Paranoia Critical to Surving in North Korea

[Toro]

As part of the newest wave in a decade-old flow of defectors from the North, they arrive stunted from malnutrition and struggling to read. At the movies for the first time, they panic when the lights go down, afraid someone might kidnap them. They find it incredible that money is stored in plastic credit cards. Pizza, hot dogs and hamburgers -- staples of South Korean teen cuisine -- give them indigestion. One gargled with liquid fabric softener, mistaking it for mouthwash. ...

"All I learned in school in North Korea was that Kim Jong Il was the best leader and that North Korea was the best country," said Lee, who is in her final year at Hangyoreh and hopes to become an English teacher.

"Education in North Korea is useless for life in this country," said the school's principal, Gwak Jong-moon. "When you are too hungry, you don't go to learn and teachers don't go to teach. Many children have been hiding in China for years with no access to schools."

The government's Ministry of Unification runs Hanowan and Hangyoreh, staffing them with psychologists, career counselors, medical staff and teachers who have a mix of specialties. In interviews, they described the defectors, the young and the middle-aged, as highly motivated but difficult to engage.

"Their drive to survive is beyond our imagination," said Chun Junghee, head nurse at Hanowan.

But helping defectors is rarely easy, the staff said, for they trust no one.
Paranoia No Longer Helps

"People from North Korea are very paranoid," said Kim Heekyung, a clinical psychologist at Hanowan who supervises group therapy for defectors.

Paranoia, she added, is a rational response to reality in North Korea.

A new U.N. human rights report describes North Korea as a place where ordinary people "live in fear and are pressed to inform on each other. The state practices extensive surveillance of its inhabitants. . . . Authorities have bred a culture of pervasive mistrust."

When defectors arrive at Hanowan, they whisper. They are reluctant to disclose their names or dates of birth. They question the motives of people who want to help them. They say South Koreans look down on them. On field trips from Hanowan to get their first checking accounts, they find bank tellers to be terrifying.

A majority of defectors suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a survey released in March by the Washington-based Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics. ...

N. Korean Defectors Bewildered By the South

 

[RoadVirus]

People should not have to live like this

 

[editec]

People should not have to live like this

You bet.

Totalitarianism at it very worst.