Time Travelers: North Korean Defectors Resettling in South Korea
To reach freedom, North Korean defectors typically brave a perilous 3,000 mile journey through China and Southeast Asia. But even after finally reaching safety, they face a long road ahead as they begin their new lives.
The majority of North Korean refugees have resettled in South Korea. Many describe the transition like stepping out of a time machine, 50 years into the future. In addition to learning about things like the internet and ATMs, getting used to their newfound freedom alone can be a lot to grasp after decades of living in the world’s most authoritarian country.
A new journey, one of restoration, discovery, and adjustment, begins.
Resettlement Process
When North Korean refugees first reach South Korea, they go through a thorough debrief process with the National Intelligence Service to verify their background. From there, the Hanawon Settlement Support Center helps them ease into modern South Korean society.
Every defector must complete a three month adjustment program, which covers:
- Basic skills, like how to open a bank account and use the Internet
- Job and vocational training
- Field trips to shops, food courts, and other businesses
- The social and cultural differences between North and South Korea
- The history of the Korean peninsula
After completing the program, refugees receive government benefits to begin their new lives, including an initial subsidy, housing support, and healthcare.
South Korean Culture Shock
Emerging from Hanawon, North Korean refugees often experience culture shock when they find themselves fully immersed in South Korean society.
One of the first things many notice is the abundance of greenery and trees compared to North Korea. While the entire Korean peninsula was severely deforested by the mid-20th century, South Korea is one of the world’s few reforestation success stories.
Many defectors are also surprised by how safe South Korea is. One person can manage a big market stall on their own and not worry about theft, whereas goods have to be closely guarded at North Korea’s Jangmadangs. Other new experiences include the widespread availability of clothing and existence of vending machines and mannequins.
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New Challenges
While the South Korean government provides material support, many North Korean refugees still face challenges starting over in a very different society. Just navigating daily life can be difficult at first, and making longer-term decisions like what to study or finding a stable job can be even more overwhelming.
“When I first arrived in South Korea, I was confused and didn’t know where to even start my new life in freedom. I wasn’t even sure who I was as a person.”
– Geumju, escaped North Korea in 2008
At school, additional study may be needed to catch up with their South Korean peers after decades of propaganda-based learning. In the workforce, many refugees have to retrain and re-qualify for the same jobs they had in the North, such as doctors and teachers. These discrepancies have contributed to an income gap between North and South Koreans in South Korea’s hyper competitive society.
In addition to figuring out the future, many refugees are still coping with physical and mental health issues from a traumatic past. A lack of healthcare in North Korea often results in decades of unaddressed medical and dental problems. Roughly 50% of North Korean refugees also suffer from PTSD. Many had to leave loved ones behind, witnessed or experienced torture, or survived trafficking, which can be tough to process.
Finding Community & Onward
Forming new relationships in South Korea can be one of the biggest challenges for defectors. In North Korea, lack of mobility and aspects of life organized by the regime meant that everyone in a neighborhood knew each other. To meet up with someone, it was commonplace to just stop by their home. In comparison, South Korea’s decentralized “yaksok” (promise) culture of scheduling a time and place to meet specific people may feel unfamiliar and take extra effort.
Refugees may also not want to reveal that they’re from North Korea or can have trouble sharing past experiences. Some may also experience prejudice against North Koreans for their accent or stereotypes, such as being uneducated or untrustworthy.
Overall, although life in freedom brings many advantages and benefits, it comes with some unexpected challenges. Before their escape, North Koreans may have only heard good things or focused on the positives. Moving to a foreign place and building a new life from scratch is difficult for anyone, and can be especially challenging for North Korean refugees.
Impact of the Pandemic
During the pandemic, refugee numbers have been at an all time low. Unprecedented restrictions on movement and surveillance have made the journey through China and Southeast Asia almost impossible.
On the resettlement side, refugees have also struggled as some support programs were scaled back or cut altogether. Many have felt especially lonely during this time or found it difficult to work towards their goals.
Agents of Change
Despite all odds, North Korean refugees are some of the most powerful examples of human resilience. When they have the support they need to successfully resettle in freedom, they can become some of the most effective agents of change on this issue.
Defectors are embracing and taking pride in their identity, sharing their stories on the global stage as YouTubers, entrepreneurs, and advocates. When they reclaim the narrative on North Koreans, they directly challenge the regime’s portrayal of their country.
North Korean refugees also have the unique opportunity to affect change inside North Korea through remittances. Many maintain contact with their home communities and send money back to their families, helping people inside and accelerating change at the ground level.
