FUTURE ROLE FOR NORTH KOREAN DEFECTORS

C O N F I D E N T I A L SEOUL 000129

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/10/2018
TAGS: PHUM SREF PGOV PROP PREL KS KN
SUBJECT: FUTURE ROLE FOR NORTH KOREAN DEFECTORS
FACILITATING UNIFICATION?: ROK OFFICIALS DISMISSIVE

Classified By: POL M/C Joseph Yun. Reasons 1.4 (b/d).


1. (C) Summary: As the total number of North Korean
defectors in South Korea crossed the 15,000 threshold in
2008, some scholars, NGOs, and defectors themselves asked
whether the former North Korean residents could play a useful
role promoting change of the North Korean regime and
facilitating eventual unification of the Korean Peninsula.
While there is a nascent, but growing activism among
defectors who see themselves as naturals for these tasks,
present and past ROKG officials dismiss the possibility of a
significant defector role. Even some leading defectors
acknowledge that defectors are not yet ready to assume such a
responsibility. Defector NGO groups have grown in number,
but they are weakened by the lack of a unifying agenda or
approach to inter-Korean issues. End Summary.


2. (C) According to the ROK Ministry of Unification (MOU),
South Korea took in 2,809 North Korean defectors in 2008 --
the most ever -- pushing the total number of defectors to
15,057. As the defectors are quite familiar with all things
North Korean, pundits and experts have tapped into their
information base, promoting their favored agenda and cause.
In the process, some pundits and experts, especially those
from outside Korea, see a role for the defectors to promote
change in the DPRK and, ultimately, facilitate a transition
to a unified peninsula. Scholar and long-time North Korea
observer Andrei Lankov, for example, advocates cultivation of
a cadre of North Korean defectors for such a task through
exchange programs and expanded educational support. The
International Republican Institute (IRI) has already
conducted small capacity-building workshops for defectors,
aiming to empower them both to improve their lives in South
Korea and to play a useful post-unification role at some
point in the future. Some defector activists share this
optimistic view of their future possibilities, reasoning that
their intimate personal knowledge and experience of life in
both Koreas uniquely qualifies them for a role in the
transition to unification. This argument does not appear to
hold sway, however, with many South Koreans, who tend to see
the defectors as a burden: poor, needy, and maladjusted.

--------------
Defector NGO Overview
--------------


3. (C) South Korean NGOs involved in DPRK-related activity
generally fall into two camps: one progressive-leaning,
humanitarian, and pro-engagement; the other conservative,
human rights-oriented, and eager to hasten the collapse of
the North Korean regime. Virtually all politically active
defectors tend to associate with, and in some cases lead,
groups in the latter category. These defector-led
organizations include radio broadcasters (Free North Korea
Radio, North Korea Reform Radio),leafleters (Fighters for
Free North Korea and Association of North Korean Defector
Organizations),human rights advocates (Committee for the
Democratization of North Korea),former prison camp internees
(Campaign for North Korean Freedom),escaped North Korean
elites (North Korean Intellectuals Solidarity),and women's
rights advocates (Committee for North Korean Women's Rights).
Though they share a desire to promote change in the North,
they are by no means a cohesive bunch and are often critical
of one another.

-------------- --------------
"Aquariums" Author Kang: Defectors Get No Respect
-------------- --------------


4. (C) Kang Chul-hwan, who survived one of the harshest
North Korean political prison camps and wrote about it in
"The Aquariums of Pyongyang," estimated that defectors need
about a decade simply to assimilate into South Korean
society. Knowing South Korea and its people and
understanding its capitalist mentality were prerequisites for
assumption of any future, post-unification leadership role in
either of the Koreas, he said.


5. (C) Kang described how defectors' status in South Korean
eyes had fallen over the years. Compared to 1992, when he
reached the ROK, recent arrivals had it "much tougher." Back
then, defecting individuals and military officers were issued
"Defector Warrior" cards, which elicited respect and praise
from South Koreans, but in 1994 the identification cards were
"downgraded" from "Defector Warrior" status to just
"defectors." As defector numbers and ROKG funding and
scholarships for defectors increased in the late 1990s, Kang
noticed a clear turning point in public perception of North
Korean defectors, as respect changed to disinterest to
disrespect. Since 2000, North Korean defectors have been
treated as second-class citizens, Kang said.


