Escape From The Sun

Chapter 20: A New World

We were brought to a resettlement center, where North Koreans were taught the skills they needed to survive in a democracy. It was something I never thought we'd have to go through, but going through the retraining at Hanawon Resettlement Center made me realize just how little we know. Every North Korean who had been accepted and granted citizenship in South Korea had to spend a mandatory three months in the center, a campus of sorts built by the Ministry of Unification in 1999. It was built in preparation for the day North and South would be reunited... but its purpose was different now.

Having been separated for more than six decades, even our manner of language is different now, and we even had to learn the way in which South Korean's speak. We had no words for ATM, hamburgers, printers, or the Internet in North Korea, along with the way English had crept into the vocabulary of modernized South Korea. The experience in Hanawon was both exhausting but thrilling, as we learned new things as quickly as we could before we were released into the democratic, digitalized place we now called home.

Despite being married, Jong Hyun stayed in a separate facility from where we were, and gender was clearly segregated in the center. Sleeping four or five in a room, we all shared meals in a communal cafeteria as we were taught how to open bank accounts, pay for rent, use a credit card, and everything else we would need to survive in our new world. It would also be the first time we learned of many prosperous democracies all over the globe, and I ate it all up like a sponge with water, having sparked curiosity from the documentaries we've watched in the NIS. It was funny hearing Jong Hyun speak at the end of the day's lessons sometimes, as he told me how his instructors reminded the men they were not simply allowed to beat someone up here, and fines and jails were not restricted to those of the lower classes. 

We all had our own difficulties, however, and I think the hardest part for me was learning the concept of 'I' and 'me'. We were not taught that in North Korea. Everything in my upbringing was 'we' or 'the nation', and we were told it was selfish to think of ourselves. Hobbies? Favorite color? There was no gray area in North Korea, and I felt panicky and put on the spot when I was asked those sort of questions, not knowing what the 'right answer' was, and not even knowing what my own opinions were.

Jong Hyun told me much later, he struggled with the concept of choice, and being able to choose a job, or where he wanted to work. But most of all, he worried over being able to give me the life I wanted. He felt as if he had to ensure my life was perfect, that I deserved such perfection since he was the one who had convinced me to go with him. I of course, reassured him much later that I did not need such dreams, but it would be a lie to say that both of us were not worried when our three months in Hanawon was up.

The staff of Hanawon took us on trips often to get used to the city and to play a little at being a tourist. We were taught to use the subway, how to buy tickets as we visited the museum, saw the Han River, even went to a night market. It made me nervous on those trips, the lights and the sounds, swarms of people of different races everywhere.

But at least on those trips, we had the staff we could fall back on. When we were alone, it felt very different.

In the early days of the separation, defectors from North Korea were treated like survivors and heroes, given big rewards, subsidies, and scholarships. But when a wave of refugees starting pouring in, sometimes at above two thousand on average, the resettlement packages began growing smaller and more restrictive. On the day of our 'graduation', as we knew it, we were issued our citizenship papers for South Korea, along with 15 million won to find a house and 25 million shared between the both of us to resettle, given over a period of one year. While we had the money, the finding was the least of our problems.

From a life where we've always been told what to do, given the appropriate answers to say, thrusting us into a life of choice-making was terrifying, and it felt almost dizzying when you now had fifteen brands of rice and ten different sorts of dishwashing liquid to choose from. It almost made me miss home, where I always knew what to do as it was being told to me.

It took many nights, as Jong Hyun and I moved into a quieter part of Seoul. We reasoned that ironically, the peace in the apartment building we had chosen felt closest to home, and he could feel at peace after a whole day out hunting for a job. We lived in a one-room with a small kitchen and an area with a low table for meals. While we could've gotten more in terms of resettlement money had we chosen somewhere further away from the city, Jong Hyun reasoned that he had spoken with some of the staff, who had recommended jobs in the city and would prefer to at least be within half an hour of Seoul.

The brightest parts of my memories when we first moved to Seoul would perhaps be the sheer amount of food we had available to us. Oranges, apples, even instant noodles were unimaginable luxuries in North Korea, even for me who stayed in the Ryongsong Residence. I was always at the mercy of what my father and his wife chose to give me, and on certain days I only had stale crusts of bread, so to be able to choose what I felt like eating on a daily basis was mind-blowing. Jong Hyun however, seemed to find a new joy in buying pizza and burgers, developing quite a taste for Western food.

I have to admit, I was worried at first as Jong Hyun found a job as a salesperson. I would turn on the television we have at home everyday to practice my English (having found myself fascinated with different languages across the world, as diverse as the culture itself), and found myself envious of the pretty South Korean women we would see on the screen, looking so cultured and well educated. Unable to help but compare me to them, a part of me wondered if Jong Hyun would be easily attracted to them and their flashy clothes and worldly knowledge. And it was a very real worry that ate away at me as he returned home late every night and left early every morning.

It all culminated in an argument one day which left us both in bad moods, but I had walked out of our small, cramped apartment to take a walk in the cold winter air. Was this how it was like to live in a modernized, materialistic world? We would never have had such disagreements, simply because we were provided with everything by the state, sometimes down to who we married. With the amount of freedom given to us in Seoul, many North Koreans who defected often tried to smuggle their way back to North Korea, overwhelmed by the many decisions they have to make on a daily basis.

But Jong Hyun came after me, and thereafter we had a long talk. I've always wondered how someone like Jong Hyun, who had lived his whole life under the thumb of our ruling party, still manages to think and assimilate easily into this new world we now lived in. But our talk revealed to me how terrified he was of failing me, that I would one day decide I had made the wrong decision, and that he only returned home late every night because he was desperately trying to earn the finances we'd need for a good, comfortable life. In a race with South Korean's who's had a whole lifelong headstart ahead of him, it felt like a futile race. Under immense stress, he even picked up smoking at some point, a habit we tried together to help him kick after a few years.

We managed to earn enough money to get a bigger place within the next ten years and picked up the interest that I cultivated many, many years ago in the kitchens of the Ryongsong Residence, and eventually got a job as a sous-chef. Life is... good. Better than I could imagine, even if we both have to work hard. Many people only ever hear of the defectors who end up becoming human rights activists, who speak on TedTalks... but there is a larger percentage of us who hide and speak as if that part of our life was never there. If we do not tell, no one would be able to guess we had previously been North Koreans, and we prefer it that way.

But sometimes, as we sit down doing nothing on weekends, watching old re-runs of American shows we've never had the chance to watch before (Jong Hyun is fascinated by Big Bang Theory for some reason), my thoughts would occasionally flit to the many years we spent under the command of someone else, or even the years in China.... and then I'd just curl up into my husband's arms, and appreciate whatever freedom we've managed to get for ourselves.

Because to many others, simple things like buying Starbuck's or having a choice between different hair shampoo's may be small, inconsequential things, but to any of us who have fought hard for the right to live where we do now, everything is appreciated.