Defectors Have Difficulty In School

An 18-year-old girl who defected from North Korea was transferred to a middle school in Seoul last March and was ordered to complete a traumatizing writing assignment by her homeroom teacher.

Her teacher summoned her to the teacher’s office and asked her to “write down what you experienced in the North and how you escaped your homeland.”

She was so sick and tired of testifying repeatedly on how she entered South Korea during her 10 day stay in a solitary cell after her escape to the South in 2004 that she left the teacher’s room, crying.

She eventually quit school last September. “I will never be able to shake off the label of being inferior and I regret coming to Korea,” she said.

Teenage defectors are dropping out-

According to the Ministry of Unification, as of 2005, the number of defectors aged six to 24 who escaped North Korea was 1,887. In 1999, only 33 juveniles came to South Korea, but that number increased to 531 in 2004 and 368 in 2005.

Among 987 North Korean defectors of elementary school age, only 432, or 43.7 percent, were actually going to school as of last August. From 2001 to August 2005, 14.1 percent of junior high schoolers and 15.2 percent of high school students left school. This is a stark contrast to the dropout rates of South Korean students in 2004, who dropped out at a 0.7 percent and 1.3 percent rate, respectively.

Civic organizations focusing on the issue of North Korean defectors think that they fail to socialize adequately and drop out of school because of rampant social prejudices.

A survey of 500 North Korean defectors in Korea conducted by the National Human Rights Commission of the Republic of Korea revealed that 48 percent of respondents go to school without disclosing they are North Koreans. In addition, 20 percent responded that they were alienated at school because they were from the North.

A nonchalant government and lonely North Korean teenagers-

What is worse is that a large portion of the dropouts become alcoholics, are depressed, or display personal relationship problems.

A 22-year-old defector who came to Korea in 2001 repeatedly played online games in a PC room without eating for three days, then went home and slept for three days.

He was admitted to a college with a special admissions program for North Korean defectors, but failed to become accustomed to college life. After several attempts and taking semesters off, he gave up his studies.

North Korean defectors receive a three month transition program provided by the Ministry of Unification. Basic education programs like understanding Korean society and career counseling are not enough to help the teenagers acclimate themselves to a new environment, however, but the government leaves the responsibility of taking care of defectors to schools and civic groups.

“There are only 432 defectors in 194 elementary, middle, and high schools throughout the country. In other words, each school only has two or three North Korean defectors. It is difficult to come up with a policy only for them,” a Ministry of Education and Human Resources official said.

“Solutions to deal with teenage North Korean defectors who have difficulty adjusting to Korean society and go astray are nearly nonexistent. If the government studies the problem and provides various programs to help them adapt to Korean society, it will worsen and bring about serious social conflicts,” says Gil Eun-bae of the Korea Institute for Youth Development.