VZCZCXYZ0000
RR RUEHWEB

DE RUEHUL #1108/01 1070141
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 170141Z APR 07
FM AMEMBASSY SEOUL
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 3921
INFO RUEHBJ/AMEMBASSY BEIJING 2334
RUEHKO/AMEMBASSY TOKYO 2443
RHMFISS/COMUSKOREA J5 SEOUL KOR
RHMFISS/COMUSKOREA J2 SEOUL KOR
RHMFISS/COMUSKOREA SCJS SEOUL KOR

UNCLAS SEOUL 001108 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR DRL 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PREL PGOV PREF PHUM KS KN
 
SUBJECT: DPRK DEFECTOR PERSONIFIES MATERIALISTIC MOTIVES FOR 
DEFECTION 
 
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SUMMARY 
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¶1.  (U) SUMMARY:  On March 29, Lim Il, a North Korean defector, 
spoke at the monthly meeting of the AhRin Forum in Seoul to an 
audience of academics and foreign diplomats posted to the ROK and 
the DPRK.  Lim described his journey from North Korea to the South, 
where he received asylum in 1998, via a stint working for a 
construction company in Kuwait.  Lim said that North Koreans are 
eager to work abroad even though they receive little compensation; 
that even family members report on each other's unauthorized 
activities; and that North Koreans defect to escape starvation, 
rather than political oppression.  Lim noted that the families of 
defectors were often punished by DPRK authorities, yet he exhibited 
no concern for the family he left behind in the North.  END 
SUMMARY. 
 
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LIFE IN NORTH KOREA 
-------------------- 
 
¶2.  (U) Lim was born in Pyongyang in 1968 and spent the first 29 
years of his life there.  During that time, ten-year military 
service was not compulsory for all males, especially for those with 
"baek" (connections).  Lim was exempted from military service and 
instead obtained a position in the communications section of the 
External Economics Committee, a government agency similar to the 
South's Korea Trade Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA). 
 
¶3.  (U) Like others before him, Lim described North Korea as a 
closed society in which ordinary people remained largely ignorant of 
life outside the country.  When he lived in Pyongyang, Lim said that 
he had thought of North Korea as the most socially, economically and 
technologically advanced country in the world.  He had, in fact, 
considered Pyongyang to be "heaven."  Lim also said that ordinary 
citizens' sole connection to the outside world consisted of 
first-hand reports from those who had returned from working abroad 
for state-owned companies.  After hearing accounts of better living 
standards abroad, Lim resolved to defect to the South.  North Korean 
policy allowed only married men to work abroad, while their families 
remained behind.  Consequently, Lim married and started a family, 
thereby qualifying him to seek overseas employment. 
 
¶4.  (U) Lim described a climate of fear and suspicion in North 
Korea, which affected traditional Korean family dynamics.  Despite 
close relationships with his two older brothers, Lim had no doubt 
that they would have reported him had they known of his intentions. 
Lim claimed to know of instances when even fathers and sons reported 
each other to the authorities for engaging in unauthorized 
activities.  When North Koreans defected, the authorities punished 
the families left behind and often sent them to work camps.  Lim 
said that he had resolved, however, to leave North Korea regardless 
of the cost to his family. 
 
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WORKING IN KUWAIT AND DEFECTION 
-------------------------------- 
 
¶5.  (U) In November of 1996, Lim left Pyongyang to work as an 
accountant for one of the three North Korean construction companies 
operating in Kuwait.  Lim estimated that there were approximately 
5,000 North Korean laborers in Kuwait at that time.  He added that 
these laborers usually worked 16-hour days without pay or days off. 
Their salaries were directly deposited into a government bank 
account in Switzerland.  Upon returning to North Korea after 
completing three-year tours abroad, these workers were compensated 
with household appliances and electronic goods such as televisions. 
Because an average North Korean could not purchase even a black and 
white television with a lifetime's worth of savings, most people 
considered these compensation arrangements to be generous. 
Therefore, overseas opportunities were in high demand. 
 
