Korea: crossing the divide: teen defectors from North Korea face a difficult transition to life in South Korea.

• Author: Sang-hun, Choe
• Position: INTERNATIONAL - Citizens' Alliance for North Korean Human Rights

When 14-year-old Ju Jin-ho arrived in South Korea in 2006, it was as if he had landed on another planet, not just the southern half of the Korean Peninsula.

Even though the defector from North Korea was placed in a school with students a year or two younger, most of his classmates were a head taller. They teased him as a "Red," or Communist, and were far ahead of him in subjects like math. He was desperate to make friends but had trouble communicating.

"During class breaks, they talked about nothing but computer games," says Ju, now 17. "I started playing them so I could join their conversations."

Now, however, Ju is participating in a program that seeks to overcome the cultural gap that has developed between the people of communist North Korea and capitalist and democratic South Korea. It brings together teenage South Koreans and North Korean defectors in an effort to promote understanding, and prepare for possible reunification after more than six decades of division.

(Korea was split at the end of World War II in 1945, a division that hardened when North and South fought a brutal war from 1950-53. For more background, see Times Past, p. 24.)

Just how far the two sides have drifted apart--and how radically different people's experiences have been--was apparent when Park Sung-eun, a 16-year-old South Korean, met Ju through the program in Seoul, South Korea's capital.

"When I asked him, 'How do you get here?' I expected him to say by bus or subway," Park says. Instead, she recalls, "He gave me the whole story of his journey from North Korea through China and Myanmar," which can take years.

The program was started last year by the Reverend Benjamin H. Yoon, head of the Citizens' Alliance for North Korean Human Rights.

"Although we share the same genes, South and North Koreans live like completely different peoples, with different accents, different ways of thinking and behaving," says Yoon. "We forgot that before Korea was divided, we lived in the same country, marrying each other."

Yoon's program brings together students from Kyunggi Girls' High School in Seoul with young North Korean defectors. They attend concerts and cook together. The North Koreans show the Southerners how to harvest yams and make scarecrows. The Southerners give the Northerners tips on how to succeed socially as well as academically.

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