North Korean Refugee Mental Health Issues
by Richardson ~ July 12th, 2007. Filed under: Defectors & Refugees, North Korea, Reunification.It’s not surprising, or shouldn’t be, that defectors and refugees from North Korea might have high instances of mental health issues. However, the story of Shin Dong Hyok, a North Korea defector who escaped from a “total control” concentration camp and eventually made his way to South Korea, highlights an additional area to consider. I don’t know that Shin suffers from any sort of attachment disorder or sociopathic condition, but the environment he grew up in is an ideal breading ground for just that sort of affliction, as was North Korea during most of the 1990s. Consider this:
Shin, now 24, was a political prisoner by birth. From the day he was born in 1982 in Camp No. 14 in Kaechon until he escaped in 2005, Shin had known no other life. Guards beat children, tortured grandparents and, in cases like Shin’s, executed family members. But Shin said it did not occur to him to hate the authorities. He assumed everyone lived this way.
[…]
“I didn’t know about America, or China or the fact that the Korean Peninsula was divided and there was a place called South Korea,” he said. “I thought it was natural that I was in the camp because of my ancestors’ crime, though I never even wondered what that crime was. I never thought it was unfair.”
[…]
Shin’s life changed in 1996, when his mother and brother were accused of trying to escape. Guards interrogated him in an underground torture cell about a suspected family plot to flee the camp. They stripped and hung him by his arms and legs from the ceiling, and held him over hot charcoal.
[…]
Shin owed his unusual escape to two friends: an older cellmate who helped him recover from his torture wounds, and a man he met in the garment factory where he worked in 2004 who told him about life beyond the camp.
“Everything he told me about the outside world - the food, China - was fascinating,” Shin said. “I loved his stories. Once I heard about the outside, I thought I would go crazy. I wanted to get out. I couldn’t focus on work. Every day was an agony.”
On Jan. 2, 2005, when Shin and his co-worker were collecting firewood near the camp’s electrified fence and could not see any guards, they ran.
[…]
Today, Shin bears burn scars from the torture and the electrified fence, and walks with a slight limp. He says he has recurring nightmares about being back in Camp No. 14. Awake, he wonders what happened to his father and about the man he left behind at the fence. Did he sacrifice himself to help Shin escape?
Now in Seoul, he said he sometimes finds life “more burdensome than the hardest labor in the prison camp, where I only had to do what I was told.” His limited vocabulary has caused him to fail twice the written driver’s license test. And there is his struggle to reconcile with his dead mother.
“However I try, I can’t forgive her,” he said. “She and my brother severely hurt me and my father by trying to escape. Didn’t she think what would happen to us?”
Shin said he sometimes wished he could return to the time before he learned about the greater world, “without knowing that we were in a prison camp, without knowing that there was a place called South Korea.” (emphasis added)
Aside from the obvious horrific nature of the story, I focus on this:
Awake, he wonders what happened to his father. . . And there is his struggle to reconcile with his dead mother. “However I try, I can’t forgive her,” he said. “She and my brother severely hurt me and my father by trying to escape. Didn’t she think what would happen to us?”
Shin wonders if his father was punished for his escape, but at the same time “can’t forgive” his mother for her attempted escape.
These are the sorts of things that must continue to torment the souls of many North Korean defectors and refugees. From the story it’s hard to discern if Shin himself recognizes, or is able to recognize, the disconnect in blaming his mother for what he also did. Maybe it’s better if he doesn’t make that connection.
Though almost none can claim to have known the conditions that Shin grew up in, how many millions of North Korean children lived through hellish first years during the famine and its aftermath? Clearly there is the potential that millions of sociopaths have been created. Assuming reunification comes sometime within the next 5-20 years, how will those then adults react to the hardships (discrimination, lack of skill, confusion, etc.) they will face?
This is just another social problem reunified Korea likely will face.
Shin Dong Hyok’s plight has been well covered and commented on at ROK Drop, OneFreeKorea, and the Marmot’s Hole.
July 12th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
There is little doubt a vast majority of North Koreans will have some sort of mental health issues to deal with. As with the prisoners, the plights of those tortured, witnessed public executions and endured endless “re-education” will be affected the most. I have a feeling those people (that survive) will be damaged for life physically and emotionally. This is a human tragedy beyond imagination, and what I consider a modern day holocaust.
There should not be a modern day holocaust. However, how in the world can the international community save them in the political quagmire the region is in right now? There is no way for human rights workers to see the camps, no simple way for the military to save them without another huge war, and certainly, there is no systematic plan in place in the event of sudden or even planned reunification. If there is such a plan, I do not know what it is.
