“Treat them like foreigners, but with respect”
by Richardson ~ April 2nd, 2007. Filed under: Defectors & Refugees, Korean Culture.The Washington Post is carrying an article by Samuel Songhoon Lee, a Korean-American currently teaching English to North Korean defectors in South Korea. It offers insights into both Koreas (h/t Marmot).
North Korean students have problems adapting to South Korean classrooms for two primary reasons. First, their northern education was likely woefully inadequate, spending a large amount of time studying the lives and writings of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. Second, “[f]acing ostracism from South Korean students, many young North Korean defectors drop out of school. . . 29 percent had dropped out of middle and high schools.” The line between insiders and outsiders is amplified in Korean society:
“Don’t expect them to be like us just because they look Korean and speak Korean,” the principal told me on the orientation day for volunteer teachers at School 34, an independent school for defectors. “Treat them like foreigners, but with respect.” (emphasis added)
Those who have lived in Korea as expats can appreciate the last sentence. The author explains the us/them divide, as it has no doubt been explain to him many times while in Korea, as a reaction to, “centuries of invasions from its Chinese and Japanese neighbors.” The lingering influence of Confucianism is also sometimes used to explain behavior towards strangers or social inferiors, or “unity.” I don’t agree with that, and neither do some others.
A common sentiment among defectors is echoed:
Many feel deeply betrayed by Kim and the propaganda they were forced to learn. But they have achieved a surprising distance from their painful past. They share memories — which include watching public executions and boiling grass to eat in times of famine — as if they were reciting folk tales with a sense of wonder and humor.
This underscores the importance of continuing to fund (and increase funding for) radio broadcasts into North Korea:
In North Korea, he knew exactly what he wanted to do: [join the military]. He dreamed of killing as many Americans and South Koreans as he could. . . and he would have marched off [to the military] if he hadn’t received a black-market [radio] for his … birthday and listened to forbidden South Korean radio frequencies.
Late at night, muffling the scratchy signal so as not to get caught, he tuned in to the news, learning that much of what he was taught all day in school was a lie. “We learned that the Americans were constantly trying to invade us. But from the South Korean news, I learned that it was the other way around. But my classmates truly believed in what we were learning. They were like robots.”
One of the defectors lived near [one of the prison camps] while in North Korea and had contact with guards from the camp, who spoke with regret of how they treated prisoners there. Perhaps the defector will be testifying at the trails of those guards, someday.
Also see this unrelated OFK post on Camp 22.
If more North Koreans learn this before defecting, the days of the Kim regime will be dramatically shortened:
“Back in North Korea, we learned to hate and fear America,” … a [teenaged] student who attended … school in North Korea, told me one recent afternoon over sodas at McDonald’s. [The student’s relative] was once responsible for importing [goods]. But [the student] defected to South Korea [a few] years ago after [the relative] was purged. “Now, I’ve realized that all I learned was a series of lies,” [the student] said, taking a bite of [a] Big Mac. “I wish my friends back in North Korea could eat this one day.”
Read the entire article here.
Update: And don’t miss the take on this article at Gypsy Scholar.
April 2nd, 2007 at 9:21 pm
Looks like we read the same article and were struck by the same remark — my title for today’s Gypsy Scholar blog entry is the same as yours.
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
April 2nd, 2007 at 10:21 pm
Yes, I noticed that as well. The sentence used for the title jumped out at me, probably similar for many current and former expats in Korea. This post updated with a link to yours.
April 3rd, 2007 at 11:51 am
I emailed the writer, Samuel Songhoon Lee, asking for clarification and the original quote in Korean, if possible. Mr. Lee responded promptly. He acknowledged that the quote had caused a stir among both expats and Korean-Americans. He explained that the original article was edited for length, and thus, the quote became distorted. He has given permission for me to post the original quote on blogs:
“애들을 외국인 처럼 대하세요, 그들이 우리들과
다른점을 인정하고 존중해주면서요”
I humbly offer a translation:
“Treat the kids like foreigners. Acknowledge their differences and give them respect.”