¶6.  (U) In March of 1997, Lim's first attempt to make contact with 
South Korean authorities ended in failure when the Korean embassy 
was closed due to a Kuwaiti national holiday.  Lim said that he was 
fortunate that his taxi waited for him at the embassy, otherwise he 
could not have returned to the construction site unnoticed.  He 
returned to the embassy ten days later and was granted asylum by the 
South Korean ambassador.  Upon discovering Lim's absence, the North 
Korean authorities accused the South of kidnapping him and demanded 
his immediate release. 
 
¶7.  (U) As a neutral party, the Office of the United Nations High 
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) processed Lim's application for 
 
refugee status, after which he arrived in South Korea in March 1998. 
 Upon arriving in Seoul, Lim said that the South Korean intelligence 
agency processed and debriefed him for approximately six months to 
ensure that he was a bona fide defector. 
 
-------------------- 
LIFE IN SOUTH KOREA 
-------------------- 
 
¶8.  (U) Upon arriving in South Korea, Lim attended a university in 
Cheonan and graduated with a degree in industrial design. 
Nonetheless, Lim said that he had a difficult time securing 
employment post-graduation because of discrimination against North 
Koreans.  He claimed to have married a fellow North Korean defector 
in a Seoul church in 2002.  After two years of unemployment, Lim 
found work at a computer graphics company, but his wages barely 
provided for his new family.  Lim said that the first inter-Korean 
summit in 2000 inspired him to write his first book, which provided 
a humorous look at life in Seoul.  His second book, memoirs of his 
time in Pyongyang, was published earlier this year. 
 
----------------------------------------- 
THOUGHTS ON POLICIES TOWARDS NORTH KOREA 
----------------------------------------- 
 
¶9.  (U) Lim said that he supports the South Korean government's 
engagement policies, especially the provision of humanitarian aid. 
Lim estimated that 3 million North Koreans died of starvation in the 
1990s.  He conjectured that had third-party countries not 
intervened, the number of starvation-related deaths would have 
increased to 12 million, approximately half of the North Korean 
population.    At the same time, Lim called for more oversight of 
and accountability for any humanitarian aid.  He claimed that 
ordinary citizens received only 10 percent of the food aid, while 
the government and military hoarded all remaining supplies.  Lim 
recounted public displays of government officials distributing food 
to citizens during the day, only to take back the food at nightfall 
when satellites could not monitor their actions.  He recommended 
that the Korean Red Cross directly administer the distribution of 
food aid in the North. 
 
¶10.  (U) Lim said that the North Korean government still held a 
strong grip on the political and social consciousness of the public. 
 He claimed that ordinary North Koreans were more concerned with 
practical everyday survival, rather than with ushering in regime 
change.  North Koreans risked the dangerous journey to China to 
escape starvation, rather than political oppression.  Lim 
contradicted reports that foreign media influences, most notably 
South Korean dramas and music, were politically mobilizing the 
masses.  Although he acknowledged greater access to foreign media 
outlets, Lim emphasized that North Korea remained an insular 
totalitarian state.  According to Lim, defectors had little actual 
knowledge of the outside world until they escaped across the border 
into China. 
 
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COMMENT 
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¶11. (SBU) To our surprise, Lim did not express any regret about 
leaving a family behind in North Korea to suffer the consequences of 
his actions.  His stated reasons for getting married in North Korea 
were opportunistic, and aimed at securing overseas employment as a 
conduit to escape.  Lim's own life, therefore, seemed to reflect the 
erosion in family loyalty in North Korea that he described. 
 
¶12. (SBU) Under South Korean laws, both spouses must consent to a 
divorce.  Because Lim's North Korean wife presumably could not have 
agreed to a divorce, the South Korean government likely would not 
have recognized his second marriage, nor have recorded it in his 
family census registry.  The National Assembly has recently passed 
legislation designed to ease the burden on North Korean defectors 
who wish to remarry in the South. 
STANTON