이기사는 10월19일자 뉴욕 타임스 기사의 내용입니다. 기아에 허덕이는 이북의 김정일 체제가 현찰로 부패해 가는, 그래서 서서히 철통같은 통치 체제가 좀먹어 들어가는, 그래서 죄없는 이북주민들의 목을 더 죄게 하는 서글픈 다른면을 보게 되는 비애를 봅니다. 현찰이 가능한 몇명의 주민들만이라도, 우선 이북을 탈출할수 있는, 부패의 구멍이 국경수비하는 군인과 당간부들에게 서서히 먹혀 들어가고 있는 좋은(?) 반증이기도 하고요. 그래서 궁극적으로는 김정일 체제가 무너져 내려 마침내 기아와 공포에 허덕이는 이북주민들의 해방되는 기쁨되는 그날이 머지않아 오기를 고대하는 간절한 마음으로 이기사를 옮깁니다. With Cash, Defectors Find North Korea's Cracks 현찰이면 김정일 체제도 무너지는것을 보게하는 증거. Richard Humphries/Polaris, for The New York Times A MOTHER'S DETERMINATION Kim Myung-shim, above, fled North Korea in 2003 and then helped her three children escape. The last to flee, Lee Chun-hak, is now in an immigration detention center in Bangkok, where his mother visited him. She said she paid $3,600 to aid his escape from the North. 2003년에 이북을 탈출하여 지금은 남한에서 살고 있는 김명심씨는 이북에 남아있던 3명의 자식들을 탈출시키는데 모든힘을 다했다. 마지막으로 이북을 탈출한 아들 이 전학은 지금 방콕에 있는 이민당국에 보호를 받고 있다. 그곳으로 그의 어머니가 방문한바 있고, 북한을 탈출시키는데 미화 3600 달러를 수고비로 지출했다고 밝혔다. By NORIMITSU ONISHI Published: October 19, 2006 BANGKOK -Last March, Lee Chun-hak, a 19-year-old North Korean, went to the Chinese border to meet with a North Korean money trafficker. Using the trafficker뭩 Chinese cellphone, Mr. Lee talked to his mother, who had defected to South Korea in 2003. She told him she was going to get him out. 방콕 - 19살의 이 전학은 중국과 북한의 국경지역으로 가서 중국 쪽의 밀매 조직을 만났다. 밀매조직의 휴대폰을 빌려,2003년도에 이남으로 탈출하여 남한에 살고 있는 그의 어머니와 통화했는데, 이북을 탈출시킬려고 모든 노력을 하고 있다고 그의 아들을,전화 통화에서, 안심 시켰다. 좀더 자세한 내용은 원문 기사를 더 읽어 보시면 좋겠읍니다. ON THE OTHER SIDE A statue commemorating the North Korea-China friendship in Tumen, China, along the river that many defectors cross. Mr. Lee missed his mother and his sister and brother, and he had a persistent, if half-formed, desire. 밒 wanted to go to a country that is more developed,?he said, 밻ven more developed than South Korea.? In June, a young North Korean man appeared suddenly at his home with a message: 밠other is looking for you.?The man then took him by bicycle and foot to the border and handed him over to a North Korean soldier. At the soldier뭩 direction, Mr. Lee was ordered to leave his identification card and his Kim Il-sung badge, which is worn by all North Koreans to honor the nation뭩 founder. The soldier then escorted Mr. Lee across the Tumen River, where on the other side two Chinese men in plainclothes handed the soldier his bribe. Mr. Lee was free to go. The increasing ease with which people are able to buy their way out of North Korea suggests that, beneath the images of goose-stepping soldiers in Pyongyang, the capital, the government뭩 still considerable ability to control its citizens is diminishing, according to North Korean defectors, brokers, South Korean Christian missionaries and other experts on the subject. Defectors with relatives outside the country are tapping into a sophisticated, underground network of human smugglers operating inside North and South Korea, China and Southeast Asia. Learning anything about such a secretive and unpredictable country as North Korea, which isolated itself further by carrying out a nuclear test on Oct. 9, is difficult. Scraps of information provided by defectors often prove unreliable, influenced as they can be by the organizations that shelter and support them while also championing political or religious causes. But snapshots of life inside the North, and a picture of this smuggling network, emerged from interviews with 20 North Koreans in Bangkok, as well as with brokers, Christian missionaries, government officials and people working in private organizations, in both Thailand and South Korea. The North Koreans in Bangkok were interviewed independently and had all recently arrived in Thailand. Pieced together, the accounts provide glimpses of a government that, while still a repressive police state, is progressively losing the paramount role it used to enjoy in society, before it found itself incapable of feeding its own people in the famine of the 1990뭩. The power of ideology appears to be waning in this nation of about 22.7 million as people have been left to scrounge for themselves, and as information has begun to seep in from the outside world. The effects of money and corruption appear to have grown sharply in recent years, as market liberalization has allowed ordinary people to run small businesses and has enabled people with connections to prosper in the booming trade with China. In a country whose borders were sealed until a decade ago, defectors once risked not only their own lives but those of the family members they left behind, who were often thrown into harsh prison camps as retribution. Today, state security is no longer the main obstacle to fleeing, according to defectors, North Korean brokers, South Korean Christian missionaries and other experts. Now, it is cash. 밠oney now trumps ideology for an increasing number of North Koreans, and that has allowed this underground railroad to flourish,?said Peter M. Beck, the Northeast Asia project director in Seoul, South Korea, of the International Crisis Group, which has extensively researched the subject in several Asian countries and is publishing a report. 밫he biggest barrier to leaving North Korea is just money. If you have enough money, you can get out quite easily. It speaks to the marketization of North Korea, especially since economic reforms were implemented in 2002. Anything can be bought in the North now.? 