North Korean refugees dream of better life in Seoul

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

CHIANG SAEN, Thailand, May 17 (Reuters) ''He is gorgeous. I love him,'' squealed 18-year-old Choi Seol-mee.

The North Korean teenager was not referring to Kim Jong-il, Pyongyang's secretive ''Dear Leader''.

Having escaped North Korea to Thailand, Choi has eyes only for Rain, the heart-throb South Korean pop star she would never have even heard of in her isolated communist homeland.

Now, in the new life she dreams of, Choi will be front row at a Rain concert in Seoul, gazing into the eyes of her icon.

''People say it is a beautiful city with lots of young people wearing nice clothes,'' she told Reuters in a police station in the northern Thai town of Chiang Saen, where she and her sister Hyang-mee, 20, were arrested for illegal entry this month.

''Everything looks and sounds civilized,'' she said, drawing on South Korean television shows and soap operas she saw while in China before embarking on the 2,000 km journey away from her homeland.

''We hope we will be able to be the same.'' Driven by hunger and hardship to flee North Korea into China two years ago, the sisters have taken the TV shows, as well as snippets gleaned from Chinese media, to build up an image of Seoul as a utopian land of milk and honey.

North Korean fugitives are given homes, jobs and money to start a new life, they believe, and will be free of the discrimination and exploitation they suffered in China.

Most of the women who flee to China from North Korea by swimming the Tumen River end up working in textile factories or as waitresses in restaurants for no pay apart from food, shelter and the occasional tip.

Many get sucked into the sex trade.

Even though the Choi sisters fared better than most in China, with Seol-mee gaining 12 kgs in weight, the constraints of being illegal migrants eventually became too much to bear.

''We weren't happy in China. We had no documents so we couldn't go anywhere. Life was tough,'' she said.

''A few Chinese people were very kind to us, and we are very grateful. But the number of people who did bad things to us was greater than those who helped us.'' Although under no illusions about the hardships of the ''underground railway'' leading from China, through the malaria-infested jungles of eastern Myanmar, to Thailand, where refugees faces months in detention centres, the lure of Seoul won through.

Whether the dream lives up to the reality remains to be seen.

Hyang-mee says she wants to go to university, maybe even do a doctorate; her younger sister wants to be a tour guide or singer.

''I also dreamed of learning taekwondo, but I never had a chance.

After I make it to the South, I will do it,'' Seol-mee said.

REUTERS GL PM1035

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