North Koreans in China: Truth and Tragedy
A must-read in today’s New York Times. My wife’s mother died of kidney cancer five years ago yesterday, so this passage plunged me into a dark gloom:
“We have no friends, and no future, nothing at all, really,” said the soft-spoken older sister, Hae Jon, 17. “But if we stay here, at least we have enough to eat. In our country, we could go for days without eating.” Within months, according to an underground network of people who help support the sisters, Hae Jon may be alone. Hae Sun, a shy girl of 13, is dying of kidney cancer and is not permitted to be flown out of the country for advanced care.
The Lee sisters are part of a virtually stateless underground population of North Koreans who have crossed into China along the 877-mile border between the countries and live on the lam in this region. International refugee and human rights groups have estimated their numbers at 200,000 and growing.
And yet there is persistent hope in the liberating power of the truth:
In interview after interview, they spoke of the huge shift in perspective they experienced upon entering China. “When I lived in Korea, I never thought my leaders were bad,” said one woman in her 50’s, a farmer who had brought her grown daughter to Yanji recently from her home not far from the other side of the border for treatment of an intestinal ailment. “When I got here, I learned that Chinese can travel wherever they want in the world as long as they have the money. I learned that South Korea is far richer, even than China.”
“If we are so poor,” she continued, “it must be because of Kim Jong Il’s mistakes,” she said referring to North Korea’s leader. The woman said her daughter had decided to stay in China, but that she would soon return home, after illegally earning money doing piecework for a factory here.
North Korea’s oppressive control of its citizens through policing and propaganda could be felt through the words of another woman. “Until the end of the 1980’s, we were convinced we were the greatest country on earth, and in fact, many people still believe this,” the woman said. “We’ve always been taught that other countries are poorer than we are. They say that South Korea is full of beggars and that people can’t afford even to send their children to school.”
This woman, a rural dweller in her early 40’s, said she had never heard anyone blame Mr. Kim for her country’s problems. On the contrary, he was “sincerely adored,” she insisted, because of an all-pervasive personality cult. “If I had ever had a chance to meet him face to face, I would have been moved to tears,” she said. “We really believed that wherever he went, flowers bloomed. And if he or some other high official arrived in our area and said he needed my daughter, well, we would have been honored.”
Asked how they felt now, after having seen some of the outside world, each person interviewed said his or her illusions about North Korea had been shattered. “There is no way I can believe my government again,” said one person who had been in China only a few weeks. “They spend all their time celebrating the leaders. There is one thing I have understood in China, and that is, as long as there is no freedom, we will never get richer.”