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Viewing cable 09SEOUL129, FUTURE ROLE FOR NORTH KOREAN DEFECTORS

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Reference ID Created Released Classification Origin
09SEOUL129 2009-01-23 07:57 2011-08-30 01:44 CONFIDENTIAL Embassy Seoul
VZCZCXYZ0009
OO RUEHWEB

DE RUEHUL #0129/01 0230757
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
O 230757Z JAN 09
FM AMEMBASSY SEOUL
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 3019
INFO RUEHBJ/AMEMBASSY BEIJING PRIORITY 5201
RUEHMO/AMEMBASSY MOSCOW PRIORITY 9190
RUEHKO/AMEMBASSY TOKYO PRIORITY 5309
RUEHSH/AMCONSUL SHENYANG PRIORITY 3913
RHMFISS/COMUSKOREA J5 SEOUL KOR PRIORITY
RUACAAA/COMUSKOREA INTEL SEOUL KOR PRIORITY
RHMFISS/COMUSFK SEOUL KOR PRIORITY
RHHMUNA/CDR USPACOM HONOLULU HI PRIORITY
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. 
 
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Comment 
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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