Human rights workers running underground railroads risk life and limb to try to save defectors and place them in safety away from the Kim regime. That in itself leads to serious problems as well because more often than not, families are left behind and the fate of those families are unclear. I have heard of defector’s families going to camps and face ultra severe punishments for defections. It is a bad situation for these survivors, and makes me wish I could do something for them. Which leads to frustration because I cannot do anything about it other than making people aware of the crimes against humanity under the grip of Kim Jong-Il.
As for those not in labor camps, the people have been brainwashed so systematically, un-programming and having them join the rest of the modern world will be very difficult as well. This presents a huge problem because so many will feel lost without the script they have been given in life and how to live that life. There is absolutely no individualism. That, too, is a tragedy.
Reportedly, only the ultra-elite have access to the outside world, and the ultra-elite will not want the perks taken away which will present anger issues and possible insurgency if the regime should collapse. The elite without access to the outside world will be so loyal to the Kims they will most likely fight tooth and nail for the survival of the regime. Maybe not because they love Kim Jong Il, but maybe for self-serving purposes. Whatever the case, the brainwashing has been so complete and so ironclad, it will be very, very difficult to undo the damage after nearly 60 years of endless propaganda.
I can go on for days about this, and I probably said stuff you have heard five hundred times already.
July 12th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
It hasn’t been heard 500 times before and people and politicians need to understand this. It is not only the liberation of a people but the inviroment that they have grown up in. This society is an abnomalty in a modern world. Its people survive on corruption and deceipt. They know no other life. Its survival at its basic level. To open borders and “Free” the people of North Korea would be like opening the gates to an insane asylem. If and when freedom comes it needs to be in small stages, with a lot of re education if it is not to be ripped apart by savey unscupulous outsiders. I believe the South is already trying to take advantage of the Norths position by using slave labor.
July 12th, 2007 at 11:30 pm
[…] has been a bit of discussion of the Shin Dong Hyok article (here and here) about the mental health of Shin and millions of other North Koreans. The perception is that […]
July 12th, 2007 at 11:49 pm
“This is a human tragedy beyond imagination, and what I consider a modern day holocaust.”
I agree wholeheartedly. I’ve said before that someday, when NK falls, the world will see the pictures that come out of there, and will be ashamed. It will feel like 1945 again.
July 13th, 2007 at 1:10 am
Joe R., Sadly I disagree the world is not what it was in 1945 it seems perfectly happy to claim President Bush is worse than Hitler, while turning a blind eye in Darfur and a dozen other places. I have even see the US get blamed for not intervening in Darfur, with very little press against the Muslim Arab murderers.
July 13th, 2007 at 7:04 am
I liken the current situation to a rowdy neighbor (North Korea) that the rest of the neighborhood (South Korea, China, etc.) knows is a pedophile who is raping his own children every night (North Korean people), but the community doesn’t act. The community could go to the neighbor’s (NK’s) house and handle him, but they know it would be an ugly scene with a scuffle – the rest of the neighborhood knows they’d get at least a black eye and busted lip, probably mess up their suits, etc., so they talk and talk, and talk some more.
July 13th, 2007 at 9:29 am
If we can destroy much of the industiralized world, and beyond, with the technology, money, and environment of the 1930s and 1940s, we sure as hell can handle the reprecussions of getting rid of North Korea as it is known today.
If we envision the worst case example, which is what most do though it is certainly not close to a given but more a guess, and we can condition the collapse to promote avoiding the worst case, but let’s take the worst case many use to say our “hands are tied” on North Korea —- what would be the body count of a “fighting collapse”?
It could be high or not so high, but let’s go with the worst case - since it is the one used to deny the effort to get rid of the North —-
the damage done by a North Korea going down swinging could be very high. But, how high compared to the 3,000,000 North Koreans who died in the forced famine? the untold numbers that died at the hands of the regime before that —
— and the untold number of NK who will die as long as we continue the policy of keeping the North alive to avoid the worst case?
I think the powers that be that call for doing nothing in order to avoid the worst case should have to —- admit in public each time they bring the argument up that — what they are objecting to is the costs in money, inconvience, and blood that COULD come with a forced collapse —
—but they are willing to watch the same level of damage being done to the North Korean people themselves generation to generation…
July 13th, 2007 at 9:30 am
Fudge…
That should be — if we can handle destorying then rebuilding during the WWII period….