Defectors offer rare glimpse of isolation in North Korea
They say it’s slowly changing from within
SEOUL When Kim Hak Min lived in North Korea, every home prominently displayed a photo of the isolated nation’s founder, Kim Il Sung, as well as his son and successor, Kim Jong Il.
Now that he runs his own iPhone repair shop in this bustling South Korean capital, the 30-year-old defector has hung a very different portrait on the wall: Apple icon Steve Jobs.
Hak Min was given a biography of Jobs when he escaped to South Korea in 2013, and the late Apple founder became a hero to him — not only for his business success but also for a message of individual rights that is lightyears away from the repressive North
Korean dictatorship under
Kim Il Sung ’s grandson, Kim
Jong Un.
“When they brainwash students in North Korea they say: ‘We can read your words, actions and thoughts,’ ” he said. “If you have bad thoughts about the Kim family they will know. But in the book, Jobs said: Do not let others’ thoughts rule over you. Do what you want. Be yourself.”
For Hak Min, the dream is to finish his engineering studies in Seoul and make his way to Silicon Valley to invent worldchanging products of his own.
He’s a far cry from the im-
ages that usually make their way out of the tightly controlled nation just 40 miles away: expressionless North Koreans lock-stepping in military parades and extravagantly choreographed public performances.
In fact, many refugees who escaped to Seoul describe a North Korea that is being transformed, if slowly, by greater access to the outside world.
Hak Min, who grew up in Onsong, a town near the Chinese border, learned how to repair electronics in a black-market economy that emerged in North Korea in the years after the economic hardship and famine of the 1990s. It was images of the world outside North Korea, picked up on TV signals from China and bootleg videotapes and DVDs that sparked his desire to escape.
“I was shocked with how rich the South Koreans were,” he said. “Their culture, their language — everything intrigued me.”
The risks of watching those shows were real. Hak Min was caught with DVDs and sentenced to prison, where he and his friends were tortured. He eventually raised money to pay a blackmarket broker to help him get across the border to China, and from there made his way to Thailand and eventually South Korea.
As tensions rise with President Trump over North Korea’s nuclear weapons, many analysts believe information — rather than military force — can be the key to bring about change in North Korean society from the inside.
While the regime’s nuclear threat must be taken seriously, an overly confrontational approach plays into dictator Kim’s hands, said Sokeel Park, country director of Liberty in North Korea, an organization that helps rescue and resettle refugees.
“North Korea is strong on traditional security stuff,” Park said. “That’s what they want us to focus on ... and then we play right into it. Whereas they’re very weak on their soft underbelly of economy, information, society, culture.”
Kim Seung Chul, a defector who came to South Korea in 1994, founded North Korea Reform Radio in 2007, which broadcasts two hours a day of news, information and entertainment over shortwave frequencies.
“The goal is enlightenment,” he said. “We’re trying to reach North Koreans who are isolated, who don’t have anywhere to listen to real stories or real news.”
Seung Chul and his colleagues also try to target higher-ranking members of the North Korean regime. Their tactics can be surprisingly creative. One program Seung Chul has turned to is House of Cards in hope that its main character will offer some pointers in the dark arts of political maneuvering.
“In order for high officials to act wisely against Kim, they will have to act like Frank Under- wood,” Seung Chul said. “The revolution shouldn’t be like the ones in Iraq or Libya. ... The strategic goal is to make North Korea change by itself.”
In the meantime, the transition to life in South Korea can be daunting for the 30,000 North Koreans who have settled here.
Many North Koreans are told to change their accents and hide where they came from. Hak Min said he found the confidence to be himself in Steve Jobs. “Reading his biography, that’s when I decided I will not hide myself again. That’s when I started telling people that I’m a North Korean defector. I said I can’t be like anyone else, so I’ll be myself.”
Such exposure to the outside world motivated Yoon Ok, 25, to flee North Korea. She grew up in another border town across the river from China.
Yoon Ok, whose full name is being withheld because of concerns her outspokenness will jeopardize the safety of family still in North Korea, recalls one particular Lunar New Year’s Day. She noticed fireworks and lights blazing in China, while her town received electricity only for a few hours a night.
“I was wondering — why is that country so bright, with so many lights during the day?” she said. “It’s just a border crossing. Why is it so much brighter than North Korea?”
She also picked up television signals from China, where she would sometimes see South Korean soap operas dubbed in Chinese.
“Their lifestyle was very carefree, freewheeling,” she said. “If they want to do something, they can do something.”
She started finding her place through a kitchen job in a Seoul restaurant. She fell in love with cooking and has begun taking classes with a goal of starting her own food truck.
“In North Korea, we would never think of eating for pleasure,” she said. “Eating was for survival. If I have an opportunity to go back or if Korea unifies as one nation, I want to cook for the people in North Korea who couldn’t enjoy eating. I hope they can have bigger dreams of their own someday.”