The refugee from North Korea said he was 13 years old, but looked nearer 8 and had the penmanship of a 6-year-old.
“I didn’t go to school in North Korea. Few children back there did,” the boy told The Korea Herald, anonymously. His father passed away in an unspecified event back in the communist country and his older sister is missing.
The escape to the South opened up new opportunities for him, but he says he still has trouble adapting to the new culture, new environment and new life.
“I hardly ever hang out with South Korean kids. They all make fun of me, mimicking my accent and repeating what I say.”
The boy, standing nearly a foot shorter than his classmates, did not talk much, but his clamped mouth and eyes full of fear told a story of their own. Young defectors from North Korea often have trouble adapting to their new environment in the South due to prejudice against defectors, a lack of studying and the herculean task of taking in a completely different culture.
Pastor Chun Ki-won, who heads the Durihana International School for defector children, said the brutal reality of the North and the escape from the country tend to leave children traumatized.
“The biggest problem is that (defectors’) family are dissolved the moment they cross the border. Sometimes mothers are ‘sold’ to men in China in a form of unwanted marriage,” the pastor said.
Broken families, fear of being caught and the memories of hunger and pain back in the hermit kingdom are what ails the young minds. A 13-year-old girl said she had to move to Durihana because she could not keep up with her classmates.
Far from going to private institutes and receiving help from tutors, defector children have only minimal opportunities to learn. Although these children need to spend more time and effort to make up for the lack of education, many defectors fail to see the importance of studying…….