6. (C) While North Korean defectors were not yet ready to
"help (South) Korea," Kang believed the defector community
could play a positive role in the future -- in time and with
training. In a post-unification era, North Koreans would be
better received in the North than South Koreans in
guidance-providing roles, Kang thought.

-------------- --------------
IT Ph.D. Kim: Elites Ready to Make a Difference Now
-------------- --------------


7. (C) Apparently rejecting the notion that they are "not
yet ready" to take on the leadership role, a growing number
of defectors are trying to plant seeds of change in North
Korea now. Holder of a North Korean doctorate in information
technology, Kim Heung-kwang serves as chairman of North
Korean Intellectuals Solidarity (NKIS),a group of more than
150 elite defector intellectuals in South Korea that he
founded in October 2008, after reaching out to other educated
defectors since his arrival in 2004. Twenty percent of its
members either hold or are pursuing Master's or Doctorate
degrees; the group aims to promote change in the DPRK by
targeting its elite class with messages and information
surreptitiously packaged in DVDs, USB thumb drives, and MP3
files. Kim told poloffs that his attempts to solicit support
from the ROK National Intelligence Service (NIS) had not gone
well due to ideological differences and NIS leaks of
sensitive information. He had been in Japan the previous
week asking an abductee NGO for funding. Kim was featured on
the Japanese NHK BS1 evening news program "Kyou no Sekai"
(Today's World) on January 22. His recent acceptance of a
visiting professorship at Gyeonggi University
notwithstanding, Kim, like many elite defectors, feel their
expertise, skills, and potential to effect change in the DPRK
are under-appreciated by the South. Kim closed with a plea
for U.S. funding.

--------------
Leafleters: Bang for the Bucks?
--------------


8. (C) The area of defector activity attracting the most
attention in South Korea is leafleting. NGO Fighters for
Free North Korea Chair Park Hak-sang's fall 2008 deliveries
of large air balloons carrying several thousand anti-Kim Jong
Il leaflets (many with one-dollar bills attached) across the
DMZ drew unusually strong condemnation from the DPRK, which
demanded that the ROKG stop Park's leafleting activities.
The ROKG's ostensible search for a legal basis to stop the
balloons failed and Park continued, sending 100,000 "Balloon
postcards" to North Korea on December 3, 2008. The next
balloons are set to fly in February, this time laden with
North Korean won-bearing leaflets.


9. (C) Presently taking a hiatus from leafleting to comply
with ROKG wishes and to wait for more favorable spring winds,
Association of North Korean Defector Organizations (ANKDO)
leaders are also very optimistic about the potential role
that North Korean defectors could play in a post-unification
era. Conceding that the defector community is "not yet
ready" to lead, ANKDO Chairman Han Chang-kweon nevertheless
stressed that defectors would be best positioned to bring
about chane in North Korea and ought to be empowered
accordingly. ANKDO is an umbrella organization representing
28 smaller NGOs that support North Korean defectors.

--------------
ROK Officials Not Impressed
--------------


10. (C) Overall, ROK officialdom is dismissive of the
possibility of a positive unification-related role for
defectors, being more concerned with the challenges defectors
present to the South's welfare and educational systems.
Former Unification Minister Park Jae-kyu told poloffs on
January 9 that what to do with North Korean defectors outside
Korea was a "huge problem" for the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs and Trade (MOFAT) and predicted that it could grow
into an even bigger headache unless the ROK changed its
current practice of universal acceptance of North Korean
defectors. Park estimated over 90 percent of defectors were
unable to adapt successfully to life in South Korea, adding
that many suffered from mental and physical health problems.
To expect this group to play a productive mid to long-term
role in Korean unification was unrealistic, he said. As
Unification Minister during the Sunshine Policy days of Kim
Dae-jung, Park had overseen implementation of a more
selective ROK policy on accepting defectors, he said.


