South not the nirvana some North Koreans thought it was, writes JOHN GLIONNAin Anseong, South Korea
THE SOPRANO in the blue dress sang a sad tune about a sacred mountain. Soon the women brought tissues to their eyes and began sobbing over memories of home. That’s when the cameras moved in – crowding for a better angle, zooming in, panning faces, until many of the defectors ducked their heads in embarrassment and shame.
For the first time, on Wednesday, officials allowed outsiders into the Hanawon resettlement centre, where North Korean defectors are debriefed.
The open house came at a time of increased tensions with North Korea, which in recent months has detonated a nuclear device, launched numerous missiles and amplified the rhetoric directed at Seoul. Any event having to do with the North becomes an instant media free-for-all.
The celebration of the centre’s 10th anniversary was equal parts propaganda ploy, talent show and sob fest. Proud of their efforts to repatriate these lost cousins, South Korean officials produced several North Koreans to show just how fulfilled they were once free of Kim Jong Il’s clutches.
These defectors sang! They played piano! They showed off paintings and poetry! But later expressed disappointment that South Korea was not the nirvana they had thought.
The life they have carved out here is at best bittersweet. While enjoying freedom and creature comforts, many find themselves second-class citizens. They pine for their families and simpler pleasures of home.
“I have memories of the mountains and the rivers of North Korea,” said Kim Chu-woong, a 35-year-old concert pianist. “The cigarettes and the alcohol taste differently here. Often I get together with friends and we sing the old songs and our eyes get teary.”
The wake-up call for this new reality often comes at Hanawon.
About 60 per cent of the defectors are women. Each year, hundreds of refugees spend several months at this leafy centre 50 miles south of Seoul.
Nearly 90 per cent of the 16,000 northern defectors in South Korea are Hanawon graduates – most of whom made their way to South Korea after slipping out of North Korea and across the border into China.
They get a crash course here in modernity and capitalism, learning how to use a computer and an automated teller machine. But they’re also being grilled by intelligence agents trying to weed out spies.
Another school prepares defector children for enrolment in South Korean schools.
A 2008 report by a South Korean lawmaker showed that 75 per cent of nearly 600 residents at the centre had depression or other mental illnesses. Many contemplated suicide due to the stress of their escape, the report said.
“They’re lonely people,” provincial governor Kim Moon-soo said of the defectors. “We offer them psychiatric care.”
He then motioned toward scores of female defectors who sat together, most dressed in matching yellow shirts and black pants. “Look,” he said. “They’re crying.” And the cameras moved in again.
Officials imposed tight security on coverage of Wednesday’s anniversary. Most of the residents could not be interviewed or photographed. Those captured on film had to have their faces blurred to protect families in North Korea.
Only a handful of graduates, dubbed “settlers” by the centre, were made available for interviews. Many spoke with northern accents that pegged them as outsiders.
“I was surprised at the reality of South Korea compared to my anticipation,” said Kim the pianist. “I thought it would be the start of my happiness. But it was the start of a hard life. The toughest was to feel the eyes of South Koreans and the stereotypes.”
“When I first got to South Korea, I thought it was the centre of my dreams,” said film director Kim Chul-yong, another defector. “Then I found out it was just a country where people lived. Those dreams were just fantasies.”
Many in the crowd began to fall asleep during the lengthy programme. But when two defectors read emotional letters they had sent home explaining why they chose to leave, women in the audience wept again.
Several former Hanawon residents who returned for the anniversary were asked whether they missed North Korea.
Yoo Hye-ran, a 45-year-old preacher, said she heard of a grandmother who wanted to go back until she made a secret phone call to her daughter, who talked her out of it.
“The daughter said, ‘Don’t ever come back here. We’ll die, and you’ll die too’, ” Yoo said.
She added a sombre note to end Hanawon’s day of celebration.
"I thought of how tough and lonely her life must be here," she said of the grandmother, "for her to want to go back to that." – ( LA Times-Washington Postservice)