began to grow
fast. As of now, there are 24,000 North Koreans
residing in the South - an impressive 24-times
increase in little over a decade.
Unlike
the earlier era, most of these people now stay in
contact with their families, using a network of
brokers - professional intermediaries who deal
with money transfers, letter delivery and if
necessary people smuggling (across the Sino-Korean
border). Chinese mobile phones are smuggled to the
North in large numbers, and this penetration also
has made a great difference. Refugees now can call
their relatives in North Korea, so long as these
relatives live in the vicinity of the Sino-Korean
border, where mobiles can pick up signals from
relay stations in China.
Until about a
year ago, the North Korean government essentially
ignored the existence of the refugee problem.
Refugees were occasionally mentioned in some
confidential papers, which only party cadres and
security officials could read, but the general
media remained completely silent on the issue.
This was understandable: even though official
propaganda has recently become prepared to admit
that North Korea is not the world's most
prosperous society, it still claims that all North
Koreans are unified in their unwavering loyalty to
the current Kim and would never think about
willingly leaving their beloved country.
This attitude changed recently. Starting
from the last summer, the North Korean media has
begun to talk about the refugees. Interestingly,
they refugees are described as talbukja,
which is word that was coined and is widely used
in South Korea itself.
In 2012, at least
three major media events that dealt with refugees.
In one case, the North Korean media reported that
some of the refugee groups in the South had
dispatched agents to North Korea to commit
terrorist attacks. The object of their planned
attack was not exactly animate, since according to
the report these agents of imperialism were sent
to blow up statues of Generalissimo Kim Il-sung,
founder and former leader of the Democratic
People's Republic of Korea.
The two other
media events were press conferences in which
returned refugees begged for forgiveness and
described their sufferings in the capitalist hell.
The first such case was that of an old lady called
Pak In-suk, who was shown to the North Korean
populace last summer. In November, the
aforementioned conference of Kim and Ko also took
place. Judging by recent trends, one can almost be
certain that such reality shows will become a
major part of Pyongyang's propaganda repertoire
for the foreseeable future.
It is
difficult to say what drove these particular
refugees back. It has been even suggested that
their entire defection was an operation by North
Korean secret services, so they were Pyongyang
agents from the beginning. While this is not
completely impossible, such an idea does not seem
particularly likely. This correspondent strongly
suspects that most of these returned refugees are
genuine.
From my own interactions with
refugees in the South, I have become aware that
many of these people experience serious social,
psychological, cultural and financial problems
that tend to be especially acute in the first
years after their arrival. Many of them have told
me that at some point during their sojourn in the
South they entertained the idea of returning to
the North.
While North Korean defectors in
the South tend to live significantly more affluent
lives in than they did in the North, they soon
discover that their earlier expectations were not
particularly realistic and that it is very
difficult for them to adjust to South Korean
society. In most cases, they can only get
unskilled work, for which their income will be
significantly lower than the South Korean average.
Things are further exacerbated by the suspicious
and somewhat hostile attitude of many South
Koreans.
So one should not be surprised
when learning that a relatively small number of
North Korean refugees have had enough and decided
to move back to the North. If rumors are to be
believed, such things have happened in the past,
but until recently neither North nor South Korean
authorities were willing to attract attention to
such "double defections". In North Korea, such
returnees were, according to persistent rumors,
treated with great leniency and given their own
lecture circuit. Nevertheless, until early 2012,
the refugee problem was officially non-existent in
the official North Korean media space.
Why
did the official attitude change? There are
seemingly two reasons. First, the North Korean
government has begun to worry about the growing
political impact of refugees and has decided to do
something about it. Second, the North Korean
authorities realized that returning refugees, if
handled with some skill, have huge propaganda
potential.
To start with, the North Korean
government has valid reason to worry about the
potential impact of refugees in the South.
Refugees now constitute roughly 0.1% of North
Korea's entire population (a very small, but not
completely insignificant number), but they still
can exercise significant influence over their
extended families and friends within North Korea.
