Conducted and Translated By Chris Jin Gon Park

Lee Hae-Young is the director of the Association of the North Korean Defectors. He was dispatched to Russia by the North Korean government but entered South Korea as a defector in 1996. 

What are the objectives and activities of the Association of the North Korean Defectors?

The Association of the North Korean Defectors was established in February 1999 by former Secretary of the North Korean Workers’ Party Hwang Jang-Yop and about 800 defectors in South Korea. One of the organization’s chief goals is to help North Korean defectors successfully settle in South Korea or other free countries. Our ultimate aim is to end Kim Jong-Il’s dictatorship, promote democracy in North Korea, and unify the two Koreas with the cooperation of defectors. Along with raising the world’s awareness of the North Korean regime’s iniquity, we are making efforts to protect the rights and interests of defectors and help these people adjust to their new environments. Our motto is “freedom, democracy, and unification.”

Why do a considerable number of people defect from North Korea each year?

Because the regime stopped distributing food, it has been especially difficult to avoid starvation in the country over the past few years. Disillusionment with the regime, the stifling environment, and yearning for freedom and the protection of rights are other powerful reasons why so many North Koreans risk their lives to escape. Most fundamentally, all this is happening because the Kim Jong-Il regime has completely drained the country’s resources out of self-interest and continues to neglect the people’s livelihoods. In the mid-1990s, over three million North Koreans starved to death. North Koreans will continue to escape from their country until there is a government in North Korea that truly serves the people and guarantees freedom and human rights.

How do defectors escape their country and eventually enter South Korea or the United States? What difficulties do they face?

The only way to escape North Korea is to pass over the North Korea-China border without being caught by the guards patrolling either side, and often one has to cross the Tumen River or the Yalu River. North Koreans who are sent abroad for official work or other special reasons sometimes disappear and refuse to return.

For defectors, there are three ways to enter a country that guarantee their personal safety. One way is to ask for protection from a foreign embassy. But in most cases, defectors escape from China into some Southeast Asian country or Mongolia and are kept under the local government’s surveillance until the South Korean government contacts them. All of these routes, however, are extremely risky because China is cooperating with North Korea in capturing defectors.

Why does the Chinese government arrest refugees and send them back to North Korea? Is this due to ideological ties between North Korea and China, or are there more practical reasons?

That North Korea has long been China’s brother state seems to play a role in China’s turning deaf ears to the voice of international community. China also fears that if the arresting of refugees stops, a massive influx of North Korean refugees into China could result and then become a factor of domestic instability.

What awaits those who are arrested and returned to North Korea? How does the North Korean government treat the families of defectors?

Failed defectors are first interrogated, and if they have met a missionary or a foreigner or tried to go to South Korea or the United States, they are either executed or sent to a special camp for political criminals. Those who escaped the country simply for subsistence are put in a labor camp for a certain period of time. The North Korean regime closely monitors the families of defectors and in some cases also sends them to the camp for political criminals or banishes them to a southern region [to make it more difficult for them to escape the country through the Chinese-North Korean border—translator’s note].

What are the conditions of North Korean refugees in Thailand? Have these conditions improved? What is the Thai government’s position toward North Korean refugees?

The Thailand refugee facility currently has over 350 North Korean refugees. Each room is so overcrowded that some refugees sleep in bathrooms. Last August a man in his thirties died because he could not receive any medical assistance, but the Thai government has not acted on the deteriorating conditions of the facility, merely repeating that their hands are full with domestic problems.

Do the North Korean people believe their government’s propaganda? How do ordinary people in North Korea obtain and share accurate information about the outside world?

The Kim Jong-Il regime has maintained its power and oppressed the North Korean people for decades through false propaganda. But thanks to the brave march to escape the country, there are now 10,000 North Korean defectors in South Korea and hundreds of thousands in China, and these people are sending real-time news of the outside world to people in North Korea by various means. Therefore the North Korean people no longer believe the propaganda, and the people’s anger is increasing day by day, though they cannot publicly express it. Despite tremendous effort, the regime has been unable to cut this flow of information into the country.

What problems do refugees have when they try to settle in South Korea? Does the South Korean government accommodate North Korean refugees?

The issues of families left behind in North Korea, the lack of independent economic standing, and health problems are the most common difficulties that refugees face. Over the past seven years, over 2,000 North Korean refugees have entered South Korea every year, raising problems and confusion that the government and the society are still struggling to deal with.

Are there problems with South Korea’s present North Korea policy, the so-called “Sunshine Policy”? In your opinion, what would be the best way to achieve the reunification of the two Koreas?

I believe that the South Korean people will more objectively assess the current North Korea policy after the reunification. As a person who had actually lived in North Korea and knows Kim Jong-Il’s true nature, I do not think trying to induce the Kim Jong-Il regime to move toward the reunification will work. The collapse of Kim Jong-Il’s dictatorship, the establishment of a democratic government in North Korea, narrowing the gap between the two Koreas, and the establishment of a unity government in the end—these are the necessary steps.

What role do North Korean defectors have in South Korea today? Might that role change if the Koreas were to reunify?

North Korean defectors reveal the true situation in North Korea to the whole world and play an important role in shaping policies and activities related to North Korea. I’m also convinced that defectors will become the fertilizer of the reunification process as people who have the experience of overcoming the gap between the two Koreas. After the reunification, defectors should have the right to return to their homeland without any international or political interference, and, as people who have experienced democracy and advanced culture in South Korea, they will become pivotal to reconstructing the North.

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