A narrower divide

Living in North Korea, Lee Gwang-cheol’s family background gave him advantages that normal citizens could never dream of.

After he defected to the South in 1997, and these privileges were stripped away, he vowed never to take any opportunity for granted.

Lee says his grandfather was an anti-Japanese guerilla who fought alongside country founder Kim Il-sung, giving the family the best possible status. His father shot through the ranks to become a senior party official.

The benefits continued after his father defected to China in 1971 amid a purge of officials who were less than sycophantic to the “Great Leader.” Despite the act, Lee took a high status job as a military engineer.

In the South, none of that mattered.

“The two systems are so different,” said Lee, now a team manager at company selling water treatment systems in Seoul. “I knew life would be hard in a society based on individualism. It was up to me to make it.”

Lee, 59, is among a minority of North Korean defectors who arrive here from a privileged background. While this doesn’t ensure success in the South, observers say some such defectors may be better equipped for life here and can serve as models for integration.

Different motivation

The Stalinist state has long used a caste system based on family status, or “seongbun,” as a control mechanism. Based on one’s political, social and economic background, as well as behavior by relatives, seongbun to a large extent shapes a person’s mobility in society.

Since the country begrudgingly accepted marketization amid a devastating famine in the mid 1990s, the role of seongbun has decreased as more have been able to gain wealth through private activities.

But in Lee’s time in the North, the system was virtually unchallengeable and the family was in the highest “core” class until his father’s departure.

The family was forced to move out of Pyongyang. But Lee kept his engineering job ㅡ and thrived, making improvements to tanks and other military equipment.

He says he used family connections to get permission directly from Kim Il-sung to visit his father in China multiple times.

During the visits, Lee listened as his father, who had become a businessman, told him about his dealings with South Korean firms. “That’s when I decided to defect,” he said. “I guess there’s something in my blood that yearns for justice and freedom.”

Most defections, however, are driven by economic necessity.

According to a survey by the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights (NKDB), far more defectors arrive from rural areas such as North Hamgyeong Province that have higher poverty levels than in Pyongyang. They tend to be unemployed or laborers.

The vast majority ­ some 78 percent ­ have not received higher education, suggesting that many come from the lowest seongbun known as the “hostile” class.

In the South, the defector population suffers from a higher unemployment rate as well as societal stigmatization.

“Defectors with good seongbun are in a better position because they may have acquired business skills or, through education, some exposure to outside culture,” Kim Sang-hun, chairman of NKDB, said.

But Kim Heung-kwang, a former professor in the North and representative of the group North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity, added, “At the same time, their level of satisfaction is lower in the South, because they don’t get the respect they did in the North.”

Road to stability

Kim Ji-eun, a medical doctor, says she owes her success to her diligent study habits, which propelled her through medical school and into a good job at a hospital in Chongjin, North Hamgyeong Province.

But her education ㅡ a good one by North Korean standards ㅡ left her unprepared for the pitfalls of capitalist society.

She defected in the early 1990s after medical supplies ㅡ and then food ㅡ become scarce because the state sector collapsed due to a lack of foreign aid. Soon after, she squandered her government subsidies in a pyramid scheme.

The internal medicine specialist found herself battling stereotypes at her office job. “They assume everything about you. They hear your (North Korean) accent and assume you need help with everything.”

Lee also endured stigmatization. “There’s a saying that after marriage you keep your mouth closed around your in-laws and ignore their pestering. That’s how I felt _ I kept my mouth shut because I knew no one would listen to me.”

Both Lee and Kim, however, have managed to carve out a stable life for their families and, in their own ways, are working to foster better conditions for their people.

The breakthrough for Kim came when she made a pitch to a sympathetic banker for a loan to start her own clinic in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province. “I told them exactly how I was going to grow my business. I checked my account the next day and was amazed to see the money had been transferred,” she said.

Aside from running the Jin Herb Clinic, she also runs the South-North Oriental Medicine Research Institute, with the hope that after unification she can help doctors combine best practices from both sides of the border.

Lee, as he has climbed to a leadership position, says he has become increasingly assertive. Though the North Korean system is badly flawed, he says there are aspects of it that can be applied here, including an emphasis in management on the collective, rather than the individual needs.

Sometimes he lets his past mix with the present, including once when he addressed his team about possible budget cuts.

“I said some of us, who are really dedicated to the company, may have to ‘tighten our belts,’” he said, referring to a phrase commonly used by the North Korean regime.

He advises other defectors to be patient with their new surroundings.

“In the North, things are often decided right away. In the global community, the customs are different ㅡ there is a certain diplomacy involved,” he said.

“It’s hard, but we have to be a bit flexible. And in the end, we can share some positive aspects of North Korean culture too.” <The Korea Times/Kim Young-jin>