Although many defectors feel they had no choice but to leave North Korea, it’s important to remember that the DPRK was once the place they called home – in some cases for several decades or more. And while the South Korean government invests substantial resources in helping arriving North Koreans acclimatise to their new lives, surveys regularly show just how marginalised defectors can be in their new home.

So, while many defectors have painful memories about their former lives in the DPRK, there are sometimes elements of life in North Korea which they miss.

As part of our special NK News refugee insight interview series, we asked our respondents to tell us what they missed most about their former lives in North Korea.

Q. What do you miss most about your life in North Korea and why?

Nayoung Koh, aged 25, left North Korea in 2009. She is now a student at university in Seoul

A. I miss my friendships and the innocent people in North Korea.

Although we were poor, we were all friends with our neighbours and we all were very close in North Korea.

Life in South Korea may be affluent and wealthy, but South Koreans aren’t as innocent or sympathetic as North Koreans. It was the most difficult thing about starting anew in South Korea.

Back in North Korea, people always shared food with each other on holidays. But South Koreans are individualistic, and they don’t even know who lives right next door after living in the same apartment complex for 10 years.

Jimin Kang, 28, had been in the military before he left Pyongyang in 2005. Now he lives in the UK, and contributes to NK News

Well, everyone has memories of home. Sometimes I get nostalgic, and certain things get exaggerated in my memory. Maybe that’s because it’s somewhere that’s very present in my memory, yet somewhere that I can never visit again.

In North Korea, everything is done by hand. I sometimes miss this old-fashioned charm.

Sometimes I think that I have become quite lazy, because I have everything I need here. Some time ago, I was reading and needed to write something down on a notebook. I looked down, and was surprised by how poor my handwriting had become. As I’m writing this now, I’m at a computer, comfortably typing away. But in North Korea, everything is done by hand. I sometimes miss this old-fashioned charm.



A South Korean, Lee In-Sub, 72, left all his family behind him in North Korea when he fled south during the Korean War. Here he looks to North Korea through a barbed-wire near the DMZ in 2000. Photograph: Hwang Kwang-mo/EPA Photograph: Hwang Kwang-mo/EPA

Back in those days, we used to write letters for confessions of love. We would write to our beloved, and wait at a certain meeting place. Waiting and waiting for the beloved with a sunken heart – it’s all a funny memory now that I think about it. A world where everything is accessible through mobile phones and computers is convenient, but it has taken away the old-fashioned charm in certain things. It has also taken away from the close personal bonds I had with people in North Korea. I really miss my friends in North Korea. I have lived in [South] Korea, and now, in the UK, amidst many friends and interpersonal relations, but I can never seem to have the ingenuous, un-calculated relationships that I had formed back in North Korea.

There would be many reasons for this, but the biggest one seems to be in the cultural differences. For starters, I have become much more cautious. What I have come to feel in South Korea is that some of the things that I thoughtlessly say or do come off to others as puzzling or harmful. These cultural differences have made me cautious and have made it difficult for me to form candid relationships with people. The same goes for my counterparts. When they learn that I am a defector, they also seem to tense up and become more cautious in approaching me. They have no understanding of my cultural background.

Another thing that breaks up my conversations with people is a lack of shared cultural experience. Those of you who are reading this will find it easy to find peers with shared cultural memories – things like favourite childhood cartoon characters or favourite pop stars. These commonalities would be what keep your conversations going. But in my case, I have nothing like that to bond over, so it is hard for me to hang out with friends in that way. This lack of close interpersonal relations has become one of the reasons that I miss North Korea.

Liberalism, and the importance it places on privacy, comes off to me as too cold-hearted sometimes.

The residents in the apartment where I live in London hardly know each other. Except for maybe one or two people, you hardly know who lives where in the UK. But in North Korea, everyone in your block knows and greets one another. Neighbours celebrate birthday parties together and help each other out in festivities. I sometimes miss these things. It’s all very friendly and personal. Liberalism, and the importance it places on privacy, comes off to me as too cold-hearted sometimes.