11. (C) The South Korean public, Park continued, was
"psychologically not ready for defectors," and was certainly
not prepared to accept them as leaders of any sort. To think
that the adjustment process would be effortless because
"defectors are also Koreans" would be a "naive and
irresponsible" notion. Informal comments made in a separate
meeting with MOU officials seemed to bear this out. North
Korean neighbors they could live with, they agreed, but they
would not stand for seeing one of their children marry one.
Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Yong-joon echoed former Minister
Park's opinion that acceptance of virtually all defectors who
wish to settle in South Korea coupled with ROKG resettlement
incentives had attracted less desirable defectors to the ROK.

--------------
Broadcasters: Kept at Arm's Length by ROKG
--------------


12. (C) Former DPRK propagandist Kim Seong-min spearheaded
development of the largest of the defector-associated
broadcasters, Free North Korea Radio (FNK),though he has
turned over responsibility for the radio portion of his
expanding operation to another defector, Lee Keum-ryong.
Employing 13 defectors and planning to increase total staff
from 15 to 20, FNK now broadcasts five hours per night and
produces over 50 different programs on everything from
current events, useful life skills, and women's rights to
defector testimonies, statistical comparisons of the North
and South, lectures by well-known North Korea specialists,
and English and Mandarin lessons. All programs are hosted by
defectors speaking in North Korean dialect. Kim and his FNK
colleagues have branched out into other activity, too,
including an online clearinghouse of North Korea-related
information, images, and videos (some from FNK's North Korea
contacts) called NK Information Center (www.fnkinf.com) and a
defection support operation enlisting the assistance of a
team of trusted brokers and contacts in Vietnam and Cambodia.
Ignored by mainstream South Korean press, FNK was recognized
and awarded for its work by Reporters Without Borders in
December.


13. (C) Not all have been pleased with FNK Radio's
activities; employees discovered a "bloody axe" on the
station office's doorstep one day and the office now receives
constant police protection. Kim claimed in a December
meeting with poloff that those responsible for sending
threatening mail to FNK in the past had since been arrested
under the National Security Law. Initially wary of the
police, Kim said he now gets along well with them and
believed that elements of the NIS approve of their
broadcasting efforts. Many who logged on to the NK
Information Center website, he noted, were from the NIS. A
female defector that worked for FNK two years ago, he said,
was in fact later recruited by the NIS, which employed other
defectors as well.


14. (C) Radio Free Chosun (RFC) president, the non-defector
conservative activist Han Ki-hong, likewise told poloff in
December that the broadcaster had close relations with the
NIS, friendlier now under President Lee Myung-bak than under
previous administrations. Also like FNK, RFC monitored
defector responses to its broadcasts and adjusted programming
content accordingly, tailoring the contents to those mostly
likely to listen in: intellectuals, students, black
marketeers. Part of a larger organization encompassing small
publisher NKnet and online North Korea news source The Daily
NK, RFC creates about 15 programs in-house on such topics as
the North Korean economic situation, stages of transition to
a new regime, music, and dramas, broadcasting for an hour and
a half per day. Ten employees worked on radio programs in one
capacity or another and RFC aimed to have defectors broadcast
70-80 percent of its programming in North Korean dialect.


15. (C) One of two other smaller, but notable, broadcasters
is North Korea Reform Radio, a two-person operation run by
1990s defector Kim Seung-chul producing 1 hour of programming
per day targeted at North Korean leadership elites. The
other is Open Radio, run by South Korean Young Howard, who
employs two or three defectors and broadcasts two hours per
day.

--------------
Comment
--------------


16. (C) North Korean defectors have been quite successful in
forming groups and organization to publicize repression back
home. Broadcasting is probably the most successful model,
attracting funds and interest from South Korean conservative
groups and foreign human rights and religious activists.
Understandably, these defector groups see themselves as
trailblazers and their work as preparation for leadership
roles in a unified Korea. This, however, is not a view their
southern compatriots share, who see a divided defector
community without much depth or leadership. Correct or not,
South Koreans also assume that North Koreans will not respond
well to the returnees.
STEPHENS