The South-based refugees send $10-15
million home annually (these transfers are
technically illegal but easy to arrange). These
remittances are not negligible and their existence
is a further demonstration of South Korea's
prosperity. Illicit phone calls, letters and
stories are also major carriers of dangerous
knowledge about the outside world, above all about
the rich and attractive South Korea.
Last,
but not least, politically committed refugees form
the core of the most militant anti-Pyongyang
groups operating outside North Korea (even though
the vast majority of refugees are remarkably
apolitical).
It seems that it was Marshall
Kim Jong-eun himself who initiated the reverse of
North Korea's refugee policy - at least, the first
signs of changes coincided with his ascent to
power.
Marshal Kim did not limit himself
to propaganda alone: a need for stronger policing
of the border is understood, too. It is widely
believed that the new North Korean leader (at the
time still a recently appointed heir) initiated
the considerable increase in border security in
2010; allegedly, he said that the "border with
China is more important as a line of ideological
struggle than even the DMZ". This is indeed the
case: the Sino-Korean border was porous; the DMZ
was and is not.
Admittedly, heightened
border security is bearing fruit. The year 2012
saw a sudden and dramatic drop of refugees
arriving in the South. According to recently
published data, only 1,508 North Korean refugees
entered the South in 2012 - roughly half of the
2011 level (there were 2,706 refugees in 2011).
This unprecedented drop is understandable: due to
the heavy presence of border guards and police, it
has become very difficult and risky to cross the
border.
At the same time, policing is not
enough. It makes perfect sense to persuade North
Koreans that escape is a bad option, that life in
the affluent South is far more difficult than it
might appear at first glance. This is not easy to
demonstrate when many North Koreans watch South
Korean TV shows or movies and when rumors about
South Korea's unbelievable affluence spread via
China. The use of returning refugees is therefore
all too logical, since their testimony may be
taken seriously (well, in some cases at least).
In their conference, Kim and Ko described
their sufferings in South Korea in great detail.
There is little doubt that their performance
(marked as it was by exaggerated gesturing,
outbursts of tears and other cheap theatrics) was
carefully scripted. It is not incidental that they
explicitly mentioned the great difference between
the reality of South Korean life and the lifestyle
depicted in South Korean TV shows. Their
scriptwriters obviously understand that many who
were watching the official Pyongyang broadcast
also secretly watch South Korean TV shows.
Kim and Kom also stated that North Korean
refugees cannot buy houses of their own and have
great difficulties getting jobs. That is true,
even though they predictably failed to mention
that the South Korean government provides refugees
with heavily subsidized public housing. The
message was simple: South Korea might not be hell
for many native-born South Koreans, but it is
clearly not a place where North Korean refugees
are welcome, and thus it is better to stay home
and not be seduced by the shining bright lights of
not-so-distant Seoul.
Will this propaganda
work? Perhaps yes, but only to some extent. As a
former Soviet citizen, the present author
remembers well how similar methods were employed
in Soviet agitprop of the 1970s and 1980s. In
those times, the Soviet audience was occasionally
treated to the sight of their fellow compatriots
who had been tricked by Western propaganda and
foolishly left the socialist motherland only to
discover that life in a capitalist society is full
of suffering and deprivation.
The Soviet
audience remained unpersuaded (even though the
post-communist experience demonstrated that much
of what this propaganda said about capitalism
turned out to be true). The stories of repenting
compatriots returning to the Soviet-union could
probably only mildly tarnish the glittering image
of the prosperous, democratic and free Western
countries.
Therefore, I strongly suspect
that the new propaganda line of Pyongyang will
have only a marginal impact on popular attitudes
toward the South. Nonetheless, it is a smart move,
which tells that Young Marshal understands where
the threats to his rule come from.
Dr
Andrei Lankov is a lecturer in the faculty
of Asian Studies, China and Korea Center,
Australian National University. He graduated from
Leningrad State University with a PhD in Far
Eastern history and China, with emphasis on Korea,
and his thesis focused on factionalism in the Yi
Dynasty. He has published books and articles on
Korea and North Asia. He is currently on leave,
teaching at Kookmin University, Seoul.
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