When Lee Geun-hyuck attended school in North Korea, he studied English to learn more about the United States, believing knowing the enemy was the best strategy to get the better of them.



Together with his mother, Lee fled the impoverished, regimented communist country and defected to capitalist South Korea in 1998 in search of freedom and a better life.



Sixteen years after his defection, the 33-year-old university student says his current purpose for studying English is to better communicate with foreigners in order to make North Korea's dismal human rights situation known to the outside world.



"I felt ashamed to realize that I had been so indifferent about the North's human rights issue after meeting with foreign activists here," Lee said. "I came to think that there must be some way for me to contribute to the human rights issue and inter-Korean unification based on my experience."



Lee is among four North Korean defectors who have recently visited Britain for a two-month stay to learn English through a program titled "English for the Future" funded by the British Embassy in South Korea.



During their stay in London, Lee and his friends, including Lee Jeong-hyeok and Luna Han (alias), met with Hugo Swire, a minister of state with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, to whom they delivered their thoughts on how to prod the reclusive country into becoming a part of the global community, according to the embassy.



Since July 2011, some 134 North Korean defectors have joined the English study program, while this year marks the second year that a group of North Korean settlers has traveled to London.







North Korean defectors Lee Geun-hyuck (left) and Lee Jeong-hyeok pose with Andrew Dalgleish (right), deputy head of the British Embassy, at the embassy. (British Embassy in Seoul)





Helping North Korean defectors has been pushed by the British government, which runs a global scholarship program, the Chevening Scholarships.



One scholarship spot is reserved for such defectors and applications remain open until Nov. 14, with three North Korean students having been awarded the scholarship so far.



"One of our jobs here is to promote harmony and cooperation on the Korean Peninsula. As you know, we have the embassy in Pyongyang. So we are well placed to see both sides of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ)," said Andrew Dalgleish, minister-counselor and deputy head of the British Embassy in South Korea.



"One of the challenges particularly North Korean refugees face when they come to integrate into the South Korean society is the English language," he said. "The embassy is really enthusiastic about a small difference that it can make. But it is an important difference."



More than 27,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea in search for freedom. But many defectors face a grim reality in settling down in the South as they find it difficult to have decent jobs amid high competition and persistent prejudice against them.



Lee and the other three students in the program are among the lucky North Korean defectors as they have adapted relatively well to life on the opposite side of the North.



It is fair to say that the zeal for English education in Seoul has affected the lives of North Korean settlers who strive to assimilate into the highly competitive South Korean society.



Lee and his friends have joined the English program in Seoul to sharpen their competitiveness, but studying English has also become a means of interacting more with foreigners to help them further understand North Korea's dismal situation.



During the visit to Britain, they said that they were surprised to see that British officials had showed an interest in human rights conditions in the North as well as their experience in the communist country.



"It was surprising to me that so many foreigners expressed concerns about and interest in North Korea's human rights situation," said Han, a 26-year-old university student, who defected to Seoul more than six years ago.



North Korea's human rights issue has been in the spotlight since the U.N. Commission of Inquiry (COI) made public a report in February that accused Pyongyang of making "systematic, widespread and grave violations of human rights."



The European Union and Japan are driving efforts to slam North Korea's human right conditions as they have written a draft resolution that calls for the Security Council to refer Pyongyang's "crime against humanity" to the International Criminal Court.



Park Yeon-mi, a 21-year-old North Korean defector, has recently delivered an emotional speech about North Korea's appalling situation of human rights abuses during the One Young World Summit held in Dublin. The footage of her speech has attracted more than

170,000 views on YouTube.



Han said that as she used to live in rural areas in the North, she did not have a chance to watch foreign movies or South Korean dramas via DVDs that had been smuggled from the outside. But she added that North Koreans have been taken away somewhere if they were discovered to have watched such materials.



"It would be difficult for the South Korean government to spearhead efforts to handle Pyongyang's human rights issue. I think that the international community's pressure on the North will be more effective," said Lee Jeong-hyeok, a 25-year-old university student. Lee came to Seoul in 2003 after his father realized that there was no hope in the North.



The three North Korean defectors said they have gotten the impression that many South Koreans seem to be indifferent to North Korea's human rights abuses and even inter-Korean unification.



In their eyes, South Koreans speak less about the "emotional"

aspects of unification, saying that it is regrettable that there are some voices against unification or economic costs or benefits involving unification are more heatedly debated.



According to a 2013 survey by Seoul National University, 54 percent of the 1,200 respondents said that unification is necessary, down from 59.1 percent in 2012.



By age, those in their 20s viewed North Korea mostly negatively with 43.2 percent, followed by those in their 50s with 37.3 percent and those in their 30s with 35.6 percent, the poll showed.



"I was shocked to see that the majority of middle school students drew a map only of the South Korean territory when they were asked to draw the Korean Peninsula," Han added, explaining her experience of working as a part-time instructor at schools here.



They also expressed that they want to contribute to the unification in their own way, believing that their experience in the North will help connect people among the two Koreas someday.



"I'd like to become a documentary director that could help more South and North Koreans better understand each other for the unification," the younger Lee noted.



Geun-hyuck said that he hopes to study the management of human resources so that he can help Seoul and foreign firms hire and educate North Korean staff there when such companies make forays into a unified Korea in the future.



"I want to feel happy by sharing with other people. When the two Koreas become one, I want to form a rural community with North Korean folks as their skills in the agricultural sector can be competitive," Lee noted.



The Korean Peninsula has been divided since the end of World War II, with the communist North and capitalist South remaining technically at war as the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a ceasefire, not a peace treaty. (Yonhap)