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From Springer Nature via Jisc Publications Router ; History: received 2020-01-12, accepted 2020-06-02, registration 2020-06-03, pub-electronic 2020-06-29, online 2020-06-29, collection 2020-12 ; Publication status: Published ; Funder: Korea Institute for National Unification; Grant(s): N/A ; Abstract: Background: To gain insights into the socio-economic and political determinants of ill health and access to healthcare in North Korea. Methods: A retrospective survey using respondent-driven sampling conducted in 2014–15 among 383 North Korean refugees newly resettling in South Korea, asking about experiences of illness and utilization of healthcare while in North Korea, analyzed according to measures of political, economic and human rights indicators. Results: Although the Public Health Act claims that North Korea provides the comprehensive free care system, respondents reported high levels of unmet need and, among those obtaining care, widespread informal expenditure. Of the respondents, 55.1% (95%CI, 47.7–63.7%) had received healthcare for the most recent illness episode. High informal costs (53.8%, 95%CI, 45.1–60.8%) and a lack of medicines (39.5%, 95%CI, 33.3–47.1%) were reported as major healthcare barriers resulting in extensive self-medication with narcotic analgesics (53.7%, 95%CI, 45.7–61.2%). In multivariate logistic regressions, party membership was associated with better access to healthcare (Adjusted OR (AOR) = 2.34, 95%CI, 1.31–4.18), but household income (AOR = 0.40, 95%CI 0.21–0.78) and informal market activity (AOR = 0.29, 95%CIs 0.15–0.50) with reduced access. Respondents who could not enjoy political and economic rights were substantially more likely to report illness and extremely reduced access to care, even with life-threatening conditions. Conclusions: There are large disparities in health and access to healthcare in North Korea, associated with political and economic inequalities. The scope to use these findings to bring about change is limited but they can inform international agencies and humanitarian organizations working in this unique setting.

Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defectors. North Korea is one of the most troubled societies on earth. The country's 24 million people live under a violent dictatorship led by a single family, which relentlessly pursues the development of nuclear arms, which periodically incites risky military clashes with the larger, richer, liberal South, and which forces each and every person to play a role in the "theater state" even as it pays little more than lip service to the wellbeing of the overwhelming majority. With this deeply anachronistic system eventually failed in the 1990s, it triggered a famine that decimated the countryside and obliterated the lives of many hundreds of thousands of people. However, it also changed life forever for those who survived. A lawless form of marketization came to replace the iron rice bowl of work in state companies, and the Orwellian mind control of the Korean Workers' Party was replaced for many by dreams of trade and profit. A new North Korea Society was born from the horrors of the era one that is more susceptible to outside information than ever before with the advent of k-pop and video-carrying USB sticks. This is the North Korean society that is described in this book. In seven fascinating chapters the authors explore what life is actually like in modern North Korea today for the ordinary "man and woman on the street." They interview experts and tap a broad variety of sources to bring a startling new insider's view of North Korean society from members of Pyongyang's ruling families to defectors from different periods and regions, to diplomats and NGOs with years of experience in the country, to cross-border traders from neighboring China, and textual accounts appearing in English, Korean and Chinese sources. The resulting stories reveal the horror as well as the innovation and humor which abound in this fascinating country

This article attempts to examine an issue regarding the reintegration of disengaged Al-Shabaab combatants in Somalia. Nowadays, some countries have undergone current generation disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR), known as third-generation DDR; in the Somali context, although DDR is designed to disengage and rehabilitate defectors of Al-Shabaab for their reintegration into society, in practice, its implementation is not preceded by conventional approaches to conventional DDR, and it has suffered from various problems and contradictions. Previous research and information on the subject are extremely limited, due to a severe security situation. Accordingly, the author conducted interviews in Somalia in 2016 and 2019 with disengaged combatants and community members, to examine conditions necessary for good reintegration. The findings of the interviews revealed a gap in understanding between ex-combatants and members of the community, which significantly undermines the prospect of successful reintegration. A detailed analysis of the findings firstly shows that two problems exist regarding rehabilitation: a lack of knowledge, and an absence of accountability and transparency; secondly, further associated problems, such as severe unemployment, unstable security, financial difficulty, and distrust of the current government, which has devastating consequences for reintegration.

