The Value of Being Valued

In the spring of 2008, Hwang Soon Hee [alias, pictured left; Image: Daily NK] immediately began looking for work following her graduation from
Hanawon, the government resettlement center for North Korean defectors. She
visited an employment agency in Suwon, which then referred her to a janitorial
post at a hospital. In her previous life in North Korea, she had worked as an
administrator in a county office for over two decades, and so her new job would
definitely not be easy to her. Even her children, who escaped North Korea and
arrived in the South before her, worried about their aged and inexperienced
mother taking on an unpleasant job, and asked her to look for an easier job or
stay at home.

But Hwang had different ideas. Her journey
to the South was not an easy one, and she wanted to create a new life of her
own through her own efforts without relying on anyone else. So began a new time
of difficulties. She would arrive at the hospital by 7a.m. to begin cleaning
the entire building, followed by laundering the sickroom curtains, patients’
robes, and bed sheets. She was unfamiliar with this type of work, which began
to take its inevitable toll on her despite her determination to persevere. There
were countless days when she would be so tired that upon returning home, she
would immediately fall asleep without finding the energy to clean up and get
ready for bed.

As she was unaccustomed to the work, it was
unsurprising that she should find it physically demanding. However, what
proved more difficult was that she had no one to talk to or rely upon at work.
Since she worked alone, she could not finish cleaning the corridors and the
washrooms in the two or three hours before the patients began arriving, after
which things became even busier and more chaotic.

After considerable deliberation, she
decided to go to work an hour early. However, this proved insufficient for
completion of all her tasks, and so she began going to work two, three hours
early, until she started going into work at 3a.m. After three exhausting months
of this grueling schedule, she could no longer continue working such hours, and
went to the hospital director to hand in her resignation.

A great source of encouragement: “We
need you at this hospital more than anyone else.”

Hwang said that the hospital director’s
unexpected response is forever etched in her memory.
I beg you not to quit. We need you at this hospital more than anyone
else,” he told her, desperate for her to stay.

She recalled the words bringing her to
tears and breaking down her previous resolve to quit the job. Settling down and creating
a new life in the South had definitely not been easy, and those words showed
her that her efforts and competence had not gone unacknowledged.

“I had many regrets about going to
work while the stars were out only to earn a pittance when I could have stayed
at home looking after my adorable granddaughter. However, a person cannot live
like that. To think that I am now a valuable member of society is a great
source of self-esteem,” Hwang said, recounting the experience.

She found the much long-awaited
acknowledgment of her efforts and pains in the director
s words. Hwang continued at her work, albeit with a raise in her
salary. Even now, her shift begins at 3 a..m. and ends at 2p.m.

A valued companion on the way to work

While working at the hospital, she met an
independent taxi driver and married him, as she smilingly said,
at the urging of my son and daughter.” Her
devoted and doting husband drives her to work every morning. Their relationship
is one of the things she values most about her new life in the South.

Thanks to the encouragement and support of
her husband and children, Hwang wears an invariable smile on her face. The fact that she is earning an honest living, she said, is a constant source of pride and
happiness for her. In 2013, she received an award from the Korea Hana
Foundation after entering the a memoir contest for North Korean defectors. That she exhibited
such a high degree of responsibility and diligence for her work was a great
inspiration to the judges.

I was so happy to receive the award
because it represented a recognition of all my efforts in making a new life in
the South. To think that I am an indispensable member of society makes me so
glad,” she said.
 

*This article was made possible by support
from the Korea Hana Foundation [the North Korean Refugees Foundation].