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By Beatrice Pavia
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| North Korea’s
massive famine spurred Byung-ho
Chung, a South Korean cultural
anthropologist, to initiate
relief efforts and establish
schools to help North Korean
refugees adjust to 21st century
life. |
Byung-ho Chung,
AM ’83 LAS, PHD ’92
LAS, is a quiet man who planned
a quiet life creating day-care centers
for children in need.
He was so easygoing and encouraging
in his mission to establish child
care in his native South Korea that
his school staff dubbed him “Director
‘No Problem.”’
But in 1995, that all changed when
a devastating famine struck the
isolated sister state of North Korea.
Suddenly Chung, a cultural anthropologist,
found himself crossing the border
to bring not only supplies but letters
of friendship to the afflicted North
Koreans.
“I happened to see the picture
of literally dying children, like
suffering children who were malnutritioned,
and they exactly looked like the
children I took care of at that
time at the [child-care] center,”
Chung said. “So I just couldn’t
hold myself to just sort of doing
the ‘Director “No Problem”’
role, he said – not once he
became aware of similar children
who were experiencing “life-and-death
type of desperate human rights conditions.”
A handsome man with a gentle face,
the 51-year-old Chung exudes patience
and vision, charisma and leadership.
He may apologize for his command
of English, but Chung, who has been
involved in child care since his
undergraduate days, clearly conveys
a sense of trust and optimism. His
soft voice tenses when speaking
of children in need, and he becomes
nearly poetic when describing his
involvement with young North Korean
refugees and his pain as he learned
of their harrowing experiences.
Chung, who studied anthropology
at the University of Illinois, was
already well-known for establishing
the first cooperative and permissive
child-care centers in his country.
But in the late 1990s he found himself
on the edge of another pioneering
front – documenting the effects
of the devastated society that is
North Korea and coping with the
aftermath of crisis. The picture
of suffering children that caught
his eye spurred him to instigate
relief efforts, establish
a system of schools to acculturate
the refugees and prepare South Koreans
to view their northern brethren
not only as victims but as friends.
‘The
world’s largest prison camp’
When the nation of Korea split following
the Korean conflict of the early
1950s, the area – much like
the former North and South Vietnam
– developed a socialist-style
government in the north and a capitalist
one in the south.
While South Korea (the Republic
of Korea) raced to prosperity –
in 2005 its gross domestic product
ranked 10th in the world –
in North Korea “you just sense
somehow history frozen,” Chung
said.
Since its inception, North Korea
(the Democratic People’s Republic
of Korea) has been run by two cult-like
figures – its “Great
Leader” Kim Il Sung, and,
at present, his son, “Dear
Leader” Kim Jong Il. Using
methods such as limiting freedom
of movement by distributing food
rations at workplaces to holding
at present 200,000 political prisoners
in brutal labor camps, the government
maintains iron control over its
citizens. Human Rights Watch, the
largest human-rights organization
in the United States, has described
North Korea as “the world’s
largest prison camp,” adding,
“No country is more deserving
of international condemnation on
human rights.”
To defect from North Korea is
a capital offense. If caught in
China, the escapees are repatriated
to face torture, imprisonment and
possible execution in their own
country. Despite these grave risks,
they are fleeing by the hundreds
of thousands.
Chung, who has visited North Korea
several times, likens it to a “theater
state, like everything on the stage
is very dramatized … the whole
city is like a movie set.”
Uniformed police direct traffic
in the capital city of Pyongyang,
even when no traffic flows in the
streets. Chil-dren are reminded
that “We Are Happy”
by signs that say so in their kindergartens,
and the country’s youth are
taught the story of the “Great
Leader” not only word by word
but inflection by inflection, gesture
by gesture.
Behind the so-called movie set lie
grim realities. Although the country
of nearly 23 million people has
a rationing system and receives
international aid, foodstuffs go
mainly to party loyalists and the
military, leaving more than a third
of the country’s children
chronically malnourished. According
to a 2006 report, 400,000 people
have perished in labor camps over
the last 30 years. Between 1 million
to 3 million people died during
the record famine of the 1990s.
‘They
show what they want to show’
This is the society
to which Chung turned his efforts.
In 1996, he formed Okedongmu Children,
a South Korean organization that
raises funds for famine relief (the
group devised ingenious ways to
get around the South Korean ban
at the time on public fundraising
and raised $1 million in two years).
The name of the group – “oke”
(pronounced “OK”) means
shoulder and “dongmu”
friends – conjures images
of close pals standing shoulder-to-shoulder.
But in addition to referring to
friendship, the name refers to the
ravages of malnutrition –
in order to stand shoulder-to-shoulder,
children must be of fairly equal
height. Chung’s studies have
shown that a 7-year-old South Korean
child now stands 4.7 inches taller
on average than a 7-year-old North
Korean. That difference may eventually
reach nearly 8 inches, a devastatingly
measurable outcome of the malnutrition
of the North Korean people.
Chung first visited Pyongyang in
2000 as part of an Okedongmu delegation.
He observed some of the fruits of
the organization’s labors
– a soy milk factory and a
hospital that specializes in treating
children with diarrhea. He also
sat through public performances
and parades.
“They show what they want
to show,” Chung said of his
North Korean hosts, “but still
you sense problems. … When
you just hold [a child’s]
hand, their hand is cold, and their
faces show obvious malnutrition.
… So even though you smile
and share, you sense the problems
that society has.”
As a cultural anthropologist, Chung
sought to document what had happened
to North Korean society, but North
Korean officials thought differently.
“They are reluctant to give
too detailed information about the
children’s conditions there,”
he said.