A review of studies on the adaptation problems of North Korean defectors in South Korean society and studies of people's adaptation to political and cultural changes in other countries suggests that similar adaptation problems may occur in the process of and after unification. Defectors have various adaptation problems and some of them have psychiatric disorders such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The reasons for this were revealed to be the difference in the culture and personality between South and North Korea, which have developed for the last 60 years without any communication with each other, in spite of their common racial and cultural heritage. Economic factors including the lack of skills and knowledge for working at industrialized and competitive society like South Korean society, also aggravate the severity of such adaptation problems. Research on defectors' adaptation problems and on the differences in the culture and mentality between North and South Korea can provide useful information on what kinds of problems may arise during the process of and after unification and what should be done to achieve mutual adaptation and harmonious and peaceful unification. ; open

APPROVED ; This thesis deals with the relationship between North Korean defectors and the South Korean Protestant churches in light of Emmanuel Levinas' philosophy. North Korean defectors who stay in the South experience significant otherisation and polarisation in their engagement with the Korean Protestant churches. The Protestant churches, as the second-largest resource provider to the defectors after the government, actively welcome them. However, the churches approach the defectors to achieve a missional agendum, particularly to convert them to Christianity, and use them as anti-communist activists. Intentionally or unintentionally, the churches create a hierarchical relationship where the beneficiary is at the mercy of the benefactor churches, and this inevitably leads to the seizing of the defectors into the logic of the churches. This thesis examines how defectors are exposed to otherisation and polarisation through the churches' attitudes, particularly hospitality. Through an interdisciplinary approach, the thesis reveals that the defectors are situated in the church-centric relation. To survive in the South, the defectors are forced to erase their own unique subjectivity and assimilate into the dominant narrative of the South. In addition, the churches achieve their politicised missional agenda by utilising the defectors as a propaganda tool. The churches, as the powerful subject, treat the defectors from the church-centred perspective that subjects them to ontological violence. This thesis also explores how the churches can transform their attitudes towards the defectors in order to avoid otherising and polarising them. Levinas' philosophical idea of hospitality is suggested as a way to overcome the limitations of church-centric hospitality. Levinas' hospitality which is based on Other-centredness seeks to establish an ethical relation that welcomes the alterity and otherness of the Other and takes responsibility for the Other's needs. Following Levinas' idea, the churches' authentic hospitality lies not only in welcoming the defectors' subjectivity but also participating in the political struggle to emancipate the defectors from the gaze of abhorrence and the oppressive social structure of the South.

The purpose of this study is to explore the adaptation experiences of North Korean youth defectors as consumers in South Korea. Collecting data from in-depth, face-to-face interviews, this study examined how seventeen North Korean youth defectors aged 19–26 years felt about their daily life as consumers. Qualitative content analysis revealed that the main sources of difficulties that the young defectors experienced while living in a consumer society had to do with their disillusionment with the "Korean dream," unfamiliarity with the market environment, perceptions of discrimination, confusion with the consumer culture, and the pressure to keep up with their South Korean peers. Based on these findings, the study identified the challenges that interfere with North Korean defectors' successful adaptation as consumers and proposed some practical implications.

Abstract
South Korean women are less favourable towards open admission policies for North Korean defectors, less supportive of assistance to defectors, and less willing to integrate with defectors than are South Korean men. Such a gender gap contradicts the findings of studies on refugee attitudes in Western countries. This article proposes two distinct explanations for the gap: 1. intra-gender competition induced by a gendered labour market and gender-imbalanced defector inflows and 2. gendered outgroup attitudes where women show greater anxiety and aversion towards an unfamiliar outgroup than do men. The explanations are tested using annually repeated cross-sectional survey data (2007–18). I find more consistent support for the gendered outgroup attitude explanation. Whilst South Koreans of both genders increasingly see the two Koreas as socio-culturally distinct, such perceptions of otherness are more strongly linked to negative defector attitudes among South Korean women. I also provide first-cut evidence that knowledge of North Korean society and politics mitigates the outgroup anxiety and, in turn, can mitigate the gender gap in defector attitudes. These findings hold implications for defector and refugee policies in South Korea and other refugee host countries in the region.

During the Cold War defectors were invariably paraded as propaganda trophies. The wider political significance of defections has hitherto been interrogated almost exclusively in an East–West binary. Utilising recently declassified documents from three continents, attention is focused on the elided role played by the developing world in the Cold War asylum story and, specifically, that of non-aligned India. By reinterpreting international responses to three Soviet defections that occurred in India in the 1960s, new light is shed upon political asylum as a source of North–South tension and discord.