زندگی پس از تابه و آتش: افسردگی، سفارش، پیوست، و میراث سوء رفتار میان جوانان کره شمالی و کودکان پناهنده نوجوان پناهندگان کره شمالی

Given previous research on depression, history of physical abuse, family order, attachment, and parenting, we hypothesized that the physical abuse–depression relationship would be moderated by (a) family order and (b) attachment, and that (c) attachment and family order would interact significantly in predicting depression. Hypotheses were tested in South Korea in a random cluster sample of 82 youth aged 15–25 who were either themselves North Korean refugees (n = 39) or who were born to North Korean refugee mothers in China (n = 43). A qualitative interview was used to shed further light on the findings. Family order appears to be a protective factor against depression in that more order is associated with a weakened past abuse–depression relationship.

An unthinkable, heartrending refugee crisis lurks behind the media hysteria around nuclear weapons and Kim Jong Eun's haircut. Among the crimes against humanity perpetrated against those who would defect from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) are “extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence” (UN COI, 14 pp.). As in the darkest moments of the 19th and 20th centuries an underground railroad evacuating some of the most oppressed people on earth now stretches across a large swath of the globe. Today that railroad, staffed by an incongruous but heroic band of human rights activists, Christians, and professional brokers, is in East Asia (Kirkpatrick, 2012). Its passengers are mainly women and children. Many of the children were born in North Korea but increasingly the passengers on the ‘Seoul Train’ (Butterworth, 2004) are children born in China. They come occasionally from voluntary relationships between North Korean women and Korean Chinese or Han Chinese men but most frequently they result from coerced unions when North Korean women are trafficked into slavery in China. In China North Koreans are forcibly sent back to North Korea if caught and the government offers rewards for turning them in (CRS, 2007). Human trafficking flourishes in the shadow of DPRK crimes against humanity because escape by victims is punished not by a pimp or ‘husband’ but by the systematically dehumanizing and frequently lethal policies of two states. Between 80 and 90% of North Koreans in China wind up being trafficked (CRS Report, 2007). This rate may be higher among women given the highly skewed gender ratio in rural China (Zhang, Attane, & Yang, 2009). Fear of detection induces PTSD-like symptoms in North Korean refugees hiding in China (Chang, Haggard, & Noland, 2008) and trafficked women with children face a devil's choice. If their illegal status becomes known do they flee with their children via the underground railroad (which poses great risk to all), or do they flee alone, leaving their children in dubious safety with the fathers? The wrong choice can have lethal consequences for the child. When North Korean women choose to flee with their children and the railroad operators succeed in helping them the children, both Chinese born and North Korea born, are likely to wind up in South Korea where they are considered citizens under the constitution (Tanaka, 2008). Apart from harrowing tales of survival little is known about these children. North Korea born refugee youth are at higher risk for current physical abuse (Kim, Choi, & Chae, 2012) and are on average shorter and thinner than their South Korean counterparts (Choi, Park, & Joung, 2010). They have serious emotional and behavioral problems and their mental health difficulties are thought to stem from traumatic experiences, long defection duration, and an as yet short period of adaptation (Lee, 2013). As a group North Korean refugees are at high risk for PTSD (Kim et al., 2012b and Suh, 2006), depression (Cho et al., 2005, Han, 2001 and Song, 2005), and stress due to the difficulty of adaptation (Kim, 2004). The pressing question facing those at the Seoul terminus is: how serious are the consequences of these harrowing experiences and what might buffer these children from aftershocks? This paper examines family order (Emery, Thapa, Do, & Chan, 2014) and attachment to parents (Bowlby, 1982 and Styron and Janoff-Bulman, 1997) as potential factors that may mitigate the impact of abuse on depression in a sample of 82 North Korean refugee youth in Seoul. The quantitative material is supplemented with results from a qualitative interview conducted with one of the youth surveyed.

