A North Korean defector living in South Korea was detained on Tuesday after ramming a stolen bus into a barricade on a bridge near the heavily militarized border, in an apparent attempt to get back to the North, Yonhap news agency reported.
The incident took place at around 1:30 a.m. (16:30 GMT on Monday) at the Tongil Bridge in Paju, northwest of the capital Seoul, after the man ignored warnings from soldiers guarding the bridge and attempted to drive through, Yonhap said, citing city police.
Paju police referred queries on the incident to provincial police authorities. The northern Gyeonggi police agency could not be reached for comment.
The man aged in his 30s who had defected more than a decade ago told police that he was trying to return to North Korea after struggling to settle in the South, the report said.
I’ve never been to South Korea, but Seoul metropolitan area is said to be a hypercapitalistic hell-hole. The major employers are the chaebols, or the family-owned corporations including Samsung, Hyundai and LG. They have toxic work cultures but is tolerated because they are major employers in the country, especially in Seoul, where half of South Koreans live. Nearly everyone is overworked for little pay resulting in poor birth rate because everyone have little time to spend with partners and families (the South Korean government actually created a new administrative capital city, Sejong, as an experiment to address the declining birth rate, and it worked by and large experiencing probably the only and highest population growth in the country).
Moreover, many North Korean defectors are still seen with suspicion and discriminated. So they feel alienated like the man in the article. I guess the best bet for defectors is to work in Sejong as a government clerk, where they could get generous welfare and employment benefits and protections, unlike corporate-employed workers.
Edit: autocowreck
Why doesn’t everyone like move to Sejong, the alternative is no alternative at all it would seem, fuck that shit
Sejong is still a new city to be fair. Also, there is not much jobs there so far, except for civil servants. But the worst crime of all in creating that new city is that public transport is lacking! How could city planners have that oversight! There is more info from Caspian Report about the Sejong city.