밫he state뭩 control is weakening at the periphery,?Mr. Beck said, explaining that most refugees came out of the North뭩 rural areas but few from around Pyongyang, where the state뭩 grip remained strong. During the North뭩 great famine in the mid- to late 1990뭩, a tide of 100,000 to 300,000 North Koreans is believed to have simply washed into China, and tens of thousands are still believed to be living there illegally, according to human rights organizations. These days, the number of refugees is believed to be much smaller, though there are few reliable figures. According to the South Korean government, of the 8,740 North Koreans who are known to have fled to the South since the end of the Korean War in 1953, nearly 7,000 arrived in the last four years alone. A 49-year-old broker in Seoul — nine of whose clients have arrived in Thailand recently — said she operated the same way, adding that those involved in the business in North Korea were Communist Party members. “You can do that kind of work — being able to travel freely inside North Korea — only if you’re a party member,” said the woman, who added that she earned $2,500 to $3,000 a month. The demand for this smuggling service has risen along with the increasing number of North Koreans living in South Korea. The North Koreans in the South pay to get their relatives out by working to pay for the fees, borrowing money or using resettlement money awarded to them by South Korea. One River, Many Hardships The case of Lee Chun-hak, the 19-year-old who fled the North on June 28, is a typical one. For the past two months, he has been in the Immigration Detention Center in Bangkok, where his mother, Kim Myung-shim, 46, visited him from Seoul the other day. Mrs. Kim fled to South Korea in 2003, remarried and began working to arrange the defection of Mr. Lee and her two other children, who lived with her former husband in a province bordering China. The three children were set to leave in late 2005. But before crossing the Tumen River into China, Mr. Lee balked — he did not want to leave his father and grandmother. His older sister and younger brother went ahead and, thanks to the $5,200 paid to brokers, were smuggled into Mongolia and arrived in South Korea last February. Mr. Lee returned to his everyday life, going to school and, like many others, earning a little money by working at a nearby gold mine. People farmed corn and beans in the area where the surrounding mountains have been stripped bare for firewood. The economy had improved in recent years, as the authorities allowed people to moonlight at places like the gold mine and to start small businesses. Local residents ate regularly, Mr. Lee said, though the portions were small. Still, he saw perhaps only two or three cars a day, and most people walked or rode bicycles. After a few months, his sister in Seoul persuaded him to leave. Mr. Lee was now an adult and would find it hard to keep living with his father, who had remarried, Mrs. Kim said. So on June 27, after his sister had made arrangements with a broker, the North Korean man picked Mr. Lee up in his hometown and took him by bicycle to a spot near the border, where he spent the night, he said. The next afternoon, they rode the bicycle and then walked to the Tumen River. Mr. Lee waded across, accompanied by the soldier. “As long as you pay the soldiers, you can cross,” Mrs. Kim said, adding that she had paid $3,600 to the brokers for her son’s escape — $1,000 for the North Korea leg and $2,600 for China. He found his way through China and Laos to Thailand where, following the advice of the brokers, he gave himself up to the authorities. Thailand does not repatriate North Korean refugees, incarcerating them instead while their cases are processed through the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Bangkok. The process takes about three to four months, after which the North Koreans are sent to South Korea, though the United States recently accepted nine North Korea refugees. Having learned that news in Bangkok, Mr. Lee said he no longer wanted to go to South Korea. “I want to go to the United States to study and become a scientist.” Doubts About an Ideology Many of the North Koreans interviewed in Thailand said they wanted to go to the United States, even though they were reared in a country that has demonized America for decades. In school in the North, one defector said, she had had been taught that Americans were “inhuman, promiscuous and dictatorial.” “Even today, I still sometimes refer to the United States as ‘Imperialist America,’ ” she said, laughing. But as a fourth grader, the woman said, she began to have doubts about that image of America, after she happened upon a photograph in a magazine. As she recalled, it showed a tightrope walker balanced on a wire between high-rise buildings in Washington. The implicit message was that the United States was such an inhumane country that it forced people to perform such jobs, she said. “But what I remembered about that photo was the tall buildings,” she said. “There was also a beautiful park and clean, wide streets. It was fascinating. There was nothing like that where I grew up.” North Korea still unleashes daily attacks against the United States through its official media, but the desire of many of the defectors interviewed to go to the United States suggests that the power of ideology is waning. “After spending a few months in China, they change their minds about the United States,” said a South Korean missionary who regularly visits the North Koreans at the detention center. “In China, they have access to so much information. They look at Web sites and exchange instant messages with people in South Korea.” Lee Chan, 36, who fled North Korea one year ago and entered Thailand in June, agreed that anti-American ideology was not as strong as it was in the past. “People’s perceptions of the United States have changed inside North Korea,” he said. “I’ll give you one example. If you’re caught watching an American movie, the authorities will just swear at you — nothing else.” In Bangkok, where South Korean Christian missionaries care for the defectors while trying to convert them, Lee Chun-hak’s mother, Mrs. Kim, was worried that her son had become too friendly with Mr. Lee, the defector who had emerged as a leader of the detainees. She was angry that her son had started smoking under Mr. Lee’s influence. “Please look after Chun-hak,” the mother said to Mr. Lee, adding that her son had birthmarks on his head and face that foretold a great future. “That’s why I’m sending him to America.” “Please guide my son,” she said, “even though he’s doing well alone.” Mr. Lee, showing her a pack of Marlboros, said, “He’s doing well — he doesn’t smoke expensive cigarettes like I do.” “Stop smoking!” the mother said. A missionary began praying for Lee Chun-hak. “Pray to God to send you to America,” the mother exhorted her son. 1 2 3