On Sundays at the Yoido Full Gospel Church
in Seoul arrive late and find standing room
only (she's running in/ church music)
Dear God, help the North Koreans find the
way to salvation. Amen!
Among the thousands listening this morning
- is this small group. Not so long ago the
people in this row would have been heroes.
Today they are just anonymous faces in the
crowd. Yet each of them has performed their
own miracle - risking their lives and those
of their families, to escape the most isolated,
repressive society in the world.
After the main mass - the group gathers for
a private service at the North Korean mission.This
is one of the few places defectors meet in
a group and a rare chance for us to meet them
without being shadowed by South Korean security
police. Our attempts to make contact with
defectors have been constantly monitored,
at times barred.The South Korean Government
wants the world to see nothing but the success
stories.
Church groups like this provide the precious
little community support available for defectors
when they arrive.Even here though, they're
being asked to take a leap of faith many are
not willing to make.
I can't tell you that I am blessed, I can't
make that kind of testimonial yet. In North
Korea I was educated and brainwashed, so it's
hard for me to become a believer overnight.
At 20 years of age Kim Hyung Duk left behind
his entire family to cross the North Korean
border into China on foot.. when he crossed
over he weighed just 29 kilograms. Well, Kim
found the freedom he wanted in the south,
but also found himself an outcast, isolated
and bewildered.This morning, he doesn't hide
his disappointment.
The Christian population here is 11.2 million
- given that number they're doing very little.
Kim arrived in the south 3 years ago bringing
little more than a family snapshot of two
sisters he left behind.. and more scars than
his years deserve... A legacy of torture at
the hands of North Korean security police.
They hung me upside down with my hands cuffed
behind me, they also subjedted me to water
torture and electric shocks and made me endure
forced exercise - they still use methods of
torture that were used during Japanese colonialism.
In the South he found people indifferent to
him.He found it impossible to adjust.
He says he was ill-equipped for the dog-eat-dog
world of capitalist, money-hungry.. and fiercely
competitive South Korea.In the North, everything
is so tightly controlled - all decisions are
made by the government .. housing, education,
food rationing, even social status.
Finally, he became so disenchanted with the
south, Kim Hyung Duk tried going back.
I thought there was no way for me to survive
in this capitalist sovereignty. South Korea did
nothing to help me adjust and change my established
way of thinking. The lack of government concern
for me just made it so difficult for me to
live here.
Last year, he was caught at this South Korean
port of Ulsan stowed away on a cargo ship
bound for China.
I was interrogated by the Korean National
Security, sent to a detention camp and imprisoned
for 120 days.
Out of prison, he's now trying to fit in..
but still doubts whether South Korea wants
him.
It hasn't always been so.. after the bloody
Korean War ended, South Korea welcomed defectors
from the North.They were political trophies,
feted as heroes.As the situation worsens,
South Korea can only expect the number of
North Korean refugees to grow and with it,
the bill for resettling them in the south.
It's hard to believe that South Korea, like
North Korea, lay devastated after the Korean
War. 44 years on and they're living an economic
miracle while on the other hand, North Korea's
economy is a shambles. South Koreans now look
around at what they've got and ask themselves
"why should we have to pay for the North's
economic disaster?"
Academically we are preparing so many measures
to help North Korean people, but as a matter
of fact, most South Korean people have mixed
feeling about North Korea, kind of love and
hatred toward North Koran people.
Doctor Lee Keum-Soon is helping devise the
South Korean Government's response for a massive
influx of refugees.
Everybody talks about national unification,
unification is our assignment. They are saying
those kinds of words, but as a matter of fact
no-one wants to sacrifice their immediate
interest.
It's extremely rare to find someone who'll
risk being so outspoken on such a sensitive
issue.
Even the government doesn't want national
reunification. At the moment? They use reunification
issues for their political interest. That
is true.
Considering all the circumstances, we don't
want sudden unification, but rather a certain
peiod of understanding and exchange, sudden
unification will only create a lot of burden
to both Koreas.
