North Korean Refugees’ Nostalgia:The Border People’s Narratives

Mikyoung Kim*

The writings of Northern settlers in South Korea constitute a unique voice of their own,which I call “border people’s narratives.” Their narratives are often contradictory, criticaland hopeful in reflecting the dramatic ruptures in their lived experiences. Their voicesstretch over between past and present, and the old home in North Korea and the new placeof South Korea. The border people’s narratives encompass the simultaneous existence ofcontradictory feelings: guilt and appreciation, anger and sorrow, nostalgia and assimila-tion, and hope and disappointment.

Key words: assimilation, border people’s narratives, guilt, North Korean refugees, nostalgia

Exodus

The massive famine that hit North Korea in 1995 marked the beginning of anexodus from the country. While the exact number of those who crossed its

borders is unknown, about 25,000 North Korean refugees have settled in SouthKorea as of early 2013.1 The refugee-settlers help to crack open the tight seal onthis secretive country, offering intimate views into the society (see Cumings,2004, pp. 128–154; Demick, 2010; Hassig & Oh, 2009; Lankov, 2007). By the springof 2010, these settlers had published 191 books, in addition to numerous blogs,poems, essays, and opinion pieces posted on the Internet. Their narratives give usa glimpse of what it was like to live within and escape from North Korea and thento settle in the South. Their words, expressed in the first person, reveal the subtleyet real workings of identity politics with reference to the human rights of amarginalized group. This article analyzes the settlers’ nostalgia using contentanalysis methods of their written and oral narratives (see Berg & Lune, 2011;Weber, 1990).

To North Korean settlers, the South is a strange land. Despite the assumedcultural commonality, linguistic similarity,2 and ethnic homogeneity between thetwo societies, more than 60 years of division have made daily life utterly differentin the North and the South. The ideological face-off between the two regimes,

*Mikyoung Kim is Associate Professor at Hiroshima City University–Hiroshima PeaceInstitute in Japan. She edited a special edition of Memory Studies Journal on Koreanmemory, and is Vice President of the ROK Fulbright Alumni Association. Her researchinterests include memory, human rights, reconciliation, and peace in East Asia.

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Asian Politics & Policy—Volume 5, Number 4—Pages 523–542© 2013 Policy Studies Organization Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

manifested in military confrontations and political rivalry, has made the twosocieties evolve differently in their lifestyles and worldviews. The capitalist Southhas deepened its integration into the international community, becoming oneof the world’s largest economies. The Communist North, on the other hand,remains alienated from the global community and continues to be one of theworld’s most underdeveloped countries.3

Northern settlers have left the tedium of the old land for the new, not only tosurvive but also to pursue dreams. Compared to older cohorts, recent arrivalssay more about better life chances and aspirations to personal achievement. Asthe settlers adapt to the new environment, their experiences in the North haveless relevance. And this becomes their dilemma: A formidable legacy fromthe past shapes their current mind-set, yet the present situation often negatescontinuity with that past. New challenges pervade daily life, and strangenessin this new land replaces the comfort of familiarity with the old (Gurevitch,1998).

One profound experience of strangeness that Northern settlers regularlycite is freedom of expression in South Korea (Reporters Without Borders, 2010).For the first time, former Northerners can talk and write freely, a highly riskyactivity subject to heavy reprimand in a totalitarian society. The transition fromtotalitarian North Korea to democratic South Korea, however, does not signal aclean departure from the familiar. These settlers chose to escape their mother-land, yet their words reveal mixed feelings about the old and new realities.These settlers are “border people” who straddle the time span and physicalspace separating North and South Korea; they harbor contradictory feelingstoward both societies. Although they belong to both lands, they do not reallybelong to either. They are not “men without history” (Schultz, 1960, p. 13).Instead, they are “double-doers” and “double-thinkers” who can thinkone thing and act another as a survival strategy (Oh & Hassig, 2000). Suchpsycho-behavioral incongruence is articulated in narratives in which affection iscompounded with guilt, frustration is riddled with appreciation, and disap-pointment is accompanied by hope.

In this article, I call the escapee-settlers “border people.” These border folkengage in ideational struggles to find a confluence between their past traumasand new pressures to assimilate. Manifestations of sociopsychological prejudiceto which they are subject constitute the ideational construction of “borderpeople.” This analysis shows that some aspects of the settlement process may beregarded as blatant violations of refugees’ rights, whereas interactions of asubtler and more intangible nature are harder to perceive. This article showstwo important dynamics in the refugees’ settlement process. The first dynamicregards discrimination as a violation of human rights. Considering the disparityin power between Southern and Northern settlers, prejudice and discriminationcan prove a fertile ground for infringing rights. The second dynamic concerns amode of resistance engaged in by Northerners. These “border people” arenot passive recipients of unfair treatment, intended or unintended. Instead, theycultivate critical insights into both societies, posing a challenge to the dominantmodus operandi of both. These refugees’ escape constituted a powerful act ofresistance against North Korea’s self-aggrandizing propaganda, and their disil-lusionment with Southern society serves as a humbling perspective, pointing to

524 Asian Politics & Policy—Volume 5, Issue 4—2013

the woes of rampant materialism and anticommunist indoctrination, which aredetrimental to social integration of the peoples of both societies. Thus, borderpeople’s narratives are counter-hegemonic for both Koreas.

The Refugee-SettlersThese settlers voluntarily left North Korea for the South. The term famine

refugee does not hint at their diversity in education, regional origin, and occupa-tion before defection and assimilation. As such, settlers cannot be categorizedsimply as escapees, economic migrants, refugees, or defectors. Each such term hasdifferent definitions and implications (Mikyoung Kim, 2005).

