A European view of defecting

By Bernhard Seliger

While I write this, the still unfolding story of the U.S. citizen dashing across the border at Panmunjeom is the talk of the internet. It brought up memories from the Cold War in Europe ― but not really deja-vus. Actually, one of the most striking differences between the Cold War in Europe, the German division in particular, and the ongoing division of the Korean Peninsula is the way defections and defectors are treated on “this side” (the Southern respectively Western) side of the border. This is particularly true for “re-defections” or for defections toward the East, or here, the North.

In Germany, though the focus of historical and political attention is clearly on defections from East to West. These were far more numerous and sometimes very dramatic, sometimes occurring in tunnels, in boats and in one case by balloon. There was a constant trickle of people leaving the West for the East. An estimated 2.5 to 3.5 million people left the East for the West from 1949 to 1961, but from the final year in that period, the year the Berlin Wall was built, defections became almost impossible. These added to the millions who already had fled from the Red Army in the last two years of the war. But there were also people going the other way: until 1961, an estimated 500,000 people went from the West to the East.

The reasons were diverse and overwhelmingly not ideological. Two-thirds of the migrants were former citizens of the East, or in Korean parlance, “re-defectors,” often simply motivated by homesickness. Some came for love and family, others again wanted to escape criminal punishment. The group of those being convinced socialists or communists was small, though existing. From 1953 to 1957 there was even a campaign by East Germany to woo artists, scientists and highly educated workers to switch sides. Those, who had formerly left the East, were promised to have their property restored while others were offered material incentives.

This campaign brought up to 50,000 people every year (mostly back) to the East. One interesting case of resettlement in the East was the father of the later German chancellor Angela Merkel, a protestant pastor originally from Berlin. This is why Angela Merkel, born in Hamburg in 1954, came to be in East Germany later the same year. Not even a few intellectuals in the early time of division saw East Germany as the “better” Germany, better in the sense that it was more honest in addressing the horrors of National Socialism.

Anyway, East Germany throughout the 1950s, when West Germany experienced a “Wirtschaftswunder” (economic miracle) catapulting it to a status among the world's rich nations, could not at all keep up with attracting settlers from the West and in 1957 stopped trying. Instead, it increased building hurdles to migration and defections from its own territory, finally stopping migration at all with the Berlin Wall. But even after the wall was built, hundreds fled the country every year and thousands migrated legally, though often heavily suppressed. In the end, the East German population sank from 1949 to 1989, when the opening of the wall led to another huge wave of migration.

So, what was the Western view of people going East? Clearly, those going for ideological reasons were seen somewhat as traitors. And, through its state media, East Germany ― like North Korea ―presented many of the returnees' horror stories of life in the West. But, overall, there was a surprisingly relaxed view of these defections. “If you don´t like it here, you can go up East!” was a thing, fathers frequently said to their children who were part of the 1968 student movement. And they knew, basically, nobody would do so. Too much was known of the drab and sometimes shocking reality of communism in East Germany. Technically, however, the barriers were practically zero.

Though being militarily alert to the huge armies amassed in the East during the Cold War, West Germany made a point by not erecting any border fortifications against the East. At most, there were poles and signs warning “you are leaving West Germany,” or, more famously, in Berlin the “American sector”. No one, however, hindered your approach to the border. According to the Western legal view, this border had no justification.

And, if really someone wanted to leave for East Germany, it did not create any stir in the West (if not for reasons that it was a spy defecting). Rather, there was a pitiful stance toward people leaving in this direction. This was a stark contrast to the eastern side of the border, which was a military border dubbed “antifascist protection wall.” It was much more a sophisticated system of barriers functioning as a prison border ― up to 10 kilometers in depth in some parts ― that was trying to prevent East Germans from approaching the actual border.

South-to-North defections in Korea, in the much more tense and dramatic setting of Korean division, are rare and widely discussed issues. But who, if nobody would care? If defectors from North to South are welcome and defectors from South to North were equally treated as people simply choosing a foolish and tragic option, one which ultimately has no bearing on the national security of South Korea, who would care?

It would at once solve many problems. Border security could be easily relaxed. There would be no more need to supervise defectors the way it is done now. For North Koreans, and also the whole world, there would be a clear sign that South Korea leaves such choices to the people alone.

That a more relaxed view seems impossible is related to the fact that national security here is written large ― National Security ― as part of laws which are so full of taboos that it seems impossible to modernize. However, as the story of the U.S. citizen “defecting” to the North unfolds, let us hope it ends benign and not tragically for him.

Dr. Bernhard J. Seliger is a resident representative of the Hanns Seidel Foundation (HSF) in Korea, based in Seoul. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, he traveled frequently to North Korea, where he implemented projects on forestry, environment and renewable energy as well as medical cooperation. He is an honorary citizen of Seoul and Gangwon Province.