A North Korean defector in Shenyang, China, has sparked outrage in the defector community after receiving financial assistance for a fabricated illness. Fellow defectors who donated money in early September to help her with her supposed illness are expressing deep anger and disappointment after discovering the fraud.
A source in China told Daily NK recently that defectors in China may live in different places and not even know each other’s faces, but they create chat rooms with messaging apps where they maintain relationships – complaining when they are sick, consoling each other and even sending each other gifts on birthdays.
When one defector who was an active member of such a chat room – a woman in her 30s identified as A – disappeared for several days early last month, another defector contacted her to see how she was doing.
A said she could not lift her head because of severe headaches and was bedridden with nausea and anemia. She needed to go to a hospital to find out why, she said, but since she could not go alone because she had no identification papers and her Chinese husband was too busy at work, she was just suffering.
The defector who contacted A informed the rest of the chat room about A’s condition, and the other defectors in China voluntarily sent the supposedly sick woman 100 to 300 yuan ($14 to $41) each with the pure intention of wishing her a quick recovery from the illness.
“Since North Korean defectors in China are technically illegal aliens who cannot receive formal treatment in hospitals and must pay a lot of money even if they do receive treatment, they often have little choice but to endure their illnesses,” the source said. “Because the defectors know the situation they’re all in, when they hear that one of their own is sick, they sympathize and try to help in any way they can, despite their own difficulties.”
In fact, the defectors got together and raised 5,000 yuan ($690) for A.
A community betrayed
However, when it was accidentally revealed recently that A did not really have an illness, but had used the sympathy of her fellow defectors to put together the money to go to South Korea, the defectors who had helped her felt very betrayed.
One defector who sent money to A said that since most defectors in China “are in the same boat, we send money to people when we hear they have an illness and think of them as family, even though we haven’t seen each other’s faces. She said defectors send money “even if they don’t have a cent in their pocket and have to borrow it just to wish the other person a quick recovery, so when we found out it was a lie, we were furious.
“Whether the amount was large or small, it’s shameful to use people’s feelings like that,” she continued, adding:”On the other hand, I feel even sadder that she must have really needed the money to lie about an illness like that.”
The source said, “A has been kicked out of the chat room and has been called a lot of names. Other defectors who hear what happened say that if she needed the money, she should have just told the truth and asked for help instead of abusing people’s feelings.”
The Daily NK works with a network of sources in North Korea, China, and elsewhere. For security reasons, their identities remain anonymous.
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