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.