Back in the struggle for South Korean deserters to live in the South, Reuters had a poor life

Author: Hyonhee Shin

SEOUL (Reuters) – Officials and the media said on Tuesday that a former North Korean deserter who had made a dangerous and strange return home across the border was fighting in South Korea on Tuesday, sparking a new debate over how such deserters are treated in their new lives. .

The South Korean military on Saturday identified the man who crossed the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separates the two Koreas on Saturday as a North Korean who fled to the South in a similar area a year ago.

The man’s situation shed new light on the lives of the deserters and raised doubts about whether they had received adequate support after a dangerous journey from the impoverished and tightly controlled North to the rich and democratic South.

He was 30 years old again and had a bad life as a janitor, a military official said.

“I would say they were classified as lower class, they were almost taking their own lives,” the official said, without elaborating on privacy concerns.

Officials said they saw a low risk of the man being spied on in North Korea as they launched an investigation into how he avoided the guards a few hours before the border was caught by surveillance cameras.

North Korean officials have not commented on the incident and the state media have not reported it.

LITTLE INTERACTION

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported that security and other attention was being paid to him by police in North Seoul’s Nowon district in June, which raised concerns about its possible defection, but no action was taken because there was no specific evidence.

Police declined to comment. An official at the Seoul Unification Ministry, which handles cross-border issues, said on Tuesday that the defector had received government support for personal security, housing, medical treatment and employment.

The man had little contact with neighbors and was seen throwing his belongings a day before the border crossing, Yonhap reported.

“He was taking a mattress and a bed-bed to the landfills that morning, and it was weird because they were all too new,” Yonhap said to a neighbor. “I thought we’d ask for it, but in the end we didn’t do it because we never said goodbye to each other.”

As of September, about 33,800 North Koreans were living in South Korea, daring to embark on a long and dangerous journey — usually through China — in search of a new life, fleeing poverty and oppression at home.

Since 2012, only 30 deserters have been confirmed to have returned to the North, according to the Unification Ministry. But deserters and activists say there may be more unknown cases among those struggling to adjust to life in the South.

About 56% of landlords are classified as low-income, according to ministry data sent to lawmaker Ji Seong-ho. At the lowest level is almost 25% of national subsidies for basic living, six times the ratio of the general population.

In a survey published last month by the North Korean Human Rights Database Center and NK Social Research, about 18% of the 407 refugees surveyed said they were ready to return to the North, most of them citing nostalgia.

“There is a complex range of factors, including the longing of families left behind in the North, and the emotional and economic difficulties that arise in revitalization,” said the Unification Ministry official, vowing to review policy and improve support for deserters.