Thursday, September 02, 2004
NORTH KOREAN DEFECTORS HAVE A DIFFICULT TIME OF IT IN SOUTH KOREA
So writes this Korea Herald story. A snippet:
This doesn't suprprise me (not least because Richard Grinker wrote about this years ago). But it does illustrate the stark reality that for all the rhetoric about the shared history, blood, and culture of uri nara, uri minjok, actually getting along in a unified Korea will present some serious and significant challenges.
A survey by Hanawon, a training establishment for North Korean defectors affiliated with the Ministry of Unification, said about 40 percent of defectors are unemployed.
The survey, which targeted 206 North Korean refugees now in the South, said 40.8 percent were jobless and only about 15 percent had stable work. Of the rest, 27.5 percent had temporary jobs, 11.6 percent part-time work and just over 5 percent were involved in small business ventures.
Some 78 percent of defectors earned less than one million won per month and 14.5 percent made no money and depended entirely on governmental support.
One troubling statistic was that more North Korean defectors are turning to crime because they cannot adapt to South Korean society and earn a proper living.
This doesn't suprprise me (not least because Richard Grinker wrote about this years ago). But it does illustrate the stark reality that for all the rhetoric about the shared history, blood, and culture of uri nara, uri minjok, actually getting along in a unified Korea will present some serious and significant challenges.