The year 2000 marked a watershed moment in relations between the twoKoreas. Leaders Kim Dae-jung from the South and Kim Jong-il from the Northheld a summit meeting in Pyongyang, trying to thaw the decades-old Cold Warimpasse on the peninsula. The Sunshine Policy masterminded by South Korea’sKim Dae-jung was translated into a shortened psychological distance betweenNorth and South Koreans (Lankov, 2007). The mood of détente in the aftermathof massive famine in the North was manifested in the increasing outflowof North Koreans (Chang, Haggard, & Noland, 2006, pp. 14–33). In 2001, thenumber of North Korean settlers reached 1,043, almost doubling to 2,018 in fiveyears (see Table 1). The number reached more than 20,000 settlers by 2010.

The increase in numbers after 2000 included more and more women, mostly intheir late teens and early 20s, who would meet the demand for marriageablewomen along the Sino-DPRK borders (Muico, 2005). Chinese men in the adjacentarea regard North Korean women as an alternative to Chinese females, who areless willing to live and work in the rural areas. Women made up only 7% ofsettlers in 1989 but became a majority in 2002, at 55%, with the figure rising to77% in 2009. The dramatic increase in women refugees was accompanied by anincrease in gendered human rights violations, such as cross-border human traf-ficking, forced marriage, and violence against women. Their status inside Chinaas “illegal economic migrants” means not only an absence of legal recourse forabuse but also constant fear of deportation to the North (Mikyoung Kim, 2005;Muico, 2005).

Another noteworthy characteristic of the escapees is their age: Most of themare in their 20s and 30s (see Table 2). This age distribution reflects the physicalstrength required to endure the perilous journey, the more future-oriented mind-set of a younger generation, and an increase in the defection of women at riskof forced marriage and other rights violations (Hassig & Oh, 2009, pp. 217–238).The escape usually takes two routes, and both entail crossing the border fromNorth Korea to China. Since it is too dangerous to cross the highly fortifieddemilitarized zone between the North and South, the escapees have nochoice but to cross the Tuman River along the China-DPRK borders. Escapeesworking with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs; mostly Christian reliefgroups) choose either to seek asylum in foreign diplomatic compounds inChina or to travel down to the Sino-Myanmar/Laos borders to reach Thailand(Berintner, 2007, p. 28),4 which has no policy of forced deportation. Some havecrossed the Sino-Mongolian border before flying to South Korea, using forgedpassports.5

North Korean Refugees’ Nostalgia 525

Tab

le1.

Set

tler

s’E

ntr

ance

Dat

a

Sex

1989

1993

1998

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

Tot

al

Mal

e56

232

235

563

506

469

626

423

509

570

612

668

5,77

5Fe

mal

e45

271

480

632

812

1,26

896

01,

509

1,97

42,

197

2,25

912

,209

Tota

l60

734

306

1,04

31,

138

1,28

11,

894

1,38

32,

018

2,54

42,

809

2,92

717

,984

Fem

ale

rati

o(%

)7

623

4655

6367

6975

7878

7768

Sour

ce:

http

://

ww

w.d

ognp

osar

ang.

or.k

r/in

form

/da

ta_1

.php

.N

ote:

The

2009

colu

mn

repo

rts

entr

ance

data

thro

ugh

July

2009

.

526 Asian Politics & Policy—Volume 5, Issue 4—2013

More than half of the settlers (9,441 people, or 57%) are concentrated in theSeoul-Kyunggi area because of its geographical proximity to North Korea andthe newcomers’ reliance on preexisting social and family networks. For the samereason, the fewest settlers reside in the southwestern part of South Korea(Dongposarang, n.d.).

An absolute majority of settlers were unemployed (48%) or laborers (40%) inthe North. Only a small minority were working at the managerial and profes-sional levels (2%), the rest being employed in arts, sports, culture, and themilitary (Dongposarang, n.d.). The majority (12,409 people, or 70%) attained thecompulsory level of education up to middle and high school, whereas only aminority completed junior college (1,565 people, or 9%) or university-level edu-cation (1,338 people, or 8%). An average settler is a female in her 30s, with noprevious employment and 12 years of compulsory education.6

The Border People’s NarrativeGenre, medium, and narrative form are closely associated. One examines the

“fit” among expressive format (i.e., genre), articulating style (i.e., medium), andauthor’s message (i.e., narrative content). Postwar Japan’s “I-novel” is an illumi-nating example of tension among the three elements (e.g., Suzuki, 2004; Yasuoka,1997). The I-novel is by definition different from other forms of creative writingin that it is read only as autobiographical, a reflection of an individual memory(K. Kim & Park, 2010). In other words, the I-novel epitomizes a creative negotia-tion among genre (i.e., literary production), message (i.e., subject’s stance vis-à-vis encompassing group), and narrative (i.e., autobiographical accounts; Bleiker,2003; Holden, 2003; Young, 1988, pp. 15–39; Zehfuss, 2007, pp. 13–26). The NorthKorean narratives of those who have crossed the border show similar character-istics: These are primarily autobiographical works that indicate conflicting feel-ings toward the past from today’s standpoint. To show the in-between nature oftheir thoughts and feelings, this article examines the Northern settlers’ narrativesboth in print matter and Internet sites using content analysis methods (Berg &Lune, 2011; Weber, 1990).

