As the number of North Korean defectors who
reside in the South now inches toward 30,000, it is worth looking at where they
stand in society. Some see them as intermediaries that offer a glimpse of life
post-reunification, while others look at them with a much stronger bias,
likening them to ‘second-class citizens’. One unquestionable fact is that they
are members of society like any other, as the South prepares for unification.
Daily NK recently sat down with Sohn Kwang
Joo, the newly appointed head of Korea Hana Foundation (the North Korean Refugees Foundation), which works to help
defectors better settle down in the South, to learn more about his work and
future plans for the group.
1. It has been almost three months since you
took office. That could be a short or long period of time depending on how you
look at it. Have you fully settled in?
I’m now familiar with most of the main
work. If I were to use hiking as a metaphor, the past three months were like entering
the very foot of the mountain. When you go hiking, you start to sweat at some
point. In order for that to happen, I still have a ways to go. Because I used
to be a journalist, I put a lot of emphasis on ‘being in the field’. For three
months, I visited a lot of sites including places that defectors stay at,
schools that teenage defectors study at, and others. There’s a school named
Hangyeore High School, where they offer specialized education for teenage
defectors, and I visited that place twice.
2. It has been over ten years since Korea
Hana Foundation has provided support for defectors in the South. Do you think
the foundation has so far done well in playing its role?
It has been five years since the current
foundation was established. The ten years that you mentioned include the period
from when it was the Support Foundation for North Korean Escapees. The Hana
Foundation was built based on a legislation for the protection and support for
North Korean defectors, so there are roughly two fields that the foundation is
involved in. One is supporting the settlement of defectors, and the other is
using that as a basis to improve the conditions for reunification and making
actual preparations.
Another important task is ‘improving
perceptions within the South about defectors.’ For example, if there are
provocations from the North such as the Cheonan sinking or the Yeonpyeong
Island attack, they make defectors feel insecure for no reason. Some South
Koreans who don’t understand how things work in the North will point their
fingers at defectors blaming them for the death of South Korean soldiers even
though the attacks were from the dictatorship. These incidents are very
frequent. This is why we work to improve perceptions people have about
defectors.
We often speak of ‘reunification’ between
the two Koreas, but there are actually two concepts that we need to think
about. One would be ‘unification’ itself, which is in reference to unification
of territory, political systems, and as a diplomatic entity under the UN.
Second, there’s the idea of ‘integration’. This involves a large number of issues
including the integration of education, medical care, and welfare. In the case
of Germany, it has been 25 years since the East and West reunified, but
integration is still work in progress. Our work at the foundation will
encompass that task of integration. In other words, it deals with unification
within our daily lives and producing tangible results that will actually help
unify the country. It has been a bumpy ride of five to ten years at the
foundation, but all the while it has grown to handle much broader areas and
with better quality of work.
3. Some of the most pressing issues when it
comes to helping defectors settle in is supporting their efforts in employment
and also receiving treatment for PTSD. Can you tell us about the efforts the
foundation is making on those fronts?
That’s right. Employment and health are two
of the most important things for defectors. In terms of medical help, the
greatest issue is anxiety, having gone through life-threatening experiences in
the course of their escape. So they need continual and systematic treatment.
There are 29 Hana Centers across the country with some 100 counselors, so they
provide continual support for defectors in different areas.
When it comes to employment, we have
personalized programs to suit people’s needs. For example, we actively look for
jobs that would suit people’s characteristics, sign up for job postings, and
also have counselors accompany them when they go for job interviews. If they
secure a job, we also follow up on it. We’ve recently signed an agreement with
The Federation of Korean Industries, and we’re planning on running programs
that help boost defectors’ employment capacity.
 Image: Daily NK |
4. There are Hana Centers across the
country that are designed to help defectors settle down. There has been
criticism before that these centers are not pulling their weight. What’s your
evaluation of these centers?
Hana Centers are run by the Ministry of
Unification and managed by local governments. We provide support by dispatching
our counselors. From the administrative side of things, the ministry is the
body that draws up policies, and our foundation provides the support. Once
defectors leave the Hanawon resettlement center and are assigned to their
homes, we provide the actual aid for stability in their livelihoods, getting
jobs, receiving education and scholarship programs and so on.
In general, I think it’s good that the Hana
Foundation can play the role of an administrative hub in a systematic and
unified way. What’s very important though is strong cooperation with the
Ministry of Unification and other related agencies.
4-1. Some have said counselors who have
also escaped from North Korea should play a larger role at the regional Hana
Centers.
I would agree. Counselors need to have two
attributes to help defectors resettle. One would be helping them understand
South Korean society. The second would be understanding defectors. When it
comes to counselors who are also defectors, they understand the latter very
well, but there are some parts that they do not fully understand about South
Korea. That’s why we have a rough 20% ratio of defectors at Hana Foundation,
and counselors are surpassing that level. If there are talented defector
counselors, we’re are always interested in bringing them aboard.
5. Korea Hana Foundation seems to have a
half-government, half-civic group nature. I would imagine striking the right
balance between those two elements would be important. What kind of plans do
you have in that regard?
