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In January this year, the South Korean Ministry of Unification released statistics for the number of refugees who had arrived from the North in the past year. As was widely expected, the figure was slightly down in 2014: there were 1,514 arrivals in 2013, while 1,396 came last year.
At any rate, 27,518 North Koreans have arrived in the South since the armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953. It is worth remembering that the vast majority of these people came to the South quite recently, mainly after 2000.
The North Korean community in South Korea is, in many regards, very dissimilar to other emigre communities that existed in the Cold War era.
To start with, most of the refugees are women ― 70 percent of the total number and 78 percent of the 2014 arrivals, are female. This reflects the mechanics of escape: it is much easier for a woman slip through the surveillance networks in the North, and it is easier for a woman to find ways to survive in China ― which is a major conduit for refugees on their way to the South.
Another peculiarity of this community is the relatively low level of education. Only 7 percent of refugees had completed college before their escape ― this is below the national average. So it comes as no surprise that most refugees come from humble backgrounds. Only 5 percent of refugees are usually categorized as "professionals," "engineers," or "officials," while almost half are classified as "people without employment." Some of these people are children, but most are housewives.
The geographic origins of refugees are equally telling. Most refugees come from near the border, the sparsely populated and relatively backward northeast. As of January last year, 64 percent of refugees were from North Hamgyeong Province, while another 9 percent came from neighbouring South Hamgyeong. Fewer than 2 percent lived in Pyongyang, the capital ― where the major elite reside.
Last but not least, it should be remembered that North Koreans rarely leave their country merely for high-minded ideological reasons. Because all former North Korean citizens are accepted as refugees in the South, they have little, if any, incentive to present themselves as victims of political or religious persecution (in this regard they are quite different from many asylum seekers worldwide). Thus, in a 2011 survey, only 26 percent of respondents mentioned their dissatisfaction with the regime as among the reasons they left North Korea (those surveyed were allowed to pick more than one reason). On the contrary, 51 percent of participants said that they had fled North Korea due to economic hardships, and another 18 percent said that they had because they wanted to earn more money.
In this regard too, North Korean refugees are quite different from Cold War escapees from the communist bloc ― many, if not most, of whom were driven by political motivations, i.e. their desire to flee the regimes in their respective homelands.
Therefore, the average refugee's profile is clear: she is a middle-aged woman from a deprived background who lived in the geographical periphery of the country, perhaps in a farming village. She fled to find a better income in China and/or to flee economic deprivation at home. After a few years, she decided to leave China for the South. She might have been assisted by sympathetic religious activists, but it is far more likely that her escape was a professional operation: she paid a professional broker a few thousand dollars, money she saved herself or got from relatives in South Korea (or in other developed countries).
Of course, the refugee community is diverse. It includes some bona fide political activists, as well as officials who got into trouble with the regime, not to mention graduates from elite universities who wanted to operate on the international scene, and the like. However, it seems that roughly half of all adult refugees fit the above description.
It is therefore not surprising that the average refugee shows little interest in political activism. Refugees also struggle to adjust to South Korean life. Their average income is a mere 1.2 million won a month, and they are almost four times more likely to be unemployed than the average South Korean.
Nonetheless, most of these women, doing poorly paid and difficult work in South Korea, are quite happy about their lot, and are ready to spend a significant part of their meagre earnings to help their families get out of the North. This fact alone speaks volumes about the difference between the two Korean states.
Professor Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. You can reach him at anlankov@yahoo.com.
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