Recent dramatic footage show a North Korean defector dashing across the border while being shot at. Yet the real challenge begins after he crosses over, says the Korea Expose’s Steven Borowiec, who recounts the tale of another defector.

SEOUL: Park Ji-eun spends her workdays shrouded in cuteness, in a room filled with teddy bears, art supplies and brightly coloured fabrics.

In more ways than one, her current situation contrasts sharply with the place she came from, a drab town in North Korea.



Back in North Korea several years earlier, she worked by painting signs. She was tasked with painting placards emblazoned with government directives, which would be hung in public places around the town she lived in.

Today, the middle-aged Park is a successful entrepreneur operating her own private institute teaching arts and crafts, mostly to housewife hobbyists.

Yet, Park’s case illustrates that defection is only the start of a challenging process of integration into an unfamiliar society, even with the South Korean government’s exceptionally comprehensive assistance.

When Park came to South Korea with no contacts or family to lean on, she knew she would need to find a well-paid occupation to make her own way in a competitive society.



Recent news showed dramatic footage of a North Korean defector dashing across the border while coming under fire from former comrades.



While the task of defecting is dangerous, the road ahead is not any easier and does not guarantee success.

SUCCESSFUL IN THE SOUTH

Park is one of the roughly 30,000 North Korean defectors who live in South Korea and have been successful in the South.

In many ways, her case is out of sync with the stereotype.



Many North Korean defectors work menial, low-paid jobs in the South, due to their lack of education and marketable skills, such as the ability to speak foreign languages.

On the other end of the spectrum, around Seoul’s community of North Korea-focused journalists and activists, are the successful defectors suggested to international journalists like myself.

All have made a name for themselves as public faces of activist efforts to improve human rights in North Korea. Many are authors of memoirs that narrate their escape and settlement in South Korea, and now travel the world giving speeches about their experiences.

Among these worthwhile stories, Park’s stands out as a subject who has found success despite being in direct competition with South Koreans.

Footage released by the United Nations Command shows the North Korea defector running from a vehicle at the Demilitarised Zone. (Photo: AFP)

When I reached out to Park, she invited me to come meet her at her workshop in a suburb of Seoul. Like all defectors who make it to South Korea, Park started life here with a package of government assistance.

The South Korean government considers North Koreans citizens, so upon arrival, after a rigorous interrogation process to confirm their identities and ensure that they aren’t spies, defectors go through a settlement process at a government-run centre called Hanawon, where they learn about life in South Korea and receive job training.

Upon completion of that process, the defectors are given money to find housing.

But to prevent the formation of a North Korean defector ghetto, they aren’t allowed to choose their place of residence, and are randomly assigned the municipality they’ll live in.

When they leave the government system of resettlement, and are on their own in hypercompetitive South Korea, the toughest part begins.

As defectors enter the job market with no real employment experience, they can encounter discrimination from South Koreans who sometimes see North Koreans as lazy or unsophisticated, unfamiliar with ways of doing business.

Another defector Lim Ji-hyun returned to North Korea in 2017 after first escaping to South Korea. She said that life in South Korea was not what she imagined and spoke of her struggle to find work there on a North Korean TV channel, on Jul 19, 2017. (Photo: AFP)

NOTHING MORE THAN A LOW-WAGE EMPLOYEE

Park told me part of the reason she went into business for herself was that she felt she would never be more than a low-wage employee if she worked for South Koreans.

A survey published last year by Hanawon found that 35 per cent of defectors cited freedom as the main reason for defecting.

Park told me stories of spending her days in her government-assigned workplace in the North and knowing that even though she had what was by North Korean standards a good job, there was no room for her to move up. She could only expect to spend the rest of her life doing the same tedious thing every day.

Despite the grim conditions in North Korea - the lack of civil and political rights, the prison camps, the state’s determination to develop nuclear weapons while most people are stuck in poverty - for most defectors, the decision to defect is nevertheless complicated, and heart-wrenching.

North Koreans know that once they leave, they will almost certainly never see their hometowns or families again. North Koreans know that they face a daunting challenge in adapting to South Korean society.

This process of adaption has in recent years led to a few cases of defectors who return to North Korea with stories of the poor treatment they endured in South Korea, which they say was so bad it overpowered the comparatively better material comfort they found.

In finding success as a defector in South Korea, Park is somewhat exceptional, but she isn’t alone. There are defectors who have risen to the top of some of the country’s most competitive fields.

Choi Sung-guk says there has been a "phenomenal" response to his online cartoons about life as a North Korean defector. (Photo: AFP/Jung Yeon-je)

Kang Cheol-hwan, a defector and author of a widely read memoir, was one of the first North Koreans to find mainstream success in the South, landing a job as a journalist at one of the country’s most prestigious newspapers.

Kang told me that the only lasting solution to the defector issue is to improve the situation in North Korea to the point where North Koreans would prefer staying home over defecting. “With democracy and human rights respected in North Korea, we would not have the problems with defectors we have today,” Kang said.

NEVER REGRETTED DECISION TO FLEE

Park says she misses the family she left behind, but has never regretted the decision to flee.

Now the owner of a profitable business, she says memories of the shackled life she left behind keep her driven to keep working. “Every day I fear that I could be sent back to my old life,” Park told me in her workshop, as she broke down in tears.

Her decision to flee to South Korea has brought her a future filled with levels of comfort and affluence she never would have attained in North Korea, but along with that came feelings of longing and alienation that she must now endure.

Steven Borowiec is the politics editor of Korea Exposé.