A North Korean defector living in South Korea was detained on Tuesday after ramming a stolen bus into a barricade on a bridge near the heavily militarized border, in an apparent attempt to get back to the North, Yonhap news agency reported.
The incident took place at around 1:30 a.m. (16:30 GMT on Monday) at the Tongil Bridge in Paju, northwest of the capital Seoul, after the man ignored warnings from soldiers guarding the bridge and attempted to drive through, Yonhap said, citing city police.
Paju police referred queries on the incident to provincial police authorities. The northern Gyeonggi police agency could not be reached for comment.
The man aged in his 30s who had defected more than a decade ago told police that he was trying to return to North Korea after struggling to settle in the South, the report said.
What’s going on in South Korea where someone in their 30s tried to get back to literally North Korea rather than stay? I know KPop is annoying, but cmon.
In South Korea? Nothing. But when you’ve been effectively institutionalized your entire life, adapting to a significantly freer society can be difficult or impossible.
This is a well known issue with refugees of hyper-authoritarian places. NK refugees discuss this a lot. Like the other person said, this is a well known phenomenon with freed prisoners, too. Basically you spent so much time conforming to a very, very, specific way of living, that you are stuck in that mind frame. Without a lot of therapy you are likely to be unable to adjust. Just like people who have been in abusive households their whole lives, yet return to them, because they can’t function, when they are in a freer circumstance.
This well understood issue.
Basically, yeah. Like I said, integration into society is difficult if you’ve been institutionalized. Going from a highly controlled and regimented life to one where you have to do everything yourself is difficult. I’m not surprised that some people reject it. We see the same thing when people get out of long prison terms.
South Korea famously treats defectors like shit when they are just working class people that want a better life instead of parroting ridiculous US State Dept propaganda.
"Once defectors make it to South Korea, often after a perilous journey across multiple countries, they go through interrogation by the government intelligence agency. Then they are sent to the main Hanawon complex in Anseong, 40 miles southeast of Seoul, to prepare for their new lives in the South.
The facility offers medical and psychiatric care. It teaches defectors about South Korean society and gender equality, and provides occupational training and counseling for skills including cooking, baking, nail art, skin care, clothes-making and mending, and long-term caregiving.
After completing the three-month program, defectors receive subsidies and housing benefits, as well as continued support from local centers to help them assimilate during their early years living in South Korea."
Doesn’t sound like they treat them like shit. Sounds like they actually have a very efficient and well-funded system to welcome and integrate defectors.
Are you yourself working for North Korea or something? “OMG yeah North Korea so great, they treat you like shit in South Korea, definitely don’t go there, the music is also bad.”
I think the poster meant “they” as in South Korean society in general rather than the government.
Isnt sk like more hyper-capitalistic hell than most places with little in the way of social welfare systems? Scary place to try to start your life over, like jumping from the firing squad to the fire/meatgrinding machine
I’ve never been to South Korea, but Seoul metropolitan area is said to be a hypercapitalistic hell-hole. The major employers are the chaebols, or the family-owned corporations including Samsung, Hyundai and LG. They have toxic work cultures but is tolerated because they are major employers in the country, especially in Seoul, where half of South Koreans live. Nearly everyone is overworked for little pay resulting in poor birth rate because everyone have little time to spend with partners and families (the South Korean government actually created a new administrative capital city, Sejong, as an experiment to address the declining birth rate, and it worked by and large experiencing probably the only and highest population growth in the country).
Moreover, many North Korean defectors are still seen with suspicion and discriminated. So they feel alienated like the man in the article. I guess the best bet for defectors is to work in Sejong as a government clerk, where they could get generous welfare and employment benefits and protections, unlike corporate-employed workers.
Edit: autocowreck
Why doesn’t everyone like move to Sejong, the alternative is no alternative at all it would seem, fuck that shit
Sejong is still a new city to be fair. Also, there is not much jobs there so far, except for civil servants. But the worst crime of all in creating that new city is that public transport is lacking! How could city planners have that oversight! There is more info from Caspian Report about the Sejong city.
You would guess that someone who scape north Korea would had some benefits for reintegration, akin Cubans thar manage to get into mainland US. At least for the propaganda, you can bet NK is going to use him as example of why there better that SK.
I mean, as a serious vignette/discussion piece here:
South Korea: you’re dumped from the North to South Korea, you’re un(der)-educated and no money, skills, culture etc. What do/happens?
North Korea: same deal but in reverse from South Korea. What happens/do?
Asian countries honestly seem pretty bad in terms of if you lose your job or never get settled or have any criminal setbacks. There’s just no do-overs it seems
Don’t understand this. If he comes back to the North, he would be tortured&executed with his family. If living in SK is that terrible isn’t easier to just unalive themselves?
If he comes back to the North, he would be tortured&executed with his family.
Are you basing this statement on anything other than your impression that the North Korean regime is cruel for the sake of being cruel, and everyone in the military and government is incompetent?
It might be true, but it’s also possible that the North Koreans would use it as the obvious propaganda coup it is and send him on speaking tours all over the country/world.
It’s also quite possible that he’s mentally unwell and isn’t making rational choices. Or that he’s trying to escape an abusive situation.
Don’t get me wrong, the North Korean government is not good, I’m just saying that the assumption he’ll be tortured and executed underestimates them.
PS. When you say “comes back” it means that you are in that place. So your sentence implies that you’re in North Korea. I’m sure you meant “goes back”.
Well, they don’t appear to use them as propaganda. When Travis T. King crossed the border, they arrested him and not used as propaganda “see? He hated SK and USA so much”
Same for Otto warmbier, instead of “see? After he saw our wonderful country, he wanted to take a piece of propaganda back home to always remember us” he was arrested, tortured and sent back dead.
I do not recall any situation when they used something like this as positive propaganda instead of a public execution
When they did that experiment on YouTube showing how wonderful is life in north Korea (if you’re a daughter of the elite), it lasted until it suddenly went like “Winston Smith never existed”
Maybe that person had trouble adjusting to SK life and was missing his country and/or people back home. Nothing to see here. It is only “surprising” because presumably they took some risk in leaving and because we only ever hear about NK in the context of its authoritarian government and it being some dystopian nightmare presumably, though if we’re being honest most of us don’t know two shits about the country and I bet to some people it’s simply home.
Why does anyone want to go back to any country that others are desperate to leave? For reasons…
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