PublicationsThe rivalry between the North and South can render narratives by the “self-

selected group” of Northern settlers political (Young, 1988, pp. 18–39). A writercan tune in to what a South Korean audience wants to hear in assessing the new

Table 2. Age Cohort at the Time of Entrance (as of November 2009)

0–9 10–19 20–29 30–39 40–49 50–59 60 Total

Number 685 2,097 4,849 5,080 2,634 795 810 17,678Ratio (%) 4 12 27 33 15 4 5 100

Source: http://www.dognposarang.or.kr/inform/data_1.php.

North Korean Refugees’ Nostalgia 527

reality. And yet a close look reveals the highly personal nature of such narratives.Tone, message, and motivation have changed over the years as these refugeeshave become more diverse (see Table 3).7

Most works published since the late 1990s seek either to expose the Pyongyangregime and its leadership or to describe personal experiences as first-personautobiography. Out of the 191 works, 51 (27%) are exposés, and 56 (29%) areautobiographical. Of these, 25 exposés (49%) and 30 autobiographies (54%) werepublished in the 1990s. Most of the narratives seem to have been written to satisfycuriosity about the secretive North Korean society and its leadership. Not sur-prisingly, some of the titles are catchy: North Korea, the Devil’s Homeland (K. Park,1997), Eyes of the Tailless Animals (S. Lee, 1996), Pyongyang Women (J. Kim, 1995),and I Want to Live With My Father (Hyung-duk Kim, 1997).

Most of the authors have unique life stories to tell. Among them are a secretagent (Hyun-hee Kim, I Want to Become a Woman Now, 1993); the first ZainichiKorean (an ethnic Korean living in Japan) to study in Pyongyang (Young-hwaLee, The Nights of Secretive Meetings in Pyongyang,); a friend of Kim Jong-il’smistress, Haerim Sung (Y. Kim, I Was a Friend of Sung Hye-rim, 2008); a child bornand raised in a political prison (Kang, A Song of Prison, 2003); Kim Jong-il’ssecurity guard (Young-kuk Lee, I Was Kim Jong-il’s Security Guard, 1996); and KimJong-il’s mentor (Hwang, Hwang Jang-yop Memoir, 2006).

Other categories, such as Christian evangelicalism, business guides to NorthKorea, and humorous items and comics also appeared between 2000 and thepresent. Books on health and herbal medicine are as neutral as they can be intheir content. Unless author biographies make much of the fact, ordinary readerswould not know their relation to North Korea or that these authors were escapeesfrom North Korea. The border narratives are growing more diversified and lesspolitical over time.

InternetSouth Korea is one of the most highly wired nations in the world. Advances in

technology (mobile phones and DVDs in particular) are adding a new dimension

Table 3. Categorization of Settlers’ Publications (Total 191 Entries,Online Library)a

Category ExposéAutobiography

(Nonfiction)PersonalEssays

PolicyEssays

Fiction(Autobio-graphical) Periodicals

Number 51 56 30 27 8 3Category Religious

messageSelf-help NK

informationHumor Poems Hobby

Number 4 5 8 4 3 2

Source: http://cafe.daum.net/talbukjadese.Note: aThe total number is 198 because of double coding. Some books in exposé, autobiography, andautobiographical fiction categories overlap in their content and are counted twice.

528 Asian Politics & Policy—Volume 5, Issue 4—2013

not only to inter-Korean relations but also to the settlement process of NorthKorean defectors. The settlers in the South as well as those in hiding in China,Cambodia, and Thailand post their writings to gain support, engage in debate,and exchange practical information (e.g., on hiring/seeking employment, search-ing for people, and obtaining South Korean licenses). Unlike traditional publish-ing, Internet interaction is impromptu, speedy, and dialogical. There are severalInternet sites run by South Korean NGOs as well as individual defectors (seeTable 4).

This article examines the postings at the sites of the Association of the NorthKorean Defectors and Settlers’ Lounge. Other sites have a religious bias (e.g.,Merry Year Foundation); only a few listings due to their short history (e.g., theCoalition for North Korean Women’s Rights, created in 2009); a Chinese-Koreanorientation (e.g., Yanbian News and Yanbian Forum);8 or certain media affilia-tions that tend to lead to reaction to the news rather than proactive postings (e.g.,Free North Korea Radio and Daily NK). Further, I focus on personal essays andconfessional poems posted on the two Internet sites or published conventionally.In addition to the primary sources, I also utilize visual materials such as films andin-depth interviews.9

Nexus Between Past and PresentThe nostalgic narratives of refugees reveal the psychological transition

between now and then, here and there (R. Park, 1928).10 The settlers are time/space travelers. They are a group of survivors who dared to make the life-threatening choice of crossing borders, hiding in China, undertaking perilousjourneys, and acclimating to a new lifestyle in South Korea. One can imagine the

Table 4. Web Sites for Northern Settlers

Name Web Site AddressMembership

SizeNumber

of Postings

Sae’tuhmin Shim’tuh(Settlers’ Lounge)

http://ww.w3ip.com/ 9,318 39,403

Free North Korea Radio http://www.fnkradio.com/ N/A 4,604Daily NK http://www.dailynk.com/

korean/index.phpN/A 2,938

Yanbiana News http://www.yanbianews.com/ N/A 57,654Yanbian Forum http://www.yanbianforum.com/ N/A 87,986Association of the North

Korean Defectorshttp://www.nkd.or.kr/ N/A 535

Merry Year Foundation http://www.merryyear.org/new/

N/A 254

The Coalition for NorthKorean Women’s Rights

http://www.nkwomen.org/ N/A 27

Note: aThe sites of Yanbian News and Yanbian Forum specialize in Chinese-Koreans living in SouthKorea, but are frequented by North Korean escapees. This is because they often spend years hidingin the Sino-DPRK border area of Yanbian and face similar issues with Chinese-Koreans in the South.

