|
Ever growing numbers of North Korean refugees are arriving in the country. The annual number stood at 100 in 1999. In 2002, only three years later, it reached 1,000. Last year, a total of 2,019 arrived, and their accumulated number will reach 10,000 in early February. At this moment, there still are a large number of North Koreans in China and Southeast Asia waiting to come here.
Unless the failed North Korean political system changes at the root, North Korean refugees will not stop trying to escape to South Korea. Can our society refuse them? North Korean refugees risk their lives for a better chance for themselves or their children. There is no alternative for South Korea from a patriotic and humanitarian point of view than to accept them and help them settle down.
So far, the government and civil society have accepted all North Korean refugees and put various kinds of support programs in place so they can settle down. And this has been recognized by a majority of the South Korean people. But the more North Korean refugees arrive, the more difficult it will be to supply them with the present level of resettlement funds, houses, jobs, vocational training, and educational and medical services. Already, most North Korean refugees prove less able to adapt to South Korean society than expected, and social discontent is growing. What should we do now there are 10,000 of them here?
The government must reform the support system so that North Korean refugees can cultivate the will to adapt to South Korean society, as well as providing systematic assistance. Above all, we need policies that improve people¡¯s understanding of North Korean refugees so they don¡¯t resent them.
The North Korean refugees themselves must understand that they are responsible for planning their own future, and also for any outcome. They will have to make efforts to adapt. And they will have to stop relying on the government and regional communities or demanding privileged treatment because of their hard life back in North Korea and their unstable social and economic status in the South.
Each and every North Korean refugee we meet complains that it is hard to settle down due to inhospitality and discrimination from South Koreans. The South Korean people should listen to such complaints. The biggest obstacles North Korean refugees encounter is South Koreans¡¯ excessive curiosity about them, their unfounded sense of superiority, and their lack of understanding of how hard the life of North Korean refugees is.
But with numbers reaching 10,000, the key is to help South Koreans see North Korean refugees not as a burden but as productive contributors to our society. The refugees' best efforts to settle down and the most systematic government support programs will be futile unless many more South Koreans stop regarding their arrival not as a boon to South Korean society but only as a financial burden and source of social problems.
Accordingly, the government must chart a course to help the North Koreans contribute positively to society. The refugees should exert themselves to become indispensable resources for the labor market. When these efforts are put together, North Korean refugees will become respected and dignified members of our society, not beneficiaries of handouts. They will be recognized as welcome migrants rather than escapees from somewhere else. Until unification, that is the only way.
The column was contributed by Yoon Yeo-sang, president of the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights.
|
