(Yonhap Feature) Ethnic Koreans fall to bitter life in "fatherland"

By Kim Boram
SEOUL, March 7 (Yonhap) -- Between 1958 and 1984, some 93,000 Koreans living in Japan emigrated to North Korea with hopes of living a happy new life in a land touted by promoters as a "heaven on earth."
Little was known about the fate of those emigrants until the 1990s, when a handful of them managed to escape the poverty-stricken country and reported the bitter ordeal they had endured there.
Their problems were again thrust into the spotlight when a Japan-born Korean movie director last week released in Seoul her second documentary film highlighting the life of one of her brothers who emigrated to the North in the early 1970s.
"My father, an ardent communist and high-ranking official with Chongryon, sent his three teenage children to North Korea," the 47-year-old movie director, Yang Yong-hi, said in a recent interview with Yonhap News Agency in Seoul, using the name of the largest pro-North Korean organization in Japan, Chongryon.
She said her father, Yang Gong-son, a native of South Korea, had thought at the time that the reunification of the divided Korean Peninsula would happen within five or 10 years at the most.
"My father believed that his sons could study hard there without any discrimination and contribute to the reunification of the fatherland and normalization of relations with Japan and then come back home," she said.



However, things did not work the way Yang's father and other pro-communism supporters had hoped for. The few escapees from North Korea, including Japanese women married to Korean emigrants, all reported experiencing utter poverty and social discrimination in the country.
The presence of a Korean minority community in Japan, now estimated at 700,000, is a direct product of Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. They were stranded in Japan at the end of World War II in 1945.
According to various studies, the number of pro-Pyongyang Korean residents in Japan has dwindled to between 150,000 and 200,000 and may continue to drop rapidly in the coming years. The decline comes as many become pro-Seoul or obtain Japanese citizenship.
Japan established formal ties with South Korea in 1965 but it has yet to normalize relations with North Korea. Key pending issues include the fate of more than a dozen Japanese citizens whom North Korea has confessed to abducting in the 1970s and '80s.
Korean residents in Japan -- whether they are loyal to Seoul or Pyongyang -- live under extreme social discrimination. Those who emigrated to the North feel even stronger discrimination in the country, according to Yang and other frequent visitors there.
"People who emigrated from Japan are discriminated against in North Korea, definitely," said Yang. "Their status is very low in the North. My niece, Son-hwa, has been bullied in school."
Yang has made two documentary films on her brother's family in North Korea. Her first film, made in 2006 and titled "Dear Pyongyang," won awards at the Berlin Film Festival and Sundance Film Festival in Los Angeles after attracting media attention for revealing the dismal conditions of North Korea.
The media publicity of the first film prompted North Korean authorities to bar Yang from visiting the country again. Yang said she does not know whether her brother and his family are in trouble.



Yang's second documentary, titled "Goodbye Pyongyang," is about her niece, Son-hwa. In the film, Son-hwa, wearing socks imprinted with an image of Mickey Mouse, a mark of the "imperialist" U.S., can't decide what dish to order at a Pyongyang restaurant. She stares at the menu that features samgyetang, a Korean-style chicken soup, chili-sauce rice cakes and pizza, saying, "I've never tasted it."
According to Yang, her brother's family is relatively affluent in North Korea because they live on money from their grandmother in Japan, but their basic rights are severely restricted.
"There are no individual voices in North Korea," Yang said of the intense cult of personality that has been built around leader Kim Jong-il and his dynastic family. "All people there have to say 'Thank you, Great Leader.' No exceptions," she said.
In the movie, Son-hwa says to her aunt that she wants to hear "anything" about the outside world. Then the camera turns off and a brief summary of their conversation is written in words across the screen.
"My family is still living in the North. The movie had to show the surface, not the substance, which I think is risky," she said. "But there are so many of the people like my brothers. I want my movie to play a role in attracting more spotlight on the issue, acting as a catalyst."
Yang said she believes her father's decision to send his three children to North Korea decades ago probably was the best choice he could have made at that time. North Korea, she said, was offering a helping hand, while the then South Korean military dictatorship took the role of a bystander.
Yang said her father died in 2009 after a long illness.
"As time went by, I think he knew the truth (about North Korea)," she said. "But he didn't regret making the choice, because regret would mean denial of his entire life. He couldn't do that."