The Support of a Movement
Reaching freedom is just the first step. LiNK is dedicated to working with North Korean refugees to help build their capacity and realize their full potential in their new lives! We do this by:
- Organizing workshops for entrepreneurship, advocacy, and more
- Facilitating a 1:1 English tutoring program
- Sponsoring scholarships for North Korean students pursuing higher education
- Providing a community of ongoing support and resources
“I’m touched by LiNK’s supporters. I can feel their genuine heart. Before I learned more about LiNK, I just thought that I came out through a rescue network. I never imagined that so many people have been rooting for us and that it’s a bigger movement than just rescues. Now that I know all of you helped us with kind hearts, I want to succeed and do good things for others in South Korea.”
– Yuna, escaped through LiNK’s networks and resettled in 2021
We’re only able to provide this crucial support with your help. Donate today to keep these programs running.
The Most Dangerous Contraband in North Korea Isn’t a Weapon. It’s a Wish.
By: Jihyun Kang
Growing up in North Korea, Jihyun took inspiration from the smuggled South Korean dramas she watched to create her own unique clothing. After reaching freedom in 2010, she has continued to pursue her interests in fashion and culture as a catalyst for change. She runs several business ventures, practices fine art under the name “Da Gyeol,” and works with the Ministry of Unification as an advisor. She’s pursuing her Masters in Entrepreneurship, Dept. of Future Science & Technology Business, at Korea University.
I grew up in North Korea, and at fifteen, I encountered a Westerner for the first time at the top of Mount Paektu. He stood over 190 centimeters tall with a thick beard, wearing ripped jeans and a frayed T-shirt. In North Korea, worn-out clothing was a symbol of deprivation. Yet my father whispered, "He is wearing that for style." With that single remark, the worldview I had been taught, began, the first time, to crack. And I thought: I want to dress like that, too.
Fashion is more than clothing. It is the moment when individual desire moves faster than collective command. People follow taste before ideology, and express themselves through what they wear long before any political declaration.
A state can enforce a dress code, but it cannot manufacture desire. That is why North Korea's fear of blue jeans was not irrational—it was the regime recognizing, however dimly, that something it could not control was already growing.
Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School, argued that transformation always begins at the margins—in forms so crude and insignificant that those in power dismiss them entirely. Christensen built his theory around corporations, but the logic applies to any system that holds a monopoly over its people, including a state. North Korea's regime was so focused on maintaining ideological control at the centre that it ignored what was happening at the bottom.
That bottom was the jangmadang—the spontaneous, bottom-up market ecosystem created by ordinary people to survive after the collapse of North Korea's state-led distribution system. When that system imploded during the Arduous March—a famine in the mid-1990s that killed hundreds of thousands—people built informal markets out of sheer necessity: not revolution, not ideology, but survival. Yet by 2018, a CSIS study found 436 officially recognized markets operating across the country. What began as a desperate improvisation had quietly become the infrastructure keeping North Koreans alive.
These markets did not merely sell food. They became conduits for Chinese clothing, USB drives loaded with South Korean dramas, and glimpses of a world no one had taught them existed. When a system ignores what people actually want, the market finds the gap.
The act of choosing—what to eat, what to wear, what to watch—may seem trivial. But a person who has tasted choice cannot fully return to obedience.
The jangmadang was the first place where North Koreans learned they could survive without the state. That desire did not stay underground—it surfaced. People began wearing jeans, dyeing their hair, and pulling on T-shirts printed with foreign letters. The regime could no longer ignore it. Authorities branded jeans and Western fashion as 'anti-socialist infiltrations' and deployed street patrols. Teenagers caught in these sweeps were sent to re-education camps; in severe cases, their names and home addresses were read aloud on state broadcasts as public shaming (Radio Free Asia).
In 2024, state-run Korean Central Television went so far as to blur the jeans worn by British TV presenter Alan Titchmarsh during a broadcast. The ruling party's official newspaper, the Rodong Sinmun, warned that a country could 'become vulnerable and eventually collapse like a damp wall' if it failed to preserve its own way of life (Newsweek, May 2021).
Regulations cannot extinguish human desire; they only raise the price of the forbidden. This is the inflection point Christensen identified: by the time an incumbent recognizes the threat, it is already too late.
To date, more than 34,000 North Koreans have resettled in South Korea (South Korean Ministry of Unification, 2024). At the start of each of those journeys, there was something like my pair of jeans—not ideology, but desire; not a declaration, but a taste; not revolution, but the market.
No government in history has ever successfully suppressed the human impulse to trade, to choose, to want more. Not the Soviet Union. Not Cuba. Not Mao's China. North Korea will not be the exception.
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Jihyun is a participant of the LiNK English Language Program (LELP), which serves to not only help North Korean defectors build confidence and skills in English, but develop their capacity as advocates for this issue. To that end, we partnered with select LELP “columnists” to write and polish personal essays through multiple rounds of external feedback and revision. Our goal is to have more North Koreans share their stories directly and lead efforts to change the narrative.
We believe the North Korean people can achieve their liberty in our lifetime.
Opportunities like LELP invest in the people building that future now. Help more North Koreans find their voice, reach their goals, and lead change on this issue.
