The Fate of North Korean Defectors: Political Puppets or Social Outcasts? - By Hokyung Sung

            Although now almost fading in my memories, I can still recall the pervading ambience of that night’s dinner. All was so very ordinary, even a bit dull; nothing dramatic or turbulent as I imagined it should have been, but quite eventless. Could I, without having been informed beforehand, have ever noticed the incurable scar of the past behind the clever-looking eyes of the woman in front of me? Or even the slightest hint of cyanide poison in her expressions? Probably not. Neither could have anybody else identified the woman to be a criminal of any sort – let alone even dream that she was a former terrorist who blew up an airplane full of one hundred fifteen innocent civilians.

Kim Hyon Hui. Now she lives in an undisclosed location.

             Her name was once Ok Hwa, and once Mayumi Hachiya – the aliases of a special-trained North Korean secret agent. Now, she lives as Kim Hyon Hui, and works as a current affairs program host at TV Chosun, a staunchly anti-North broadcaster. Her story, her testimony, is that of pure drama, pure epic; its suspense and intricacy triumphs that of fictional Hollywood movie plots.

             My chance to have dinner with her as a member of her distant family was an uncomfortable privilege, to be honest. I was curious and, embarrassingly enough, a bit excited. But at the same time, it was inevitably somewhat mind-boggling to see a person responsible for the death of 115 people – the infamous 1987 bombing of Korean Air Flight 858 – enjoying dinner peacefully just as I was. This was by no means a personal or character assessment; she was truly a warm-hearted, likable person. But hearing how she was to soon appear weekly in TV Chosun to discuss North Korean affairs, I could not help but question what her role was in South Korea – was she standing by herself, or could it be that she was merely being used as a political puppet by the South Korean government and media?

The latter was sadly but undoubtedly true at one point in history. During the days immediately following the terrible explosion in 1987, still unidentified and under the custody of the Secret Service, Kim was exploited by the then-autocratic regime as a propaganda puppet. Korea then was facing a turning point: the 1987 presidential election was to be its first democratic direct election. Two weeks after the accident, and “coincidentally” just the day before the election, Kim, still known to the public as Mayumi, arrived in Korea under heavy escort. She dramatically appeared in the 9 p.m. television news as the offender. As expected, the main article on the first page of the next morning’s newspaper discussed prospects for the presidential election; in the corner, it showed a giant picture of the fearless, allegedly North Korean terrorist, Mayumi, who had bombed the South Korean plane – a heartless North Korean mass murderer.

The First Page of Chosun Ilbo on 1987.12.16 - The Day of the 13th Presidential Election

(Source: Chosun Ilbo)

Mounting on the fear of an additional North Korean attack, the election was easily won by the conservative party leader who had been a faithful aide to the preceding dictator. Such outspoken and deliberate political machination certainly engendered widespread criticism and even spawned far-fetched conspiracy theories as extreme as those that accused the South Korean Secret Service of planning the explosion from the very beginning and staging a self-fabricated scenario.

             Kim Hyon Hui is not alone in the list of former North Korean personnel who were a deeply integrated part of the autocratic regime. Another former secret agent Kim Shin-jo, a member and one of the two survivors of a North Korean assassination team that vowed to eliminate ROK president Park Jung-Hee in 1968, now has become a Christian pastor with conservative political inclination. Hwang Jang-yop, a major politician (former secretary of the North Korean Workers Party) who is known to have played a large role in creating North Korea's state ideology the Juche ideology, defected to the South in 1997 with his aide and became a harsh critic of North Korea. Without exception, both Kim Sin-Jo and Hwang have been among the most frequent interviewees and guests of right-wing mass media and conservative administrations.

             Whereas these former vanguards of North Korean tyranny enjoy a life of relative prosperity and convenience, the scene at the other hemisphere of North Korean defectors is not so bright and beautiful. According to South Korea's Ministry of Unification, currently there are about 24,613 North Korean defectors livingin South Korea, and shockingly enough, about half of them are unemployed or struggling to stably mingle within the South Korean society. This in large is due to the sad reality that they are utterly under-educated, having “at most a few years of elementary school education” in the North – and that too, one “more focused on political indoctrination than reading and math.”

However, the lack of proper education is not the only barrier that blocks the path for the defectors’ peaceful adaptation. Experts say that many young defectors are given a chance in prestigious South Korean universities with the help of affirmative action policies, but that even among them, it turns out, half or more choose to drop out. Apart from the inability to follow the curriculum, the main challenge is the defectors’ emotional problems – caused by trauma, stress, and most importantly, the not-so-friendly attitudes of their classmates. Defectors say they are often shunned for their Northern accent, their small stature, and the traumas that haunt them. Just think about it. Isn’t it true and sadly indisputable that we view these former "assassins" and autocrats with an indescribable air of amusement and awe, but at the same time that the average (in world standards, much below average) North Korean defector is met with a hostile and condescending look?

The Cross of Golgotha

In Hermann Hesse’s renowned bildungsroman Demian, there appears an interesting, unorthodox interpretation of the often-called “Good Thief Bad Thief” story. According to the bible, just before the thieves were about to be crucified next to Jesus, one of the two, the Penitent Thief, admitted all his wrongdoings, expressed true repentance, and promised his faithfulness to God. The Good Thief was allegedly allowed to ascend into Heaven. However, in the novel Demian, the spiritual leader of the protagonist, suggests this novel viewpoint: “If you had to pick a friend from between the two thieves or decide which of the two you had rather trust, you most certainly wouldn’t select that sniveling convert. No, the other fellow…… he follows his destiny to its appointed end and does not turn coward and forswear the devil, who has aided and abetted him until then.”
          Although far from being analogous to the situation in hand, the position where North Korean defectors have to yield to the impure motives of the government is quite similar to where the thieves stood: they are, in a way, forced to a “conversion of faith” that refuses them refuge without the endurance of political abuse. Can we accuse these “thieves” who have left what was like hell in the North to find their own “heaven” in the South? No. It is and it must be the government’s task to ensure a system in which political confessions do not have to be prerequisites to a successful assimilation to the Southern society, a system in which the innocent can find themselves in an unqualified, non-elitist “heaven” of life.

Ironically, the treatment of defectors, I vaguely recall, was one of the many conversation topics at that night’s dinner table. A naïve child then, I sat there and listened to the passionate stories told by my grandfather’s cousin’s daughter – seven long ties of blood from me – about the life of defectors. There, speaking sincerely from her heart, she was for certain neither a puppet of anything else nor a subject of awe to be looked at differently. She was simply Kim Hyon Hui, a happy mother of two, eating Chinese food, meeting distant relatives and having a nice talk. Like her, someday the average defector might start to be identified as the true person he or she is, no longer as “the defector” or “the North Korean” that he or she now lives branded as. Today, I just hope that “someday” comes soon.

For More Information

"Drop in North Korean Refugees to South Korea." BBC News. BBC, 01 Feb. 2013. Web. 15 Apr. 2013.

Fackler, Martin. "Young North Korean Defectors Struggle in the South." The New York Times. The New York Times, 12 July 2012. Web. 15 Apr. 2013.

“South Korea Passes Resolution on North Korea Refugees." BBC News. BBC, 28 February 2012. Web. 15 April 2013.

U.N. Security Council. “Provisional Verbatim Record of the Two Thousand Seven Hundred Ninety-First Meeting” (S/PV.2791) 16 Feb. 1988. (Online) Web. Apr. 15, 2013. n.d.