[imText1]To defectors who come from living in North Korea, a closed country, small things of a democracy state can appear significant to them.
There are things about South Korea which are incomprehensible to the eyes of defectors.
First, from the moment defectors step foot in a Korean airport, there is the image of the airport staff sincerely bowing their heads. North Korea is a stratified country. Kim Jong Il is the first of his country, where people’s ranks are decided by their level of privilege and power, which means that the general populace is inevitably the last. Thus, even the elderly have to bow their heads in front of a young party staff.
Greetings have only been thought of as signs of obedience and submission in the North, but in South Korea, the fact that it is just a sign of familiarity, gentleness and goodness makes the defectors puzzled. Even then, they cannot help but to shed tears and don awkward expressions as they receive bows from the airport employees. In the first moment of their lives where they are treated like human beings, smiles stemming from happiness and gratitude continuously appear on their faces.
Further, defectors are not accustomed to smiling, so are not very good at greeting strangers. To North Koreans who have to survive in a system where they have to live in the midst of ceaseless organizational inspections and control, personal relationships are related to order and submission and are filled with competitiveness and tension. Moreover, North Korea is a rights-based nation, so smiling belongs the lower hierarchy and dignity to the upper hierarchy.
South Korea is a service society where anyone can easily give and receive smiles, but in North Korea, only in personal relations can citizens exchange smiles, so defectors have seriously mistaken smiling South Koreans who approach them as having an interest in them.
Another incomprehensible occurrence is the hanging of the flag in every home or store. Even in nationalistic North Korea, no one puts up in his or her home or store. It is only hung by the decree of the party or administration every holiday or event. The national flag is the nation. North Koreans may be brainwashed by the deification of the Kim father and son and think that portraits are natural, but they do not have room to worship their national flag or their country. More specifically, they do not espouse the cause of superiority of the state.
In addition, carefree parking of cars on the street has been a source of befuddlement for the defectors. In North Korea, too many cars do not exist. To leave such a precious possession outside is to say to thieves to take the car. They are even short of car accessories, so those that do have cars and those do not have cars indiscriminately hunt down parked cars, the former for restoring their own cars and the latter for selling the accessories in the market.
Consequently, in North Korea, not only private individuals but also national organizations have their exclusive parking spots and leave two or three locks on thick steel doors. Even if cars are parked for ten minutes, the owners buy human locks and leave them standing by, even then, people tend to secretly enter central party organizations unbeknownst to the guards and rip parts off of perfectly fine cars. As a result, North Korean cars do not have modeled car accessories. The outer form is a Toyota, but the engine is a Bentz and the tires are different and even the back mirrors or logos are stolen from other cars.
Next is the South Korea’s culture of waste. In North Korea, one meal per day is the source of sustenance. To North Koreans, the purpose of life not to live, but to survive. The evening meal symbolizes the day’s peace, blessing, and health. However, that is not enough for South Koreans, so they gluttonously eat and drink second or third round even besides dinners. North Koreans eat to survive, but South Koreans seem to live to eat.
Perhaps for that reason, it is difficult to understand the nightlife of South Korea. In North Korea, after the nighttime meal, the evening looks even more bleak with worries about the next day. It is a country where there is nothing to see and do and with the shortage of electricity, melancholic streets become empty around 10pm.
It is the same night, but in South Korea, it is longer than in the North.
Poets express dawn as hope, but truthfully, hope comes at nighttime in North Korea. Dawn is the beginning of a larger suffering and to North Koreans who have lost happiness, leisure, and freedom, 10 o’clock is known as the time for sleep, whereas in South Korea, it is the beginning of revelry-making. Finally, South Koreans seem to live twice longer than North Koreans because of their drawn-out nights.
To describe “incomprehensible Korea,” seen from the eyes of defectors, would be endless. However, while living in Korea, they have assimilated and their kaleidoscopic experiences have become old stories.
Nonetheless, there is still one thing which cannot be understood, which is South Korea’s left-wing pro-North Korea influence. North Korea is a live model of why the socialist regime should never be repeated in human history.
A reason exists for this reality. However, sympathizing with the unjustifiable, the unprecedented, unhumanitarian country of North Korea and its regime is humanly psychologically disturbing. They try to explain and disguise their illness with protection of peace, humanitarianism, strategic approach, and other fancy words, but they themselves do not realize their misunderstanding of peace, human rights, and strategy. South Korea is such a diverse society, so can such pro-North Korea ignorance get through?
