North Korean Youth Need Freedom

Chhay Sophal

Seoul, South Korea (25 June, 2012): North Korean young defectors have reviewed their lives several years ago in the Communist North Korea where they consider the closed society.

Speaking in a session with a topic of “North Korean Youth in the South” at the International Media Conference in Yonsei University in Seoul, a 24 year-old female youth who defected to South Korea through China since 2006 said that everything was different from the South Korean society where she has a new life and new opportunity.

The 24 year-old women who asked not to be named and photoed in the conference for security reason said she wants to work and help North Korean youth.

Echoing the young lady, another young male defector said he never got any information from South Korea and the outside world while he was in the North. “When I was in South Korea at the first time in 2006, I felt shocked so much as I was warmly welcomed by the South Korean society at the airport which is different from what the North Korean authorities said,” he told the conference through an interpretation.

Both young defectors said that they tried hard after arriving in Seoul to adapt themselves in South where they found more benefit which is unlike the North with no freedom and “everything was kept in order”

Due to hunger or repression, tens of thousands of people in the communist North Korea have fled in recent years and defected to the South, virtually crossing the border to China and Southeast Asian nations such as Thailand, Vietnam and Laos in hopes of flying from there to South Korea.

North Korean students learn that their country has had two main enemies: the Japanese, who colonized Korea from 1910 to 1945, and the U.S., which fought against North Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War, according to a report of Mail Online posted on 24 June.

At the Kaeson Kindergarten in central Pyongyang, one of several schools visited by the AP, U.S. soldiers are depicted as cruel, ghoulish barbarians with big noses and fiendish eyes. Teeth bared, they brand prisoners with hot irons, set wild dogs on women and wrench out a girl’s teeth with pliers.

Last Wednesday, a 51-year-old identified only by his surname Yoo was detained by intelligence officials at a hotel in Ho Chi Minh after he had been alleged of helping North Korean refugees passing through Vietnam, Seoul’s foreign ministry spokesman told told AFP Monday.