The foundation is a public entity that
falls under the purview of the Ministry of Unification. So that means it needs
to have very solid roots in the legal system and state institutions. As of the
end of October, the number of defectors who entered the South stood at 28,459.
Compared to the 50 million, that’s less than 0.1%. Within society, they are in
some of the lowest rankings. That’s why in dealing with them, laws and
principles are all very important, but we also need a lot of interest, love,
and understanding from the public. Realizing that on the foundation of laws and
principles would be the right answer.
Hana Foundation has the love and interest
needed for defectors. Also, under South Korea’s liberal democratic constitution
that values freedom, human rights, democracy, and rule of law, it is important
that things are governed by laws. North Korean defectors have not lived under
this rule of law but instead in a country where the teachings of the ‘suyreong’
(supreme leader) are more important. This is why we need to make sure they can
experience a soft landing in establishing a thought process based on the rule
of law. We need to run the foundation based on that chain of thought. The
foundation needs to be like a mother, warm and loving, but sometimes it needs
to be like a strict father as well. It needs to have both qualities.
5-1. To be able to have both qualities, can
you tell us in greater detail what kind of projects you would like to
implement?
The first place North Korean defectors go
to when they arrive in the South is the ‘Protection center for North Korean
escapees’. In the past it was called the ‘joint interrogation center’ but
because that sounded too authoritative, they gave it a new name. From here,
people go to the Hanawon resettlement center. At Hanawon, they learn about
liberal democracies and market economies, and once they’ve completed that
education, they move on to receive resettlement support from Hana Foundation.
What’s most important is the work-flow starting from the protection center and
moving on to Hanawon, Hana Foundation, and then Hana Center.
The most essential
part is the education that they receive to put their roots down in a democracy.
In other words, education is the most important element in ensuring they have a
soft landing in a democratic society. Education on globalization and universal
values with the foundation in democratic order is important. Teaching English
is also important and starting next year, we’ll probably have Chinese as well.
These elements are all very essential. Settling down in the South and becoming
part of the community has three main meanings. It means to become a shared community
in language, history, and culture.
What’s most important is for defectors to
assimilate in their way of thinking. Education is crucial in that process, and
that’s why we have designated coordinators for this task. We select defectors
with teaching experience in the North, and have them help teenagers when
they’re studying at school.
6. Hana Foundation has played an integral
role not only in providing direct support for defectors but also helping change
people’s perceptions in the South about them.
We conducted a recent survey and 25.6% of
the respondents said that over the past year they had either been discriminated
against or looked down on after arriving in the South. That’s a quarter of the
defector population saying they struggle with biases South Koreans have about
them because they’re from the North.
This is why it’s important for us to
improve the environment that they settle down in. Especially when it comes to
media, groups like the Unification Media Group and Daily NK that play an
important role in shaping public opinion need to keep this in mind. Those who
are at the helm of driving public opinion need to pay close attention to these
issues. Mid- to long-term, we need to make sure people think of defectors as
‘your average neighbor’, but it’s also important to make sure people are
interested in issues surrounding defectors. They may make up only about 0.1% of
the population, but by remaining interested in them, we can also learn about
their traits and enhance communication with them.
7. Personally, I’d like to know how you
think you’ll be different from your predecessors, and what you think your
strengths are in running the foundation.
Each chair I think had their own strengths.
The first chair, Kim Il Joo, focused on expanding the size of the foundation
and secured a bigger budget for us. The second chair, Jeong Ok Im, left the
legacy of operating the foundation on laws and principles. So each person had
their own strengths. What I think sets me apart is the fact that I’ve had a lot
of exposure to North Korean defectors. I was Hwang Jang Yop’s research
secretary for 11.5 years, so I was able to meet a lot of defectors from 1996.
In that sense, I think I have an advantage in understanding the way they think
and feel about things. Also, having been a journalist, I place a lot of emphasis
on field experience, so the way I operate the foundation will also be based on
that.
9. I expect we’ll see a lot of visible
results. What kind of vision and dreams do you have for the foundation down the
line?
The work of Korea Hana Foundation is to
prepare for defector resettlement and actual unification. It has now been five
years since the foundation has established its legal and institutional
foundation. It has not been a long time, but using the experience and knowledge
that we’ve accumulated, we plan on putting this into statistics and indices to
create a manual for resettlement. For example, we need to show that policy A
produces the result A’, while policy B produces the result B’. By putting this
into numbers and statistics, we will be able to complement our current
policies.
Unification can happen gradually, or it can
happen suddenly overnight. The reason why we call it ‘sudden change’ is because
we cannot predict what will happen. This is why we need to create policies of
resettlement that can reduce our errors if change happens rapidly. Policies are
devised by the Ministry of Unification, but our job is to collect a lot of
cases and produce data and put things into numbers. My term is three years, and
during that time, I plan on working hard to make the best of it.
10. If
you were to describe who North Korean defectors are to you in one word, how
would you describe them?
I would say they’re like partners. We’re
walking towards the same goal hand in hand. In other words, we share the same
values and goals. In that sense, we are partners and friends. That’s the
mindset that I will have with me as I run the foundation.
