scholarly journals Adaptation in South Korean Society of North Korean Elite Defectors

Studia Humana ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 62-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Levi
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Integration Policy ◽  
Major Research ◽  
The South ◽  
South Korean Government ◽  
Korean Society ◽  
South Korean ◽  
North Korean Defectors

Abstract This paper aims to explain the adaptation of North Korean elite defectors who fled from North Korea. Data used for the purpose of this article came from surveys of North Korean defectors conducted in the late 2000’s. Findings of the realized research indicate that the majority of senior defectors are experiencing less psychological and material issues when adjusting to society than regular North Korean defectors. The paper will proceed in three steps: explaining the notion of defectors, outlining their background, and focusing on their adaptation in South. Although defectors as a whole has emerged as of the most research group as a minority in South Korea, the so-called senior defectors have hardly been spotlighted. Basically North Korean senior defectors are supposed to strengthen the anti-Kim movement and legitimize the power of the South Korean government and the image of South Korea abroad. What has to be enlightened upon is the fact that North Korean senior defectors partially disagree with the integration policy of South Korean authorities. A major research question emerges: How are the experience of elite defectors localized in South Korea? How do their specific identities impact their opinion within the South Korean society? The aim of the article is also to categorize senior defectors and to provide in a single document a list of senior North Korea defectors based abroad. This kind of information is only available for Korean speaking readers. I wanted to make it accessible to the Englishspeaking community.

An improvement proposal: Protection and resettlement support act for North Korean defectors in order to propel social integration

2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (5) ◽  
pp. 665-680
Author(s):  
Min-jung Kim ◽  
Min-joo Kim ◽  
Jyung-soo Kim ◽  
Joon-ho Kim
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Social Integration ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
The South ◽  
South Korean Government ◽  
Korean Society ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Korean Government ◽  
North Korean Defectors ◽  
Remedial Actions

The purpose of this study is to critically examine how North Korean defectors adapt to South Korean society and how the South Korean government institutes policies to support their settlement in the perspective of social integration. In particular, economic and psychological support by the South Korean government will be analyzed among the current resettlement support policies. The aim of this study is also to suggest proper remedial actions for North Korean defectors based on empirical research on the actual conditions of North Korean defectors in South Korea.

scholarly journals Transitions and Time: Dissonance between Social and Political Aging in South Korea

2012 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-63
Author(s):  
Won Jee Cho ◽  
Denise Lewis
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
The South ◽  
South Korean Government ◽  
Korean Society ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Korean Government ◽  
Young Old ◽  
Old Age Benefits

This study explored multidimensional meanings related to “becoming old” for the young-old in South Korean society. Six persons aged 62 to 68 were interviewed in-depth. They chronologically, physically, and socially experienced the transition to old age at different times determined through “Hwan-Gap” (at age 60) and through current social policies that define entry into elderhood (at age 65). However, most did not psychologically accept their own aging as beginning at age 60 with “Hwan-Gap.” They reported that they were “forced” to become old at that time, even though they did not yet qualify for old age benefits provided by the South Korean government. In addition, they did not consider others’ perceptions of them as “old” as a psychological obstacle to defining themselves as young. Knowledge about young-old persons’ dissonance between their identities and sociopolitical views of entry into elderhood is important for understanding their experiences during the five-year gap between sociocultural entry into old age at age 60 and entry into the nationally defined elderhood at age 65.

Bitter Taste of Paradise: North Korean Refugees in South Korea

2006 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrei Lankov
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Social Adjustment ◽  
Bitter Taste ◽  
Korean Society ◽  
South Korean ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
North Korean Refugees ◽  
North Korean Defectors ◽  
To Come

This article deals with the problems of North Korean defectors currently living in South Korea. In the past, most such defectors came from privileged groups in the North Korean population, and their adjustment to the new environment did not pose a significant problem. However, from the mid-1990s, defectors began to come from the far less privileged groups. They experience serious problems related to jobs, education, crime, and social adjustment. Recent years have seen a dramatic but not always openly stated change in the official South Korean attitude toward defectors: from a policy explicitly aimed at encouraging defection, Seoul has moved to the policy of quietly discouraging it. There are fears that encouraging defection will undermine the policy of peaceful engagement with the North. There is also the perception that refugees are outsiders, not quite adjustable to the conditions of South Korean society and thus a social and budgetary burden.