North Korean Refugees’ Nostalgia 529

culture shock that the fast-changing, highly competitive, and modern Southwould hold for those who had spent their lives in the economically underdevel-oped and totalitarian Communist North. Their narratives are neither single-dimensional in content nor univocal in perspective.

They transcend the hegemonic anticipation imposed on them by both societies.In the North, their survival instinct defied the “world’s paradise” propaganda.Had the refugees mindlessly internalized the mass deception implemented tosustain the few ruling elites, they would have stayed in the North. “An emptystomach is a bigger source of courage than a thinking head,” according to onesettler (personal communication, August 31, 2008). In the South, the escapeesrefuse to accept the wholesale superiority of the capitalist system. They see thenegative side of unlimited competition and the chilling reality of making it onyour own. Some criticize the culture of Southern society, where the young some-times trample tradition in their profit-seeking behavior, and sexual hypocrisyentangled with financial calculation often leads to the tragic dissolution of fami-lies.11 Border people’s narratives encompass conflicting feelings as settlers simul-taneously recall the past and situate themselves in the present: Guilt coincideswith appreciation, anger with sorrow, homesickness with assimilation, disap-pointment with hope. These kinds of emotions are recognized as not beingmutually exclusive.

Guilt and AppreciationThe escapees experience a profound sense of guilt and appreciation for what

they have and enjoy in the South. Most of them say that the feelings of guiltarise after they are safely settled in the South. A sense of security in the presentallows them to engage in a reflective reappraisal of past negative events (cf.Davis, 1979). One settler touches on this: “We were very scared of apprehensionin China and deportation to North Korea. Our constant preoccupation was togo under the radar. Nothing else mattered. I used to carry rat poison just incase. But since I have settled in the South, I have been feeling very sorry for myfamily left behind in the North” (personal communication, February 28, 2006).The new material abundance, of food in particular, makes them revisit theirprevious struggle with hunger and reassess their relationships to familymembers still in the North. One of them said, “I am not happy eating deliciousfood alone. I used to think filling my empty stomach would make me happy,but it is no longer true. The tasty food does not mean much because I know myfamily is still suffering in the North” (personal communication, February 27,2006). An escapee in her 60s recollects, “My granddaughter had to survive onweed soup. I do not even know whether she is still alive or not. My body twistswith pain when sitting before delicious food and decent clothes” (personalcommunication, March 3, 2006).

This overpowering guilt does not stop at the thought of immediate family.Escapees go through phases of repentance for past sins committed simply inorder to survive. Sung-hee Park writes about bartering a bowl of bean soup for apair of winter shoes: “One winter night, a soldier entered my house and asked fora bowl of bean soup with rice and offered a pair of winter shoes in exchange. Idecided to cut a deal with him and took his shoes. I resold the shoes in order to

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generate money to sell the bean soup in the market. It seemed like a good idea atthe time. Looking back, I feel ashamed thinking how cold the soldier must havebeen walking back to his barracks after having left my house” (S. Park, 2007,p. 28). Refugees tell of guilt, shame, and repentance for past wrongs inflicted onothers as well as their present comfort, beyond the reach of their loved ones leftbehind.

In tandem with this sense of guilt is appreciation. Settlers are generally thank-ful to the Seoul government and their Southern compatriots for accommodatingthem. One refugee said, “Ever since I have arrived here, I began hating myself forhaving been so gullible and foolish. How little I knew about this country! I neverlifted a finger for this country, but they take care of me simply because I am adefector” (personal communication, March 1, 2006). Another appreciates a new-found joy in helping other people. Ms. Ma writes about her amazement at theSouth Korean culture of volunteerism and NGO activism: “One of the things thatreally surprised me about the South is volunteerism. I had never thought of sucha concept in my hometown because I was so preoccupied with feeding my ownmouth. It has been three or four years since I wanted to experience the joy ofhelping other people, and that made me start fundraising to help victims of theYongcheun train [station] explosion.12 I and several other settlers from the sametown sold dishes at a bazaar to help North Korea.”

Anger and SorrowVery few defectors left North Korea out of political conviction. Some of them

knew about South Korea’s relative affluence and culture from watchingsmuggled DVDs and listening to people with Chinese connections. Years ofpolitical indoctrination, with the insistence that South Korean capitalism is ashameful copycat of the U.S. system, benefiting only a handful of capitalists whiledepriving the majority of laborers, left little room for second-guessingPyongyang-controlled propaganda. Elementary school math textbooks, forinstance, offered problems loaded with anti-American belligerence (Bleiker &Hoang, 2007, pp. 249–274; Misook Kim, 2006, p. 77). Another settler recounts thissense of national pride: “I heard that South Korea was rich. But it did not stop mefeeling proud of North Korea. We were poor, but we had pride and dignity.Unfortunately, that was before the beginning of the Arduous March. Food camebefore everything else in the world” (personal communication, March 3, 2006).

New arrivals tend to be overwhelmed, first by disillusionment, then by anger.They realize that most of the stories they grew up listening to and memorizingat compulsory “Everyday Learning” sessions (Saenghwal Chonghwa) were false.Such deception was aimed at controlling and depriving ordinary people whilethe Pyongyang leadership led a luxurious, even decadent, lifestyle.13 A teenagersaid, “You would not imagine how angry I am with all the lies Kim Jong-il toldus. The schoolbooks are full of lies. My dad [in the North] still might believe inwhat he has been taught” (personal communicaton, March 5, 2006).

