From North Korea to Gangnam style: one defector's journey

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/10/north-korea-gangnam-style-defector

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Nam Jin Hyeon works at an architecture firm in Gangnam district in Seoul. At 25, he is already the head of his own team at the company. His job is stable, and for the most part he has succeeded in putting down roots here in the South. But the 10-year journey that brought him here was not easy.

Nam was born in a fishing village in Chongjin in North Korea’s North Hamkyung province before the “Arduous March” (the 1994-1998 famine). The state distribution system collapsed, so his parents took to selling seaweed, shrimp, and fish at the markets, eking out just enough to keep the family alive. Nam says his memories from the North are full of nothing but the interminable pangs of hunger.

Skipping one or, more often, two meals a day was commonplace; sometimes Nam’s family went without food for several days. The family home, passed down from his grandfather, was traded for a sack of corn as the situation exacerbated.

After this the family migrated deep into the mountains to build a makeshift, tiny shack. Strips of tattered plastic and silver grass formed a roof, or something akin to one, but on rainy days the rain drenched both the interior of the house and the family within it.

Flight to China

“It was almost impossible to survive with the chronic shortage of food and economic hardship, and once we were teetering on the brink of severe malnutrition, my father made an executive decision: our entire family fled to China. There, we raised cows, planted trees and crops with proper fertiliser. We worked hard and never did we sleep through the night without the ever-present concern of being repatriated to the North,” he says.

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This fear led the family to flee to South Korea, but Nam notes that this did not end their troubles; he and his siblings struggled trying to adjust to school.

“A lot of kids who got out of Hanawon [the government resettlement centre for North Korean defectors] would go to alternative schools for defectors instead of a regular school. They would be satisfied there within their own boundaries instead of trying to overcome the challenges that would help them settle down. I felt that being in a shared community of only defectors would present limits to settling down in the South,” he says.

So Nam chose to enter a regular middle school – his parents even went as far to request that the school keep quiet about his background in North Korea. Still, he remembers it as a difficult time: following school rules and making new friends were uphill battles, and despite all his family’s efforts, the students kept their distance because of the discernible difference in his accent.

This all changed when he proved himself as a talented athlete. Small, but strong from working on a farm in China, he beat 22 of his classmates in arm wrestling and out-paced the fastest student, dubbed “cheetah” for his speed, during a memorable school running event. “That’s when I gained more confidence,” he said. “I became a soccer player for the school team and played against other schools. More students approached me because I was good at sports, and I opened up to them, so we became friends.”

Building futures

Yet Nam’s grades suffered because, unlike other students, his family was unable to afford to send him to private academies after school for supplemental study – a standard practice among his South Korean peers.

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When the time came for him to enter high school, Nam found himself drawing on memories from his days in the North, huddled and shivering inside a small hut. He cites this as an important moment in his life, saying, “I asked myself what it was that I truly wanted to study. It was natural for me to think of architecture, so I got into the architecture department in a technical high school. My dreams, combined with a natural ability for drawing, gave me the passion to put everything I had into my studies there.”

Nam immersed himself in architectural design and obtained a number of related state licenses on top of his studies, which eventually led him to his current job.

These days, Nam spends much of his free time walking around Seoul with his mother, pointing out the new apartment buildings he has worked on. To him, these buildings symbolise the future cities in the North after the two Koreas unify.

Supported by the North Korean Refugees Foundation and translated by Jiyeon Lee