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President George W. Bush signed the North Korean Human Rights Act in 2004. In recognition of the law’s tenth anniversary, the George W. Bush Institute has launched the Human Freedom initiative. Yesterday we discussed two polls of US public opinion toward North Korea. Today we examine a qualitative survey based on sixteen in-depth interviews with North Koreans who have resettled in the United States conducted between August and September 2014.
The majority of interviewees left the DPRK after 2000 and arrived in the United States as late as 2011; they make up a little less than 10 percent of the roughly 170 North Korean refugees in the United States who have arrived after 2004. Nine of the sixteen are male. Their ages range from 19 to 72 years old. Ten of the sixteen are from North Hamgyong province in the extreme northeast of North Korea, and left the country between 1985 and 2010. The authors of the report, which was prepared by Intermedia, are careful to note that this group is not necessarily representative of the whole universe of North Korean refugees in the US.
Each refugee’s story – how they left North Korea, why they came to the United States, and how they acclimated to life – is unique, but generally follow some broad narrative threads. While the study’s authors could not identify any particular demographic characteristics that predisposed the refugees to select the US over other locations, particularly South Korea, for permanent resettlement, they did observe that these individuals appeared to have “a relatively high tolerance for risk.” This conclusion would be consistent with results that Yoonok Chang, Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland obtained in an earlier, larger, survey which found that younger, more educated refugees tended to prefer the US, precisely because they had greater confidence in their ability to prosper in a non-Korean language environment. Similar to results presented in Witness to Transformation, this study finds that perceptions of bad songbun (political classification) amounted to a stacked deck and encouraged migration, as do economic motivations.
However, once they had made the decision to attempt to enter the US, the refugees typically had problematic experiences. While they praised the personal kindness of the American officials with whom they interacted, the whole asylum process was more protracted and uncertain than the equivalent procedures in South Korea. Some of the refugees reported companions who eventually grew frustrated by the American process and accepted asylum in South Korea.
Similarly, their experiences once in the US “varied substantially compared with experiences of those who had gone to South Korea, which were much more uniform and predictable.” A common complaint was that the need to make money and become financially independent short-circuited their ability to learn English to their long-run detriment. Another complaint related to transportation: many of the refugees ended up in towns and cities where access to a car is a practical necessity, but car ownership is beyond the financial means of most refugees. As a consequence of these challenges of language, transportation, and dealing with healthcare and officialdom more generally, most of the refugees are reliant on support networks formed by NGOs, and less formally, the broader Korean-American community, especially its churches. Again, the refugees frequently express ambivalence: while they are uniformly grateful for the support they receive, they would like to be more independent, and sometimes feel looked down upon by the broader Korean-American community.
Most interviewees express the dichotomy between gratitude for the opportunity to come to the United States, and the daily frustrations of adapting to a new life, culture, and language. There also appears to be wide inconsistency in the ease to which refugees find success in their new homes, and the quality and breadth of support infrastructure. Nonetheless, ethnic Korean communities in the United States have been a central component of refugee transitions. Interviewees express that language acquisition, aid in transportation and self-empowerment, and more assistance with healthcare and health insurance are key areas in which government and non-government groups can improve the lives of North Koreans living in the United States. Ironically, it was President George W. Bush, signer of the North Korean Human Rights Act, who infamously stated, when threatening to veto a children’s health care law, “People have access to health care in America, after all, you just go to an emergency room” and it has been Barack Obama, the president who succeeded George Bush, who has delivered the health care reforms that aid people in America like these North Korean refugees. But that is another argument for another day.
