JoongAng Daily’s article features a story of Ji-Eun, a North Korean defector who currently resides in Seoul. Her father died in North Korea when she was little and the family had a hard time carving out a living in the poverty stricken nation. In 2000, when she was 6 years old, her mother decided to escape North Korea with Ji-eun in a hope to find food and a better living.
After living anxiously in China for a while, they eventually ended up boarding on a plane heading to South Korea.
Ji-eun pictured a wonderful life in South Korea when she was on the plane. But after she arrived, she found that things were quite different than what she had imagined, recalled Ji-eun, who turned 15 this year.
“Why did you come to Korea, you beggar?” one person asked her. “Were you hungry?”
“Go back to your country because there’s nothing we can give you,” said another.
The rest of the article can be found here, and it needs some moment to think about what it means for N. Korean defectors to face not acceptance but isolation and discrimination by the society even after their life-risking escape out of North Korea. Ji-eun’s story is especially telling because it may well represent the sad story of hundreds of thousands of N.Korean defectors, and by all means, ourselves.
This is indeed very sad. As human beings, we each have a responsibility to help those in need. Especially when someone has accomplished something as incredible as escaping North Korea. They obviously left for a better life, everyone knows that. There is simply no reason not to help them ease their harship and suffering.