Sorrow, ironically, is another side of this anger. While the escapees are angry atthe deception rampant in North Korea, they are unhappy that they have beenmisled and that the lies and devious tactics of the North Korean leadershippersist, even as Northerners themselves remain oblivious to them. Escapees

North Korean Refugees’ Nostalgia 531

grieve that many continue to die and suffer from a staged and fabricated North-ern reality, having no knowledge of the sympathy that exists for them in theSouth. Enlightenment is not necessarily a blessing—it can also be a source ofheartbreak. Had they not discovered the truth, they would not feel sorry eitherfor themselves or their Northern compatriots. Jang, a settler poet, expresses thissadness for a mother in a marketplace (Jang, 2008, pp. 84–85).

Selling My Daughter for 100 Won14

She looked tired.“My daughter for 100 won”15

The sign hanging around her neckStanding next to her was the young daughter.

She was deaf.The daughter for sale and the mother selling herBecame the target for people’s contemptLooking down on the ground.

Her tears all had dried up.My mother is dyingThe daughter cried and shoutedHolding on to the mother’s skirtShe only twisted her lips.

She did not know how to thank.A soldier gave her 100 won, buying her motherly love,Not her daughterShe ran off somewhere with the money.

She was a mother.She hurried back with wheat bread for the 100 wonAnd put it in the daughter’s mouth.Forgive me, cried the woman.

“I am sorry” [Mi’anahe] is one of the most frequently used expressions amongescapees. They apologize for promises unfulfilled and broken. In the film Cross-ing (Cheh & Kim, 2008), the child repeatedly apologizes to his father for havingfailed to protect his mother while his father sneaked into China in search oftuberculosis medicine for his wife. When his mother dies because his father couldnot return, the child begs for forgiveness for having failed to keep the promise.The boy becomes a kkotjebi (“flower swallowtail,” a euphemism for an orphanedchild living on the streets), and the father, too, who could not keep the promiseof bringing medicine and rescuing his child from the North, repeatedly says tohimself, “I am sorry.” When the news of his father’s escape becomes known to thegovernment, the son is sent to a labor camp while his father, in South Korea,hoping to bring his wife and son to join him, escapes to Mongolia to meet hisfather, then dies before he sees him again. This tragic narrative, based on a truestory, defies villainy or heroism: Anybody can fall into victimhood due to cir-cumstantial hardship.

The roots of sorrow stem from the ultimate absurdity of life’s situations: Thesepeople did not choose to be born in an isolated country and to be ruled by ineptleaders. Famine, death, and separation did not result from these victims’ actions.Rather, the culpability lies with the North Korean regime for its failure to provideits people with the most basic necessities. Yet in their sorrow, the narratives arefor the most part divorced from political analysis.

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Homesickness and AssimilationGuilt and appreciation, anger and sorrow alone do not cover the sentiments

settlers harbor for their hometowns and motherland.16 I asked escapees to namea few things that came to mind when they heard the word hometown. Most oftheir reactions were surprisingly mundane: They mentioned mugwort rice cakes,azaleas, the hills, creeks, and childhood friends. If nostalgia may trigger happyassociations, at other times it can be a source of painful longing (Davis, 1979).Separation from loved ones is particularly difficult to bear, as Won-kyong Kim(2007) writes about her hometown:

My Hometown

My heart aches with thoughts of my hometown.I wonder how my family is doing lately.I wish I could run into their arms,I wish I could call their names.The flowers along the road remind me of my hometown Azalea,Listening to the laughs of children passing by makes meLong for the childhood days—tears flow.

I have sworn that I would never return to the landBut I miss my home.When could I return?

When could I live happily with my family in our hometown?That is all I think of day and night.

Yet a hometown was also the place where hunger tore families apart, as onerefugee describes: “All we had was a bowl of porridge and soybean soup. Ourseven-year-old child was tempted by the porridge, and my husband beganbeating him for that. He became violent to me as well when I sided with ourchild. And yet we knew that we could not blame anyone. I was overcome withguilt at not being able to feed the child. I hated myself as a parent” (S. Park,2007, p. 27).

The reactions of the escapees were far more complicated when I asked themto name a few things not merely about their hometowns but about theirhomeland. They mentioned hunger, death, disease, Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il,unification, and pain. The documentary On the Border (Daily Chosun, 2008b)shows a conversation between two sisters hiding in Yenji, near the DPRK-China border. Misook17 fled 10 years ago and settled in the South. She hired abroker to find her younger sister, Miho, and help her escape from the North.A day before Miho’s voluntary return to North Korea, the sisters have thisexchange:

Miho: Capitalist countries always speak ill of socialist countries like the DPRK.

Misook: The Chinese people despise the Dear Leader. They call him “Kim Jong-il,Kim Jong-il.” Only North Koreans get upset with the Chinese who have littleregard for the General.

Miho: That is because our people cross the border and enter China in order to go tothe South. Our acts invite their contempt.

Misook: If we had not escaped, we could have died a long time ago. Do you knowhow many died during the famine? More than three million people . . . during thatArduous March campaign.18

North Korean Refugees’ Nostalgia 533

Miho: But most of us have survived. Some were born afterwards. There are toomany people anyway, and it might be okay for some of them to die [nervouslylaughs].

Misook: The problem is that they died prematurely.

Miho: That was their fate.

Misook: What was their fate? Dying from starvation is a fate?

Miho: Ah, let’s preserve socialism. . . . I want to see unification soon. Then who willbe the leader of unified Korea? Does it have to be only one person?

Misook: Probably.

Miho: Why?

Misook: Because unification means two becomes one. How can we have two sunsunder one sky?

Miho: Then our General has to become the leader of unified Korea.