So since 1999, he has gone directly
to the source – the refugees
themselves, many of whom escape
to China and hope to make their
way to South Korea. While dealing
with escapees in South Korea is
safe, working with them in China
re-mains very risky.
“I went to the [Chinese]-Korean
border to see escaping refugee children,”
he said, “to check the famine
problems, what causes, how much
they suffer.” He called what
he saw there “disastrous.”
“I was … nervous about
not being able to help them,”
said Chung, his voice still resonating
with pain at the memory. “I
had to leave them in the secret
shelters. … They just become
street children and hide under the
bridges and all [the] really difficult
conditions they have to survive.
“I have to leave them behind,
and I was very sad and feel really
sorry.”
The
agony of affluence
So Chung has gone about creating
resources. He established three
schools – Hanadul, Hannuri
and Evergreen – that help
North Koreans transition from a
repressive society to the advanced
pace of life in South Korea. Chung
also teaches a course on North Korean
culture at Hanyang University in
Ansan City, South Korea, where he
is a professor and directs its center
for multicultural studies.
While South Korea provides the
refugees with aid, a two-year stipend
and free or highly subsidized lifetime
housing, the North Koreans don’t
automatically blend into their new
life. Chung’s brother-in-law,
Gene-Woong Chung,
AM ’94 LAS, PHD ’98
LAS, is frank in describing the
difficulties. “Korea has been
a discriminatory culture dating
back hundreds of years to the late
Lee Dynasty,” he said. “Your
place in this society is determined
by money, status and appearance.
By comparison, these kids have nothing.”
 |
| North Korean
children scrounge for food as
a result of a devastating food
crisis that has killed an estimated
3 million North Koreans in the
past decade. |
Part of the attractive “appearance”
that some North Koreans lack is
due to the effect of malnutrition
on physical development. In addition
to a shorter stature, deprivation
has left many North Koreans with
larger heads and skin diseases.
“We live under the myth of
homogeneity, of oneness here in
Korea,” Byung-ho Chung said
in a 2003 New York Times interview,
“but these kinds of distinctive
physical markings are a scar. The
fear is that the scar will become
a social stigma affecting many generations
to come, then may take many more
to overcome.”
Hanadul School, which Chung initiated
in 2001, addresses this exact issue
in both name and purpose. “‘Hana’
means one, and ‘dul’
means two,” Chung explained.
“We are ethnically one but
culturally two. [This school emphasizes
that] you are OK to be different
… Try not to deny your past
or try not to hide your North Korean
identity. Being a North Korean in
South Korea is OK.”
Hanadul School is part of South
Korea’s Hanawon facility,
where refugees undergo a compulsory,
three-month cultural orientation
program. “We’ve been
separated for 60 years, and we happened
to realize … that we became
really different nations,”
he said. “By running a program
for those arriving refugee children
and adults, we are sort of experimenting
… [with an] educational program
that sort of reduces cultural conflict
and discrimination.”
Hannuri School, which Chung initiated
in 2003, functions like an after-school
tutoring program for children under
age 15; some North Korean teenagers,
placed in the South Korean school
system with younger students, may
find that up to two-thirds of the
material is new to them (in addition,
over the years the North Koreans
have developed a dialect). At Hannuri,
teens can also talk openly about
their experiences.
“[We] assumed that affluence
in South Korea and freedom and everything
is going to be good for them,”
Chung said of the refugees. “There
is that kind of initial euphoria,
but soon they suffer intense psychological
problems – the pressures of
competition and discrimination and
social class.” His point is
personified by the 2002 death of
a 19-year-old refugee who died in
a drunk-driving incident. “We
gave him everything as a capitalist
society,” Chung told The New
York Times, “and we made him
crazy.”
Evergreen School, co-founded in
2002 by Chung and his brother-in-law,
exists for these “fluttering
swallows,” teenagers who have
escaped from North Korea unaccompanied
by adults. These young people –
most of them male – come out
of a very difficult escape experience,
sleeping in caves and surviving
without the advice of adults. The
Evergreen School houses the “swallows”
until they are 20, providing a six-
to 12-month bridge between life
after Hannuri and the adult world.
When asked if the assimilation has
managed to be successful, though,
Chung’s response is immediate.
“Oh yeah, it does work,”
he said. “I have many youths,
it is really rewarding to see how
they change, how they become happy.
It’s not all that hard –
just challenging – but for
many people it works.”
Chung says there are more than
1,500 North Korean refugee children
in South Korea today who have gone
through Hannuri School. He manages
to stay in touch with many, some
of whom spend holidays with him
and his wife, Jean-Kyung
Chung, AM ’80 LAS,
PHD ’85 LAS, a psychologist,
who have no children of their own.
The
habit of doing good
When asked how he manages to handle
his challenging work, Chung looks
back to lessons learned in childhood
– “the habit I acquire
from my Boy Scout days,” he
replied.
“I was one of the youngest
Tiger [Eagle] Scouts, and I was
very serious in Boy Scouting when
I was little,” he said. “Like
a Boy Scout, … you plan, and
you design, and you practice something
good – and for what you don’t
know.
“You have to do something
good, you know, every day.”
Chung’s habit of planning
seems to give him the stamina needed
to continue working in a world darkened
by brutality and injustice. “I
have anger,” he said, “but
anger itself doesn’t help
much to the children.”
In addition to his work with refugee
relief efforts, Chung wants to help
prepare South Korea as it increasingly
develops into a multicultural society.
For that, he can get help from his
wife, who develops cultural understanding
programs. “Understanding differences,
that is going to be my topic,”
he said.
And that challenge doesn’t
seem to daunt him, either.
“I daydream a lot,”
he said. “Little by little,
… that big topic just becomes
very small.
“I want to find a hope and want to make the
hope, through a hopeful act.”
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