hankyoreh

Members of the Korea Parent Federation and other conservative groups hold a protest against the Sewol sinking victims’ families outside Yeongdeungpo Police Station in Seoul

Identifying a group of people by a single label is an act of violence, since such a label cannot convey the differences among them. One such label is that of North Korean defectors.

Defectors are at once a symbol of the superiority of South Korean society within a divided peninsula and at the same time manifestations of North Korea. They were accepted into the South because they defected from North Korea, and at the same time they must deny any connection with their motherland in order to maintain their precarious existence in the South.

That is why even today they demonstrate their existence by calling for the elimination of pro-North Korea forces. Individuals who diverge even in the slightest degree from the stereotype of the defector that is permitted by South Korean society must either conceal the fact that they are from North Korea or transform themselves into that stereotype.

South Korean society does not allow people from North Korea to exhibit a variety of orientations or behaviors. The only role it gives them is as people who have escaped from North Korea - no more, and no less.

Not long ago, when a young defector pointed out on a television program that people live in North Korea just like anywhere else, that defector was subject to withering criticism.

In cyberspace - the site not only of personal insults but of character assassination - defectors who refuse to be submissive are easy targets for hatred. In order to avoid getting into trouble of this sort, defectors need only adhere closely to the defector stereotype.

Shin Dong-hyuk, the subject of the book “Escape from Camp 14,” is a successful example of such a transformation. The role he was given was to prove just how horrible of a place North Korea is.

But when questions were raised about the veracity of his account, many people who were on his side turned their backs on him. Not even the progressives bothered to wonder why he would have felt compelled to embellish his experiences as he did.

Now that Shin is no longer a reliable witness, he has been cast aside as useless. No one can be found who considers or cares about Shin Dong-hyuk the person.

And now the story is repeating itself. This time, the issue is groups of defectors that have been hired to take part in demonstrations. The Korea Parent Federation was implicated in suspicious money transfers, and it turns out that some of this money was given to defector groups.

To be sure, the fact that large numbers of defectors were hired to join in demonstrations in support of political positions is enough to arouse indignation. But a closer look shows that South Korean society is excited not so much about the fact that demonstrators were being paid as about the fact that the demonstrators being paid were defectors.

Needless to say, the reason for this excitement depends on people’s political outlook. People in one camp are worried that this scandal will put a dent in the superiority of South Korean society of which the defectors have been proof positive; people in the other camp are delighted that their opponents’ dependence on “lying defectors” has inflicted a mortal blow on their moral position.

A few people who are more reflective than the rest say that naive defectors were taken advantage of by unscrupulous groups. Others are sympathetic to the defectors, saying that their economic hardship gave them little choice but to join the demonstrations. But even those who view the defectors with pity treat them not as people the same as you or me but rather as being somehow subhuman.

None of these groups try to seriously examine the reasons why defectors are pushed to behave like this or their position in South Korean society. These groups are only thinking about how this scandal will help or hurt their own political agenda.

Minorities who are most concerned about their survival have an animal instinct for their own position and limitations. Did the defectors really only join in the demonstrations for money? Or were they perhaps better aware than anyone that the only role they are permitted to play is that of opposing the North Korean regime and calling for the elimination of pro-North Korea forces?

The place where these defectors confirmed their existential value, if only for a moment, was a demonstration that right-wing organizations had spent lots of money to arrange, a fact that is very suggestive.

Since South Korean society has failed to let defectors assume other names and play other roles, none of us are free from responsibility for this incident. Since we failed to stand by their side, we are all complicit in making them protestors for hire.

By Kim Sung-kyung, professor at the University of North Korean Studies

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