Soon-kyung Hong, in his mid 60s, had been a DPRK Trade Councillor before he left North Korea in 2000. Now, he lives in South Korea and is chairman for the Committee for Democratization of North Korea

What do I miss most? First let me remind you one thing. North Korea is a s totalitarian society that completely ignores the individual’s life, preferences, and tastes.

It is a suffocating society where politics govern individual relationships.

As I enjoy my individual freedom in South Korea, I don’t really have any nostalgia for North Korea.

However, it’s true that I miss the family and friends who I have left behind in North Korea.

Ribbons with messages wishing for reunification of the two Koreas hang on a barbed wire fence on the South Korean border with the North. Photograph: Ng Han Guan/AP Photograph: Ng Han Guan/AP

Mina Yoon, 28, had been in the military before she left Chongjin in 2010. She is now a university student in Seoul

I miss the days I spent with my family. There’s no reason for this besides the fact that they’re my family.

I feel guilty when I feel happy in South Korea.

I feel guilty when I feel happy in South Korea. My heart aches to even think about my family I left behind, who accept their fate in North Korea and who still don’t know about the outside world.



I also miss my childhood friends who were so innocent.

After coming to South Korea, I miss innocent people and friendships.

Of course, I’ve met nice people in South Korea, but I feel sad that I don’t have friends to empathise with and who share childhood memories with me.

Jihyun Park, in her mid-40s, left Chongyin City in 1998. She lives in the UK, and works for the European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea



What I miss most dearly are the times when I would sit around the table with my whole family and laugh away, even though the only things on the table were a bowl of broth and a bowl of rice.

All I want to do is to call out loud to my father, mother, sister, and brother. When somebody tells me to write down the word “longing,” I immediately think of my home, where our memories, happiness, and joys all remain.

During the time I wandered through foreign countries like a vagrant, the time I had to live under an alias, and the time when I had to live like a slave in someone else’s home, I looked back on those memories and found solace in them.

It was thanks to these memories that I was able to make it through all the dangers to reach freedom. The longing is always in my heart, and I keep it there so as not to lose it. The power and love of my family is what made us who we are today. I always keep a room in the corner of my heart for this longing.

Sung-ha Joo, in his 40s, was a reservist artillery officer, in the North Korean military before he left in 2001. Now he lives in South Korea, and works as a journalist at Dong-a Ilbo

I miss my relatives and friends the most. My relationships in South Korea aren’t deep enough.

Anywhere in the world, people make real friends until their time at university. As such, friends from work are all related to gain and loss – shallow relationships, indeed.

I think I miss my hometown because of this reason.

Besides that, I don’t miss my life in North Korea much.

Loneliness from leaving my hometown makes me miss North Korea, but I believe it is same for everyone who lives away from their home.

Se-hyok Oh is in his mid 30s and is a journalist for Daily NK. Originally from South Hwanghae Province, he left in 1999

All people want treasured and innocent memories – memories with parents, and of course, memories with friends.



Though it might sound strange, I have more more good memories from North Korea than unpleasant ones.

Even though I like living in the free South Korean economy and may become rich, I still have memories of the time when I couldn’t live freely.

However, while difficult memories in North Korea come to mind, South Korean life is tough, too. If I think about the unsteady future, I think it will become even more tough. Will I become greedy?

Rather than longing for family, I would say I have nothing to long for, as my family doesn’t exist to me any more.



Inae Hyun was a professor of Philosophy before she left North Korea in 2004. She is in her 50s, and is now a researcher in South Korea.

What I miss most about my life in North Korea are the strong bonds and friendships I had with people. Of course, I have friends here in South Korea. But, it isn’t the same.

It feels more special to build a strong bond with people from the country where I was born.

Also, another thing: people in the socialist state didn’t own property. Because of this, they were more innocent.