Korea Times
Andrei Lankov
3/5/2007
When future historians analyze the history of North Korea in the 1990s and early 2000s, what will they see as the most important events of that era (likely to be remembered as the “demise of Kim Il-sung’s socialism’’)? I do not think that future works of historians will spend too many pages (or megabytes) describing the never-ending soap opera of the “nuclear crisis.’’ Perhaps, some still unknown clashes in the North Korean palaces will deserve attention. But much more important will be the social changes in North Korea and, among other things, the near collapse of border control on the northern frontiers of the country. This collapse has opened the North to foreign influences and international exchanges of all kinds.
It is a bit of an overstatement to say that the North Korean border with China is now “open.’’ It is not open in the same sense as, say, the border between the Canada and U.S., let alone borders between the West European states. But it is porous to the extreme, and this situation is quite new.
For decades, cooperation between the DPRK and Chinese authorities ensured that defectors stood little chance of gaining asylum across the border. Sooner or later a defector would be arrested by the Chinese police and sent back to the North where he or she would be prominently sent to a prison camp forthwith. Everybody, including aspiring defectors, was clear on this point.
But this system collapsed about ten years ago, and the adjacent areas of China were soon flooded with North Korean refugees whose numbers in the late 1990s reached some 200,000 (now the numbers are much lower).
Nowadays crossing the border is not too difficult or dangerous. In the late 1990s, the people who crossed the border every night could be counted in the hundreds. Most of them were refugees fleeing the destitution and hunger of their Korean villages. Others were smugglers, engaged in the somewhat risky but profitable business of moving valuable merchandise across the border. And yet others were engaged in more unusual activities.
There are professional matchmakers, for example. While ethnic Korean girls from the Chinese North-East try, and sometimes succeed, in marrying South Koreans, the girls from the North would not mind having a Chinese husband, normally _ but not always _ of Korean ethnicity. China, with its abundant food supply, appears a veritable dreamland for them.
Such marriages are quite common: according to one study, in 1998 some 52% of all North Korean refugees (overwhelmingly women) were living with their local spouses. In most cases such marriages are arranged via Chinese (Han or ethnic Korean) brokers, and sometimes these brokers contact girls and their families while they are still in North Korea. If the girls are interested in the idea, the matchmaker or his/her agent crosses the border and then escorts the would-be bride to her new place of residence.
Most of the “husbands’’ are people who, for a variety of reasons, have had difficultly in finding a wife by more orthodox methods: widowers with children, habitual drunkards, the handicapped. In many North Eastern villages the mass migration of young women to the booming cities has resulted in a bridal shortage, such that North Korean wives are in high demand.
Of course, being illegal aliens, North Korean wives face a risk of deportation, and there are problems with children born of such unions. Nonetheless, a bit of caution, and a hefty bribe, can often solve some of the problems, ensuring the much-coveted registration for a baby and buying the local constable’s willingness to look elsewhere.
Another business is getting people from the North to China and, ultimately, to South Korea. Nowadays, there is large and growing community of North Korean refugees in Seoul. Many of these people save every cent to get their families in from North Korea. When they have enough money, they pay the brokers who arrange the escape. A few thousand dollars will be enough to ensure that a professional agent will cross into North Korea, locate the person and escort him/her across the border. $10,000 is the payment for getting a resident of Pyongyang, but for closer areas the fees are lower. Then, an additional payment will be necessary to get the person to Seoul (this costs between another $2,000 and $9,000, depending on various factors).
And there are money transfers, both from the North Korean refugees doing well in China, and from South Korea. Money has to be sent in cash, through reliable couriers (and there are many ways to confirm that the transfer has been delivered).
Take, for example, the case of Ms. Lim, a 31 year old refugee, happily married to a Chinese man and engaged in running a small business (the story was recently described by the Daily NK, a South Korean web-based newspaper). Twice a year Ms. Lim sends about $400 to her parents in the North. Being a retired officer of an elite unit, and a devoted supporter of the regime, her father initially refused to accept any money from the “daughter who had betrayed the country,’’ but he changed his mind. Nowadays, these transfers keep the family alive and even prosperous by North Korean standards.
I also assume that some of the people who cross the border have far more important tasks than delivering a few hundred dollars from a loyal daughter. The area is perhaps a hotbed of spying activities of all kinds. But those are other stories, not to be told in full in the next fifty years…