How did you defect? My mother came first. I came with my father. Because we were betting with our lives we decided to pay a broker. How is your parents’ relationship? When we were in North Korea we just thought about how to survive. We couldn’t think about anything except that the family needs to eat. Now since we have come to South Korea, we have rights and freedom, it seems like they don’t like to talk, like they were just together because of me. Most North Korean men just feel a strong responsibility to feed the family, they only think about the family and money. So they can’t really treat women well. Then women say ‘South Korean men treat women well, why don’t you? That's what women say. There are a lot of people who escape to South Korea only to commit suicide. Grown up men. If you come here to a new society and then you lose your family, well then you’ve lost everything, haven’t you? It is clear from the narrative that difficulties do not cease upon arrival in South Korea. Cultural differences as well as patterns that were adaptive in North Korea but are not necessarily so in the South can be difficult to overcome. This young man's parents have since divorced. Not least among the difficulties facing those families that do succeed in defecting together are the legacy of sexual assaults frequently endured by female family members during the defection process. Did anything bad happen to your mom or your dad during the defection? When I hear such things I don’t worry about it. People who have so many difficulties don’t have time to worry about such things. Our life is difficult and we don’t have the leisure to think about things like that. We lived well in North Korea. Our house was 50 pyong. [1 pyong is 3.3 square meters. A 50 pyong apartment is considered quite large in South Korea.] The field was 30 pyong. Fruit trees. My grandfather had the second largest holding in the village. South Korean society is very conservative, with a tendency to blame victims of sexual assault. Hence North Korean women tend to be extremely reserved about what they endured in China. This would appear to apply to their children as well. The raw mean for the CES-D depression scale in this sample (mean = 1.1, sd = .45) is significantly higher (t = 2.09, p < .05) than the mean for South Korean high school students (mean = .96, sd = .58) ( Kim & Hong, 2013). Descriptive statistics for the quantitative sample are reported in Table 1. As indicated in the measures section, depression is standardized to have mean zero and standard deviation one. There were no significant differences in the level of depression or family order for those youth born in North Korea versus those born in China. The lifetime experience of severe physical abuse among youth born in North Korea was strikingly high. Of youth born in North Korea 53% had experienced severe abuse by parents at some point during their childhood. Breaking down the rates by item 39% of North Korea born youth had been beaten with hard objects like sticks, belts or brushes on some part of the body other than the bottom, 39% had been pushed or shaken, 30% had been punched or kicked, 24% had been beaten up, 16% had been choked, 11% had been intentionally scalded with hot water or otherwise burned, 13% had been threatened with a knife of scissors, 13% had been knocked unconscious, 37% had had bruises as a result of punishment, 32% had been injured as a result of punishment, and 18% had needed to see the doctor as a result of punishment by their parents. North Korean children live in a very violent world. Did your parents believe in the whip of love? [A Korean expression very similar in meaning and use to ‘spare the rod and spoil the child.’] In North Korea both my mom and dad beat me severely. When we had a fire they would beat me with firewood, immediately after I misbehaved. I even lost consciousness once. Dad just said he was going to kill me. There's a proverb: ‘the more precious your child, the more you must use the stick.’ That's about the size of it. Violence appears to be prevalent both inside and outside the home. In North Korea, people also die in gang fights. Or if they don’t die they get sent to prison. You can think of that as almost dying. Still, if the case isn’t too serious you can get out of it by giving them a bribe. Really when I see people fighting here [in South Korea] they look like kids. Up there, you just start throwing stones if you feel like it. It's barbaric. People take revenge. I had to pay for damages. You can’t do anything because you’re afraid of revenge. Even young kids are organized. They move in packs of more than 100. I’m not kidding. They have their territory; they can’t go into another gang's territory. They’re beaten or stabbed till they’re almost dead. They carry 7 cm knives. Usually if the knife doesn’t go in more than 7 cm you don’t die. The violence of the gangs is inextricably bound up with the violence of the security apparatus. It's turning into all out war. There's no answer. It's the law of the jungle. Even the police can’t touch them. And the police are in on it. The captains are members, jerks with money, jerks with connections, jerks who are good at fighting, they all flock together. Loyalty is no joke. People fight seriously, about 100 people will rush out to fight if a fight breaks out. Everybody fights together, one or two people have to die for it to stop. Also if you die they give you a lot of money. They pay for your funeral and give rice to your family. It's almost impossible to study at school, but some kids still do it. I myself once pretended to get knocked out because I was afraid I would get killed. I’m afraid of dying, but when I reach the point when I think I’m really going to die, I stop being afraid and I feel like killing someone. I worry about reunification because those kids in gangs are extremely violent. There are also many drug gangs. Table 1. Sample descriptive statistics. Variable North Korea born China born Difference N Mean Standard deviation N Mean Standard deviation T/χ2 Depression 39 −0.02 0.82 43 0.01 1.14 0.12 Family Order 38 2.70 0.68 43 2.84 0.65 0.97 Any Severe Abuse 38 0.53 0.51 43 0.30 0.46 4.22* Total Severe Abuse 38 2.74 3.72 43 2.23 5.20 −0.50 Attachment 35 2.15 0.92 43 2.58 0.81 