MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
When North Koreans defect to South Korea, the law instantly welcomes them as citizens. Society, however, can be a different story. Some defectors feel like strangers in their new home, but NPR's Se Eun Gong reports on schools that are trying to change that.
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UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: (Singing in Korean).
SE EUN GONG, BYLINE: Students start their morning assembly by singing the national anthem. Yeomyung School is an alternative school for teenage defectors and children of defectors. There are five such schools across South Korea, and among them, Yeomyung is the only one in Seoul. About a hundred middle and high schoolers study here.
KANG: (Speaking Korean).
GONG: Kang is a 10th-grader who likes playing sports and writing poetry. His family fled to the south 14 years ago when he was 2 years old. Kang asked that NPR only identify him by his family name because he is concerned about retaliation against his relatives in North Korea. It's his fourth year at Yeomyung School. Before coming here, he went to regular schools.
KANG: (Through interpreter) When my classmates learned I was from North Korea, they started treating me differently, and they shut me out in subtle ways.
GONG: Whenever North Korea came on the news...
KANG: (Through interpreter) Kids would tease me, trying to get me to say certain things.
GONG: Like swearing at the leader, Kim Jong Un, as if to prove his allegiance to the south. Here, he says, he can forget where he's from. But this summer, Kang and his classmates' background suddenly became the focus of attention when the school revealed a plan to build its own home at its current location, where it's a tenant.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting in Korean).
GONG: Some residents pushed back, chanting we oppose, at a community briefing.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Speaking Korean).
GONG: They said the sites should be used for their children, not defectors. This isn't the first time the school faced local residents' opposition. The school already had to withdraw its plan for a new building in 2019 in a different district. Vice Principal Hwang Heui-gun remembers the comments back then were more openly discriminatory.
HWANG HEUI-GUN: (Through interpreter) I heard residents saying at a hearing that their kids will be in danger if defectors come to their neighborhood.
GONG: While some older data suggested a higher crime rate among defectors, a 2019 government study found the rate was not meaningfully higher than that of the general population. Thirty-eight-year-old Ahn Ji-hyun (ph) says she's still concerned. She lives across the street from the school.
AHN JI-HYUN: (Through interpreter) North Korea itself is unpredictable. And it makes no sense that people who grew up with brainwashing education there can be safe.
GONG: She doesn't know any defectors personally, but the school feels like a threat to her safety, she says. Similar comments popped up on the student Kang's social media feed.
KANG: (Through interpreter) I was very hurt. I realized that's how I can be seen by some people.
GONG: Close to 35,000 North Korean defectors live in South Korea. But after nearly 80 years of living under different systems, many find that crossing the border doesn't automatically mean fitting in. Last year, a survey by Seoul National University found that fewer than 30% of South Koreans felt friendly toward defectors. Kim Young-ho is a researcher at the university.
KIM YOUNG-HO: (Through interpreter) People are comfortable with defectors in theory. They're less comfortable when they become neighbors.
GONG: He says the perception tends to get warmer when more people want reunification, as defectors can contribute to social integration in a unified Korea.
KIM: (Through interpreter) But that's far in the future. They're not seen as contributors to my life right now.
GONG: At Yeomyung School, students have spent years imagining what a permanent home might look like.
HWANG: (Speaking Korean).
GONG: Vice Principal Hwang asked students to draw their ideal school on a mural in the central hall.
HWANG: (Through interpreter) We didn't have a schoolyard at the time, so students described the school with a schoolyard, some nature and a river nearby.
GONG: The school used retail spaces for classrooms before moving into a closed elementary school three years ago. Today, it's next to the Han River, complete with a schoolyard.
HWANG: (Through interpreter) So we were quite moved when we got to come here.
GONG: The students finally got the school they once imagined. Feeling fully accepted beyond its walls, though, may take longer.
Se Eun Gong, NPR News, Seoul. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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