South Korean authorities recently discovered the decomposing remains of a 49-year-old North Korean defector in her apartment in Seoul. The woman defected to South Korea in 2002 and began working as a counselor at the ministry-run Korea Hana Foundation to support other defectors in 2011. According to some media outlets, she had a good reputation among defectors and was hailed as a successful resettlement case. However, she left her job in 2017 and had asked the police not to extend their protection services in 2019. Her badly decomposed body was found approximately one year after her demise after she had failed to settle multiple rent payments. Dressed in her winter clothes, she was almost in a “skeleton” state upon being discovered and was said to have died a lonely death without any family members in South Korea.

NEW LIVES, OLD TRAUMAS

Every year, hundreds of North Koreans flee their country and risk being trafficked in China’s sex trade or being caught and repatriated, where they face torture, imprisonment or possibly even death back home, in search for a better life. South Korea’s Unification Ministry reported that over 30,000 North Koreans have defected since 1998 in the aftermath of the end of the 1953 Korean War, though only 42 defectors have been recorded since the pandemic.

Nevertheless, for those few “lucky” individuals who successfully make it to the South, their newfound freedom is often met with financial difficulties, culture shock and hostility from some South Koreans as they struggle to adapt to the country’s notoriously competitive and success-driven society. Our own surveys with medical experts show that 100% of the North Korean refugees in Crossing Borders’ network in China suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. This includes a defector under Crossing Borders’ care, Boa, who left her parents and younger sister and fled the North in 2011, only to experience a new sense of loss and fear upon settling in the South.

REALITY CHECK: THE CONTINUOUS STRUGGLES

An official from the Unification Ministry commented that a re-examination of the crisis management system for defectors shall be carried out in response to this “very sad” case. However, this is not the first time the authorities had promised to improve social welfare for defectors.

Two years ago, a similar tragedy unfolded in a low-income Seoul apartment. 42-year-old single mother, Han Sung-ok, who escaped the North, was starved to death along with her 6-year-old son, Dong-jin, in one of Asia’s wealthiest cities. After risking everything to flee her homeland, she was sold to a Chinese man in China with whom she had a son. When she decided to escape to South Korea, she left her family behind and gave birth to Dong-jin a few years later. Han struggled to keep up with work while caring for her young child; meanwhile, she fell through a gap in the welfare system where she could not secure government assistance without presenting the divorce papers necessary for her to qualify for benefits as a single parent. By then, she was also no longer eligible to receive help as a defector because the protection period of five years had expired. The last reports received about Han from a neighbor claimed that she was distracted and anxious. Shortly after, a water meter inspector who noticed a foul odor alerted the building management, which led to the subsequent discovery of two decomposing bodies, a bag of red pepper chili flakes (the only food found in their sparsely furnished home) and a bank statement showing Han had withdrawn her last 3,858 ($3 USD) a few months before her death.

These tragic deaths are not isolated cases. Rather, they should serve as a reminder that although North Korean defectors are free from the Kim’s authoritarian regime, many still suffer from unimaginable pain, loneliness, isolation and discrimination in the South. Past traumas do not automatically come to an end with their arrival in South Korea. Crossing Borders is trying to help as many as possible.