Interviewer: Why do you want to return to the North? It is such a poorcountry.

Miho: I do not know. Yes, we are poor, but . . . I wish I could stay with my sister, butI cannot abandon my motherland.

Interviewer: What do you have in the North? Why can’t you leave?

Miho: The truth is we have nothing. I personally have nothing there either. But Iwas born there . . . my motherland . . . yes, that is my motherland. [Miho returnedto North Korea the next day, and Misook headed for the South.]

The escapees make it clear that their defection was not motivated out of dissat-isfaction with North Korea. It was instead a decision of life or death. Disillusion-ment about the country’s deception and propaganda arises only after they settlein the South. Choong-shik Park writes in his book An Aria From the Borders (C.Park, 2008, p. 9), “I did not leave my country because I disliked it. North Korea isthe place where I was born and raised. I often cry as I miss the land and thebeautiful memories. I would like to go back to North Korea if possible, but myhomeland does not allow us to return.”19

The homeland to Jung-myung Lee (2007) is a place devoid of love and sym-pathy, where death is a part of daily life:

On the Autumn Day

It was one autumn morning in 1997Mother and I poured thin porridge into a small bowl,Put it on the kitchen stoveAnd pulled the cart out of the houseLooking back to my father’s swollen face

When we returned with a cartful of shrubsWalking 40 milesMy father was already deadHe did not have the porridge

My tired mother laughed,Laughed very loudlyEnvious of my dead fatherShe laughed and laughed.

When I got up next morningMy mother was also deadHer face bearing the same smile of the night before

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I could not laughBut could not cry eitherBeing calmIt felt like one of those days

Quickly upSpread the only blanket over the cartPlaced them on itBegan climbing the mountainOn my way to their burials.

My neighbor KangyiAlso placed her younger brother, who had died the night before,On the cart and stood next to me

Another neighbor, Youngyi,Also carrying her dead sisterSaid, “Let’s go together” andFollowed us.We went to the mountains.What I was pushing in the cart felt like lumber,Not people.

Nobody on the street paid attention to our carts.The corpses with their eyes wide openMust have looked like some stuff,Not people.

They looked like stuff to my eyes as well.I went to the mountains, talking with Kangyi as if nothing had happened.

I dug graves,Buried them,Dusted off my hands, andReturned home.

I could not offer them a cup of liquorSimply because there wasn’t anyThe whole world dried up just like that.

Not only the world had dried upSympathy, love, kindnessThey all dried up.

Life has made the people like that.We do not know what life is.We do not know what death is.

It was a world for human beingsThat was certain.For it was not for animals.The village up in the NorthThat indeed is my homeland.

The flip side of homesickness is the pressure to assimilate. Migrants mustadapt to the host environment to survive and succeed—although this does notmean that they must like the new society. “The North has good sides and badsides. The South also has good sides and bad sides. China is the same. I want toselect and learn only the good things from the three places I have been to,” aninterviewee said (personal communication, November 25, 2006).

With the majority of refugees being women, narratives on assimilation haveclearly gendered implications. There are many accounts of migrant women enter-ing into relations with less desirable partners in host countries (Morris, 2009).Most North Korean women settlers cohabit with South Korean men withoutmaking the relationship legal, the arrangement most likely reflecting the men’s

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wish to avoid family and financial complications in case of potential disputes.Because the South Korean government provides free housing to escapees, theirmale partners usually move in with women settlers. Cultural differences oftenlead to tension in these households, with different ways of communicating beingsome of the biggest sources of conflict. Northern women, with their strongaccents and straightforward temperaments, often find their Southern partnersdifficult to read. A woman confided to me, “He just leaves the house withouttelling me. That makes me feel disrespected” (personal communcation, Novem-ber 11, 2006). When Southern men try to evade confrontation, their Northernpartners tend to view this as dismissal rather than a matter of cultural and genderdifferences.

Assimilation is important in the work world as well. Those who have escapedfrom the North have to find gainful employment upon finishing the government-sponsored settlement training program. One of them said, “When I first got a jobin the South, my co-workers treated me like a foreigner.” Then he went on toexplain that “the company had hired three settlers before me and realized thatthey were not trying hard enough to change themselves within the capitalistsystem. I later heard that the owner and my fellow workers watched me sweep-ing the floor through a closed-circuit camera before deciding to give me a regularjob. They were skeptical of my work habits because the previous settlers oftendid not come to work without giving the company proper notice. Then I madeup my mind to adjust to the South Korean system” (personal communication,February 28, 2007).

The need to assimilate despite homesickness is one of the complicated aspectsof the settlers’ new life. The conviction that they would never want to go back tothe old land of hunger and deception is gradually replaced by longing for theirfamilies and hometowns. Their new life does allow them to indulge in nostalgia;however, their narratives continue to straddle borders.

Even as they are disappointed by the discrimination and prejudice they face inSouth Korean society, settlers from the North still hope for Korean unification.Having lived in both societies, these people consider themselves pioneers offuture integration. Their experiences, they believe, can be used as templates toallow South Korea to better prepare for peaceful coexistence with its Northerncompatriots.

Southerners often equate poverty with a lack of dignity. In their personalessays, North Koreans show that they kept their households clean and orderly inspite of their poverty. According to traditional Confucian values, keeping one’sresidence presentable is regarded as an important neighborly duty. A womanrefugee writes, “The neighborhood church sent me the daily necessities, but theywere not suitable for reuse. They must have thought I was a beggar. The futonwas like a rag, the dishes were dirty, and the necklines of the shirts were yellow.I threw away all the donations and cried” (Cho, 2007, p. 20). To settlers’ dismay,they become the object of acts of inconsiderate charity.

