Former North Korean Soldier Adjusting to Life In South Korea One Year After Defection
|Here is an update on the North Korean soldier defector who was shot while fleeing across the JSA to defect to the South. His story is very similar to other defectors who are surprised how hard one has to work in South Korea to earn money:
North Korean defector Oh Chong-song, whose bold dash across the heavily armed border in November last year made global headlines, has been struggling in South Korea since he was released from hospital.
“I took a job as a construction worker to feed myself,” Oh (not his real name) told the Chosun Ilbo Wednesday. “I experienced how hard it is to make money in the South.” Oh left Hanawon, a halfway house that helps North Korean defectors adjust to life in South Korea, in June after a long hospital stay to treat his many gunshot wounds and clear him of a mass of parasites in his stomach.
He now lives in Seoul. “I couldn’t work too long on the construction site due to my bad back, and I now work part-time at a social enterprise,” he said.
Oh denied a media report that he bought two cars and ended up selling them after running out of money. “That’s not true,” he said. “What I was given when I left Hanawon was W4 million in settlement support money and am entitled to live in public rental housing,” he said. “I didn’t have much money left after I bought furniture and a refrigerator (US$1=W1,130).”
Oh now looks no different than many young South Korean men in their 20s. He is slender and around 177 cm tall. Dressed in a navy-blue suit and white shirt, he had also dyed his hair light brown. Because he was born and raised in Kaesong close to the inter-Korean border, he does not have a distinct North Korean accent.
Oh insisted he had been misquoted in an interview with Japan’s Sankei Shimbun last weekend. The right-wing Japanese newspaper stirred up controversy by quoting Oh as saying that the South Korean military is a joke.
“I was misquoted and what I said was lost in translation,” he claimed Wednesday. “I watched video footage of South Korean soldiers crawling to save me,” he added, raising his voice as his emotions ran high. “I served in the North Korean military and do not know much about South Korean military life. You serve 10 years in the North Korean military and two years in the South Korean military, and all I said was it must be easier in the South.”
“But what I was quoted as saying made it sound like I laughed at the South Korean military.” Oh claimed the Sankei sent him a message apologizing for mistakes by the interpreter. [Chosun Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but apparently there is a lot of disinformation being put out about him. I would not be surprised if the disinformation campaign against him is a coordinated effort by ROK leftists to discredit him as much as possible.
The first Parasite son should keep his mouth shut. Big Commie Moon is watching.
reminds me of animals that were kept in captivity being released into the wild. No longer being fed by the big government machine and being told what and how to do every minute of their lives, they now have to think, act and fend for themselves. Bet it is a hard transition.
Now unify the Koreas, open the borders, and have about ten million hungry North Koreans flood into the south with no job or life skills except how to thrive in a gangster society.
That is a far bigger threat to Korean society than nukes or shelling… which can be overcome in a few years with no real lasting effects other than bad memories and lessons learned.
Once the Norks infest, it will be hard to get rid of them.
Protip: When the the Norks come down, go north and start buying up the inevitable guns and ammo that will flood the black market.
Wonder how many defectors will come over now that the border is “softer”?