There are two pages of comments accessible at the end of the article. Mr. Lee posted two long responses on the second page of the comment thread.
April 3rd, 2007 at 2:26 pm
I was surprised that the WaPo comment section for that article was no more civil or free of whackos than a typical Marmot’s Hole thread.
April 3rd, 2007 at 5:47 pm
Sonagi,
Thank you very much for the clarification. I do have to wonder, however, it the gist wasn’t more honest in the original and if later clarifications are a correction of, ‘did I say that out loud?’
Slim,
Just checked out those comments - it doesn’t take much to get them to come out of the woodwork. “Deer Leader” indeed.
April 3rd, 2007 at 5:52 pm
Lee responds in the WaPo comments section:
I’ll have to disagree with him on how non-Koreans, particularly of color, are generally treated, no matter how they act.
April 4th, 2007 at 6:20 am
Richardson,
I do believe Mr. Lee was quoting either from his notes or from the best of his recollection. I don’t think he was trying to spin.
I do think he himself, as an ethnic Korean, is unaware of how Koreans can condescend to foreigners, talking down to us like we just got off the boat. As a perfect example, when he sent me the original quote written in Korean, he offered to write the pronunciation if I couldn’t read it. If my Korean is good enough to check a translation, I can certainly read Hangeul, a “scientific” alphabet that all Korean kindergarteners master. The only illiterate Korean speakers I’ve ever met, ironically, were overseas Koreans enrolled in Korean language programs.
April 4th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
In the three months I volunteered at a school for North Korean defectors, I was consistently surprised by how un-Korean the students all were. The majority were extremely outgoing, gregarious and generally unafraid of me as a foreigner - vastly different from most of my experience with Southern Koreans. And they referred to themselves as being distinct from South Koreans. When talking about their new lives, they would invariably refer to others as 한국사람, 한국남자들, 한국여자들(South Koreans, SK men, SK women..etc), which means they don’t consider THEMSELVES 한국사람. In my experience they ARE foreign, and they are treated as such by South Koreans with all the implications any foreigner familiar with Korea is aware of.
April 4th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
I did not deal with anyone younger than 30 in my experience with defectors. Those that had been in country for a short time were mostly in a ‘shock-and-awe’ phase, but those with 1-2 years had adapted quite well and could blend in fairly easily, at least that’s my perception. But they were older and much larger than their younger counterparts.
April 5th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
Well, to be honest most of those I knew were ‘fresh’ off the boat - 3 months or less - and hadn’t yet had the opportunity to fully adapt. It is interesting that you bring up the issue of stature though. After hearing and reading many stories about the desperate conditions of North Korea’s northern provinces (where as you know about 99% of defectors are from) I was pleasantly surprised to see how healthy and normal most of the kids were. Some of the older ones among them, especially those who escaped during the peak of the famine in the late 90’s, had obviously gone through hard times but most of the recent arrivals were in good shape. Hell, one was even what I’d call slightly overweight in the happy, rotund, Saint Nick kinda way.
April 5th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Perhaps b/c your students were younger (were they?) they bounced back better? Some I met were doing ok, but one woman (~30 days) seemed to be a bit shell-shocked, particularly at the prospect of speaking to Americans. She did seem well fed, not skinny, but I don’t know if that was from time in China or South Korea.
April 6th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
They certainly were quite young. I’d say the mean age was probably around 13-15. A few were definitely shocked when I told them I had been a 주한미군 at one time but their shock was quickly replaced with curiosity - but not TOO curious though (I don’t think any were squeezing me for intel
).
April 7th, 2007 at 8:19 am
Corpy wrote:
“When talking about their new lives, they would invariably refer to others as 한국사람, 한국남자들, 한국여자들(South Koreans, SK men, SK women..etc), which means they don’t consider THEMSELVES 한국사람.”
Well, that’s understandable, isn’t it. Even the nomenclature is different.