Many escapees talk about how Southern anticommunist prejudice is expressedin mundane daily interactions. The people in the South are generally afraid,cautious, and distrustful of North Koreans (S. Kim, 2010), and they often do notmake a distinction between the political leadership and ordinary citizens. Thetypes of prejudice that Northerners confront range from the economic (such as

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rental and employment discrimination) to the ideological (derogatory labels suchas “Kim Dae-jung’s freebees”). Most of the time, however, the prejudice is subtleand cultural (Anand, 2007; Hall, 1997, pp. 223–290). One woman recalled anincident when a man shouted, “She looks just like us” (personal communication,April 4, 2006), expressing decades of anticommunist education that had instilleda negative image of North Korea.

Ironically juxtaposed to this disappointment in their treatment in the South isNortherners’ hope for unification. A North Korean woman cohabiting with aChinese man asserts, “I’d really like to see early unification. I am one of the poorestpeople in China, but North Koreans have less than half of what I have” (The DailyChosun, 2008a, p. 3). Many others hope for integration between the two Koreasbecause they wish for a family reunion. Separated by hunger, they long for the timewhen their families can live together again without worrying about food.

Settlers think of themselves as trailblazers who have been paving the way forthe arrival of more North Koreans. They not only secretly remit money to theirfamilies in the North20 but also often hire brokers to smuggle family members outof the country. They mediate between the two societies by assuming the role ofmessengers who spread the word about the Southern reality. One settler alludedto the hidden communication channels and smuggling networks that can bringabout popular revolt and the demise of the dictatorial regime: “If somethinghappens in North Korea, it is because of our efforts to deliver the news of whatwe have seen here. As more and more North Koreans begin to realize that manypeople are dying because of Kim Jong-il’s lies, they will get very angry” (personalcommunication, April 5, 2007).

The escapees are laying the groundwork for a smooth transition to unificationin the South as well. Their arrival alerted the Seoul government to the necessityof putting into place systems for re-education, de-indoctrination, and welfareprograms for North Korean refugees. At the government level, for the first timein more than 60 years, South Korea has relatively accurate information on theinner workings of North Korea. At the level of its citizens, increasing numbers ofSouth Koreans are beginning to accept Northerners as part of daily life. With thecoming of the refugees, a quasi-unification has thus already taken place.

Conclusion: Nostalgia and TraumaSurvivors of trauma pose an interesting question for memory debates. The

nostalgic memory of trauma victims suggests the coexistence of seeminglyincompatible sentiments of nostalgia and trauma (Atia & Davies, 2010, p. 181).The survivors of the atomic bombing in Hiroshima, Japan, for instance, oftenexpress guilt, anger, and confusion over the overwhelming number of mean-ingless deaths (Lifton, 1999; Ray, 2007, pp. 133–165). More than 60 years afterthis unprecedented event, survivors of the atomic bomb engage in varioustherapeutic activities to overcome their trauma, such as giving public testimo-nies, drawing and writing about the event, and engaging in social activismthrough NGOs. They are not trying to forget the tragedy but instead to keep italive by seeking meaning in the traumatized past (Mannheim, 2010). Traumaalso often causes distortion or embellishment of memories, and even some-times amnesia to preserve survival (McKeena, McKay, & Laws, 2000, pp. 234–267).

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Holocaust survivors have described daily life in the concentration camps. Theytried to avoid confronting life-threatening realities, for the fear was too over-whelming. Survivors testify to the creation of their own realities in order toendure hardship and retain hope of survival. Their testimonies reveal guilt,anger, sorrow, and hope, with little evidence of any good memories of the camps(Young, 1988, pp. 117–133). The memories of Hiroshima and Holocaust survivorsalike halt at the beginning of their hardships. Most nostalgic testimonials byHiroshima victims are concentrated on the “bright and beautiful Mondaymorning, August 6, 1945.” Holocaust survivors often look back on their “happyand peaceful” days before the anti-Semitic genocidal campaign launched by theGerman Third Reich.

This article on North Korean escapees’ narratives shows an understudied,often ignored aspect of trauma, survival, and human rights. These settlers haveendured famine, dangerous border crossings, police hunts, and discrimination. Iftrauma led to the total suppression of difficult memories, they would becomepeople “without history.” By the same token, if a harrowing past leads to distor-tion of memories, refugees would be telling made-up stories without any dis-cernibly coherent narrative themes.

This analysis shows instead that their memories are betwixt and between.Instead of deleting memories to meet the needs of a dramatically differentpresent, their recollections vibrate with lingering contradictory sentiments.Despite the prevalent paradigm in Western scholarship, which holds that NorthKorean memories are dominated by the present, this study shows the coexistenceof conflicting feelings that interweave past and present. Unlike the assertionmade by Davis (1979) that “nostalgia’s special relationship to the past has to dowith the relatively sharp contrast that the experience casts on present circum-stances and conditions, which compared to the past, are invariably felt to be,and often reasoned to be as well, more bleak, grim, wretched, ugly, deprivational,unfulfilling, frightening, and so forth” (p. 15), North Korean refugees recall thedifficult and dark past from the comfortable distance of the settled present. It isnot today’s discontent that drives such settlers to feel nostalgic about their oldhomeland, with its poverty, deprivation, and terror. Instead, it is the sense ofsafety and security that allows survivors to endeavor to give meaning to the past.The continuity of mnemonic praxis among traumatized North Korean escapeesaccentuates the tenacity of past events in an unfamiliar present.