Potential Risks of the Russia-North Korea-South Korea Gas Pipeline

Asian Survey ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 584-606 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yusin Lee
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Liquefied Natural Gas ◽  
Gas Pipeline ◽  
South Korean Government ◽  
Supply Disruptions ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Contingency Plans ◽  
Potential Risks ◽  
Gas Supply

This paper analyzes the potential risks of the Russia-North Korea-South Korea (RNS) gas pipeline, comparing it with the Russia-Ukraine-Europe (RUE) pipeline. I argue that the possibility of disputes is much higher in the RNS case. Furthermore, I propose that the South Korean government opt to import liquefied natural gas by ship directly from Russia if contingency plans in the case of gas supply disruptions in the RNS pipeline are not available.

scholarly journals SUNSHINE POLICY : KEBUNTUAN CONFIDENCE BUILDING MEASURES SEMENANJUNG KOREA PADA MASA KIM DAEJUNG- ROH MOOHYUN

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (01) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bayu Eko Yulianto
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
South Korea ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Regional Studies ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Political Will ◽  
South Korean Government ◽  
South Korean

This paper describes the ineffectiveness of South Korea�s confidence-building measures towards North Korea during the reign of Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun through the sunshine policy. The previous studies on the sunshine policy only discussed the efforts made by the South Korean government through the sunshine policy and America's influence on the implementation in general. The studies are divided into three major categories namely: domestic politics, political economy, and regional studies, but none has discussed the causes of the ineffectiveness of the sunshine policy. By using confidence-building measures as an analytical framework, this paper will explain the variables in confidence-building measures that cause sunshine policies to be ineffective. The main argument of this paper is that there are 2 factors that cause the sunshine policy to be ineffective, namely the influence of America and the absence of political will from North Korea to achieve the goal of confidence-building measures through sunshine policy.

The Ethical and Regulatory Problems in the Stem Cell Scandal

2007 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Han Aera
Keyword(s):  
Stem Cell ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
The South ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
South Korean Government ◽  
Korean Society ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Vulnerable Subjects ◽  
Regulatory Problems

AbstractThe recent stem cell scandal of fabrication of two papers published in Science by Dr. Hwang Woo Suk shocked the world and devastated the South Korean society. Investigations conducted by the South Korean government have revealed a variety of ethical and regulatory failures. In this paper, I first explain the South Korean regulatory background to research conducted on human subjects in general and on biotechnological research in particular, and then analyze the ethical and regulatory problems affecting the research for the two papers published in 2004 and 2005 by Dr. Hwang's team, respectively. These problems can be summarized as: 1) problems regarding egg donation (lack of informed consent and donation by vulnerable subjects), 2) ambiguous record-keeping of research funding, 3) insufficient reviews by the two local IRBs (an already established IRB and a newly established IRB, both deferred to the principal scientist's heavy-handed influence), 4) too close ties between the research team and government officials, and 5) the National Bioethics Committee's inertia and lack of impartiality.

scholarly journals A Comparative Study of Family-Friendly Policies and Benefits in Public Organizations: South Korea and the United States

2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Soonhee Kim
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Korea ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Organizations ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
The South ◽  
South Korean Government ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Korean Government ◽  
Family Friendly

This paper anlyzes the family-friendly policies and benefits currently offered by public organizations in South Korea and the United States. This study found that leaves of absence are the first types of family-friendly policy that reflect an acknowledgement on the part of government agencies in South Korea and the United States aht both men and women must face work/family conflicts in their lives. The South Korean government provides more generous leave policies than those of the American public sector. Hoewver, several family-friendly benefits provided by federal agencies in the United States, including flexible workplace and telecommuting programs, job sharing, and dependent care counseling and referral services were rarely offered by the South Korean government. Finally, the paper discussed policy implications and emphasizes managerial leadership affecting the implementation process behind these policies in public agencies.

“We contribute to the development of South Korea”: Bilingual womanhood and politics of bilingual policy in South Korea

Multilingua ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bong-Gi Sohn ◽  
Mia Kang
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
First Language ◽  
Diversity Management ◽  
Linguistic Capital ◽  
South Korean Government ◽  
Korean Society ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Systematic Training ◽  
Worker Identity ◽  
The One

AbstractGlobal flows of migration to South Korea bring a new challenge of how to negotiate the identities of migrants. Unlike other reported cases that reframe the value of migrants’ first language as part of contingent practices of diversity management, the South Korean government has responded to this challenge by explicitly reframing so-called damunhwa mothers (foreign women married to Korean men) as bilingual workers, imagining them as self-governed, autonomous workers whose linguistic capital can be mobilized for the betterment of South Korean society. The government’s adoption of linguistic entrepreneurship and ethnocentric nationalism becomes particularly salient in this process. This paper studies how four damunhwa mothers respond to this new bilingual worker identity as promoted in the bilingual policy texts. We examine the ways in which they negotiate their bilingual worker identities by echoing the government’s new linguistic nationalism and linguistic entrepreneurship on the one hand, and by problematizing the insecure job markets, stratified linguistic needs, lack of systematic training for bilingual instructors, and native Korean’s misunderstanding of their new roles on the other. Finally, we discuss the implications of Korea’s bilingual policy, elaborating on the significance of linguistic entrepreneurship in language policy planning and practice and calling for more reflective accounts of ecological and translingual policy implementation in Korea.

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