2.21* Mom Trafficked (Proxy) 39 0.00 0.00 43 0.79 0.41 0.00*** Years in South Korea 39 2.90 1.83 42 1.88 1.77 −2.54* Age 38 20.47 3.55 43 15.88 1.48 −7.74*** Female 39 0.59 0.50 43 0.49 0.51 0.85 Both Biological Parents 39 0.23 0.43 43 0.42 0.50 7.97 Bio Dad and Stepmom 39 0.08 0.27 43 0.02 0.15 Bio Mom and Stepdad 39 0.18 0.39 43 0.21 0.41 Only Dad 39 0.03 0.16 43 0.02 0.15 Only Mom 39 0.10 0.31 43 0.16 0.37 None of the above 39 0.38 0.49 43 0.16 0.37 Low SES 39 0.54 0.51 43 0.09 0.29 22.77*** Middle SES 39 0.41 0.50 43 0.72 0.45 High SES 39 0.05 0.22 43 0.19 0.39 * p < .05. *** p < .001. Table options These experiences are different from those children of refugees who are born in China, among whom 30% had experienced severe abuse by parents. This is significantly lower than among those born in North Korea (χ2 = 4.2, df = 1, p < .05). Among those born in China 30% had been beaten with hard objects like sticks, belts or brushes on some part of the body other than the bottom, 19% had been pushed or shaken, 19% had been punched or kicked, 19% had been beaten up, 12% had been choked, 9% had been intentionally scalded with hot water or otherwise burned, 9% had been threatened with a knife of scissors, 9% had been knocked unconscious, 21% had had bruises as a result of punishment, 21% had been injured as a result of punishment, and 14% had needed to see the doctor as a result of punishment by their parents or caregivers. These rates are high but not as high as in the North Korean born group. Life changes drastically for defectors hiding in China, but fear remains constant. Why did you leave North Korea? Basically we were ok but my mother had to go to try to help a family member in China. My dad was a member of the communist party, but my mom got caught going to China and my dad got interrogated. So he got kicked out of the party and had no more hope to rise. He would just have to spend the rest of his life as a farmer. So my dad got annoyed and said let's go. …. In China I couldn’t go out or go to school at all. I just had to stay in the broker's house. I watched South Korean dramas 24 hours a day. Heaven's Stairs. That one is really awesome. Snow Queen too. Were you in any danger when you escaped from China? When we were crossing we heard the border guards shooting. Thank goodness we survived. These types of traumatic experiences appear to have an impact on the relationships the youth have with their parents. Attachment to parents was significantly higher in the group born in China (t = 2.21, p < .05). In addition to exposure to less abuse and having no experience of the violent environment in North Korea the youth born in China are different in other ways. They have been in South Korea on average 1 year less than those from North Korea (t = 2.54, p < .05) and they are 4.6 years younger (t = 7.74, p < .001). Current SES is also significantly different between the two groups (χ2 = 22.8, df = 4, p < .001). Only 9% of youth born in China report having low current socio-economic status, but 54% of youth born in North Korea report low current SES. Youth born in China are also three times more likely to report high current SES (18.6%) than youth born in North Korea (5.1%). We also measured height (not shown in the descriptive statistics). When age differences are held constant so that like is compared to like, youth born in China are on average 5.1 cm taller than youth born in North Korea (t = 2.04, p < .05). There are no other significant differences. Among China born youth nearly 80% had mothers who we estimate were trafficked but this is because we use nation of birth to create the proxy variable. There were more girls in the North Korea born group (59%) but more boys in the China born group (51%). For the North Korea born group the most common family structure is alone or not with any parents (38.5%) but this is uncommon for China born youth (16%). A substantial number of youth born in China are living with both biological parents (42%) but this is relatively uncommon for North Korea born youth (23%). The other most common experiences are living with the biological mother and a new father (18% among the North Korea born and 21% among the China born), and living alone with their mom (10% of North Korea born and 16% of China born). Bivariate relationships between depression and the two independent variables of interest were both either significant or marginally significant and in the predicted direction. Family order was marginally associated with less depression (B = −.30, Z = 1.79, p < .10). Attachment to parents was associated with significantly less depression (B = −.33, Z = 2.57, p = .01). Table 2 shows the findings for the full random effects regression model. Because the interaction terms predicted by Hypothesis 2 and Hypothesis 3 were not significant they are not shown in the table. Controlling for other variables in the model the interaction between attachment and severe physical abuse was not significant (B = .02, Z = .37, p = .71). Similarly, the interaction between attachment and order was not significant (B = .14, Z = .76, p = .45). Hence, only the interaction term predicted by Hypothesis 1 was significantly different from zero (B = −.14, Z = 2.01, p < .05) and in the predicted direction. Higher levels of order were associated with smaller impact of the legacy of severe abuse on depression. Current attachment to parents is also negatively associated with depression (B = −.33, Z = 2.01, p < .05). The main effect of severe abuse is positively associated with depression (B = .40, Z = 2.21, p < .05). The other predictors in the model are not significant, with the exception of living with the biological mother and a new father, which is marginally associated with more depression (B = .59, Z = 1.81, p < .10). Table 2. Explaining depression. Variable Full model (n = 628, 85) B SE B Family Order .18 .22 Total Severe Abuse .40* .18 Order × Total Severe Abuse −.14* .07 Attachment −.33* .16 Mom Trafficked (Proxy) .28 .31 Years in South Korea −.02 .07 Age −.03 .05 Female .18 .25 Bio Dad and Stepmom .09 .57 Bio Mom and Stepdad .59 .32 Only Dad −.33 .75 Only Mom −.13 .37 None of the above −.54 .42 Middle SES −.33 .29 High SES −.76 1.19 Notes: Coefficients followed by standard errors. * p < .05.