News of South Korea’s establishment of a “North Korean Defectors’ Day” has spread to North Korea. North Korean authorities have made no official comment or criticism on the matter, presumably because they believe the news itself could cause social unrest.
A resident of an area bordering China interviewed by Daily NK earlier this month expressed criticism of the situation in North Korea and admiration for South Korean society after hearing the news. “We are treated worse than animals here, but people who have gone to South Korea receive care and support in an incomparably better environment. I can only admire their good fortune.”
The individual further said that he “regrets not leaving for South Korea while I still could” and that “the next time the opportunity arises, I’m absolutely determined to take the risk and go.”
However, a North Korean party official with a strong sense of loyalty to the government had the exact opposite reaction, demonstrating a clear difference in perspective between party officials and ordinary people.
The official told Daily NK: “Isn’t holding an anniversary for those who left the country because of their anti-revolutionary ideology a suppression scheme against the DPRK aimed at destabilizing our society?”
He went on to say that “it makes no sense to set an anniversary for people who are not even independence fighters. Besides, the party recently announced that the reunification of the north and the south is impossible and ordered us not to think of South Koreans as the same people. If the public finds out that South Korea has put forward such a policy, it will become a dangerous ideological weapon to increase their admiration for South Korea.”
In fact, many North Koreans have reacted negatively to the decision at the party’s plenary meeting late last year to reframe inter-Korean relations as “hostile bilateral relations” and to remove all references to reunification and the concept of one people.
The party official, for his part, insisted that he was “loyal to the party.”