These Northern settlers, no ordinary cosmopolitan migrants by any means,are angry with the brutal regime they have left behind and grateful for thematerial comforts of the South. They are indignant about cultural prejudice andsocial discrimination in the South but at the same time are under pressure toassimilate. They feel guilty about loved ones who must continue to endurehardships in the North, yet are nostalgic about their homeland and hometownsand hope for the unification of the Korean Peninsula. Unlike trauma survivorswho appear in other studies, North Korean settlers tell stories that are difficultto clearly define or categorize. For them, North Korea, the homeland, is anobject of longing, hatred, anger, and love, whereas South Korea is a safe zoneof material comfort, accommodation, and prejudice. Escapees belong to bothand yet belong wholly to neither. Their place in between is the very inspirationof their border genre.

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This article brings the refugee-settlers into the debate. Their narratives are theoutcome of the refugees’ engagement in seeking and conferring meaning in andon their difficult past and challenging present. Escape was an act of resistanceagainst the irresponsible regime that has failed to protect its own citizens. Theunjust relationship between the failed state and its unprotected population,however, has not been translated into unilateral denouncement of the homeland.Nostalgia is a potent sentiment that defines the border people’s genre. Settlers areconscious of the socio-ideological prejudice that they are subject to in the Southas well. If the North Korean regime is a blatant violator of basic human rights, thesubtle workings of Otherizing in the South deprive refugees of their rightfuldignity.

Notes1China has been on the receiving end of a massive influx of Korean refugees since the mid-1990s.

Pyongyang’s failure to feed its own people has driven a starving population in search of food acrossthe dangerous 850-mile-long border between the two countries. With the zone dividing South andNorth Korea highly fortified, the Sino–Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) border is thebest route by which these hungry masses can flee the North. The exact number of North Koreanescapees in China is open to debate. The Chinese government’s conservative estimate is 10,000;Seoul’s calculation is between 10,000 and 30,000; humanitarian organizations put the figure as high as300,000 (Mikyoung Kim, 2005).

2North and South Korea share strong linguistic similarities. Besides the differences in accent andintonation, North Korean vernacular has much fewer foreign expressions compared to the SouthKorean version.

3North Korea’s gross national product per capita was about $1,800 in 2010, whereas that of SouthKorea was $30,200 per purchasing power parity and $20,265 per nominal calculations.

4The Thai government does not send refugees back to North Korea. Thailand provides shelters tothe refugees and processes each case with the cooperation of the United Nations High Commissionerfor Refugees and the South Korean Embassy in Bangkok. The North Korean escapees are known topay Chinese brokers for the arrangement of safe passage to Thailand. The cost ranges from $5,000 to$13,000 per person. The escapees usually rely on prearranged vehicles and boats, considering theterrain of the escape route, and walk through the jungle before arriving in Thailand (personalcommunication, November 16, 2009).

5Between 1999 and 2009, about 3,000 North Koreans sought shelter in Mongolia. In 2008, therewere 150 people, in the first half of 2009, 30 persons, and 500 people in 2007. A majority of them stayedin China for several years before seeking shelter in Mongolia. See United Nations General AssemblyA/HRC/13/47 (2010, p. 15).

6In North Korea, compulsory education consists of two years of kindergarten, four years ofelementary school, and six years of middle and high school. In addition, every able-bodied person isrequired to attend “Everyday Learning Sessions,” during which citizens publicly criticize themselvesand resolve to improve.

7The total number is 198 because certain books in the exposé, autobiography, and autobiographicalfiction categories overlap in content and so are counted twice. Reflecting how the genre is diversi-fying, detective novels (e.g., Church, 2006) and travel essays (e.g., Munz, Nikol, & Kracht 2007) arealso appearing on the market.

8The sites of Yanbian News and Yanbian Forum specialize in Chinese-Koreans living in SouthKorea but are frequented by North Korean escapees because they often spend years hiding in theSino-DPRK border area of Yanbian and face similar issues as Chinese-Koreans in the South.

9All names of escapees quoted in this article are pseudonyms except when the writers themselvesspecified their names in blogs.

10Park describes an immigrant as “marginal man” who strives to live in two diverse culturalgroups.

11For examples of a minority’s standpoint as social critique in autobiographical fiction andpersonal essays, see Angelou (1997) and Morrison (2007).

12This refers to an accident on April 22, 2004, in which 154 people died, 1,300 were injured, and8,000 houses were destroyed (Ma, 2007, pp. 26–27).

13In an Internet posting, Jayubang writes, “I learned that poor children beg and pick crumbs off thestreets in the South. The rich people often beat them to death out of whim, the teachers taught us. . . .

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How can we save the people in the North from dying of starvation?”(http://www.nkd.or.kr/nkd/read.html?s=3001&no=794&page=1).

14All translations in this article are those of the author.15Won is the unit of North Korean currency.16There are quite a few examples of survivors” nostalgia for a painful past. See Jiang (1997) and

Zhang (2008).17The names are pseudonyms.18The Arduous March is the name given to a massive famine that struck North Korea, in the

mid-1990s and ended in 2000, the 50th anniversary of the DPRK Communist Party. The term comesfrom the 100-day march of the guerrilla fighters led by Kim Il-sung to evade the Japanese attacks inManchuria from late 1939 to early 1940.

19According to a 2008 survey of 444 escapees, four out of five think the severe competition in theSouth Korean society is hard, and about two out of five think life in North Korea was better than thepresent. In addition, 44.4% feel alien from the South Koreans, and 47.3% think North Koreans aremore warm-hearted than South Koreans. See The Daily Chosun (2008a, June 13).

20At least 70% of escapees send money to their families in the North. See Hong (2007, p. ii).

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