The South Korean Government wants unification
on its own terms and cracks down on unauthorised
attempts to hurry the process.Here, members
of the North Korean Buddhist Movement are
offering one hundred days of prayer for the
dying and famine struck in North Korea.
Nearby in the temple grounds, student radicals
stage a hunger-strike and sit-in.Their cause?
Unification with the North, and the right
to protest. They are exercising that right
today under threat of arrest by security police.
Everybody has been talking about re-unification,
but if you can't trust one another - how can
you become one nation?
Mr. Park, from the North Korean Buddhist movement,
has offered to help us find other defectors..
Is it very far to the house.
No...
He won't give us the address over the telephone
but will take us there. We need a third party
to get around the tight security net that
guards defectors.
This security serves a dual purpose - it helps
the government keep a lid on defectors' activities
- and it protects them.One well-known defector
was murdered outside his apartment earlier
this year - police suspect North Korean agents
of the killing.
In a small city apartment I meet Lee Chul
Soo and his wife Cho Seung Hee.They came here
in 1993 with their young daughter Jinshil,
after escaping via China.
Mrs Cho works but her husband is still debilitated
by the effects of frostbite suffered during
many month of sleeping on streets and scavenging
for food in China. They enjoy luxuries undreamt
of in the North - fresh fruit and vegetables
daily.. meat on a regular basis. But it's far
from a lavish lifestyle.
I work every day and we live off that money
- there's no extra money to lend out or to
spare.
Yet they're subject to deeply held suspicion..
and resented for the government assistance
they're given.
There are those who despise us because we
are from North Korea and we can just feel
it.
Here when our stories are told on television,
many South Koreans think that we are lying
and exaggerating.
Most of the money they were given was spent
leasing this small apartment.Now, the government
is cutting back on money to newcomers.
Before 1993 the government gave about three
times more financial assistance to North Korean
defectors.
Compared to the past, the government policy
is more focussed on practical support. So
defectors know they'll get more practical
benefits. So it's not fair to say the amount
of money has decreased.
It was nine years ago while studying in Moscow
that a North Korean physics student called
Kim Young Seh, learned the truth about life
in the affluent south.
I felt a strong sense of betrayal. We trusted
them, we believed them, we even put our lives
in their hands. In reality those high up were
telling lies to us to look after their own
interests. At that time I realised North Korean
society had to be changed.
In 1992 he was the subject of a dramatic tug-of-war
between the Russian and North Korean governments'
after seeking asylum in Moscow.
Well-educated, he was better received in South
Korea than most defectors .. yet he carries
a burden that weighs more heavily than mere
discrimination.Last year, Kim married his
South Korean wife and they now have a one
month old son.But he left another wife.. another
infant son, in North Korea
Every time I pray before a meal, I pray for
my family and I pray for my son. When this
one grows up I'll tell him he has a half-brother
living in North Korea. Defecting like I have,
my parents and family may face severe punishment.
Knowing that, I still had to do what I did.
It makes me feel..if you could only
understand a little bit - you will understand
the pain and emotional hurt I am going through.
The North Korean Government has forcibly divorced
Kim from his wife in North Korea and he knows
she too has remarried. But the guilt of leaving
family behind has driven defectors here to
depression, alcoholism, even suicide.
The feeling of isolation in such a crowded,
 busy city, is tangible.
There is no counselling available, and little sympathy.
Everywhere the catch-cry is one Korea. Today
in the heart of the city, religious groups
have gathered on this national holiday to
pray for peaceful unification.
Lord please help us escape ideologies and
Cold War logics. Strike the sword and turn
it into a scythe, so that 70 million Koreans
can stand hand in hand and accept each other
as brother and sister.
But they're noisy minority, far outweighed
by the surrounding indifference. It's fine
to talk of grand notions, of peace and unification,
harder to make it work if you can't live with
your neighbour
or don't want to pay for his house.
The South Korean government is providing more
practical support... giving defectors job
training, building settlement centers for
new arrivals. But what it has yet to build
is a bridge to span fifty years of division
and hostility.
