South Korean Leftists Should Take a Tip from Oh Kil-Nam

To Oh, a left-leaning South Korean economist, defecting to North Korea with his entire family seemed like a peachy idea at the time (1985). Today, Oh is one of a very few people who has a souvenir photograph of his family standing in the snow at Camp 15, the infamous Yodok Camp described by Kang Chol-Hwan in “The Aquariums of Pyongyang.”

As it turns out, “the relevant organ” means the large intestine.

His activism attracted the attention of North Korean agents, who approached Oh and offered help with a family medical problem. His wife, Shin Sook-ja, a South Korean nurse, was sick with hepatitis. The North Koreans convinced Oh that she would get free first-class treatment in Pyongyang and he would get a good government job.

“My wife did not want to go,” Oh said. “I ignored her objections.”

Via East Germany and Moscow, the family arrived in Pyongyang on Dec. 3, 1985, Oh said, and was immediately taken to nearby mountains for indoctrination at a military camp. “The moment we stepped into that camp, I knew my wife was right and that I had made the wrong decision,” Oh said. [Washington Post, Blaine Harden]

As it turns out, the reality of North Korea’s universal health care fell significantly short of Oh’s expectations. Instead, Oh and his wife were put to work broadcasting propaganda to the South until he was ordered to return to Europe:

[A]uthorities ordered Oh to return to Germany and recruit more South Korean students to live in North Korea. His wife and daughters, he was told, could not go along. Oh recalls that he and his wife argued bitterly about what he should do.

“She hit me in the face when I said I would come back with some South Koreans,” Oh said. “She said I could not have that on my conscience. She told me to leave North Korea and never come back. She told me to think of her and our daughters as being dead from a car accident.”

Technically speaking, of course, “slave laborer at a political prison camp” is a government job.

Yes, Mr. Oh, you’re a fool. How unfortunate that your wife and daughters paid such a terrible price for that.