Disability Experiences: Living with Disability in North Korea

a timely article to share from The Guardian 

Defector Ji Seong-ho lost his left hand and foot during the famine of the 1990s. Here, he describes life after the accident and why he felt he had to escape

North Koreans bow to bronze statues of North Korea’s late founder Kim Il-sung and late leader Kim Jong-il at Mansudae in Pyongyang in December 2014. Photograph: Kyodo/Reuters

The Guardian | by Ji Seong-ho | Dec 2014

I left North Korea in 2006 because I was in search of freedom. In more simple terms, I wanted to be treated as a human. 

On 7 March 1996 I had my accident and lost two limbs. I was 13 years-old. This was during the economic problems [and subsequent famine] in North Korea, so I wasn’t as well-developed as I should have been. It was a hard time to eat and survive. In 1995, my grandmother starved to death.

I should have been in school, but I was outside trying to find food. I would take coal and try to exchange it in the markets for food every seven or eight days. Back in 1996, there was a long time that I had nothing to eat. While I was riding the train to [try to steal some] coal, I lost consciousness. When I regained consciousness, I found that I had fallen through a gap between train carriages.

The train passed over me. I lost my limbs [left hand and foot]. It hurt so much. I was screaming so much that the sound would [have been] like watching an action movie in the cinema. Nobody helped. I went to the hospital. There, I received surgery without anaesthetic because they didn’t have it. The surgery took 4.5 hours.

I [had been] gathering coal with my mother and sister when the accident happened. My mother still remembers the screams – it was hard for her to process it.

Ji Seong-hoPhotograph: EAHRNK

My father was a member of the [ruling North Korean Worker’s] Party. Even though he would go to work, there would be no food to eat. When my father came to see me after the accident happened, he finally realised that it was more important to save his family rather than the party.

My mother still remembers the screams – it was hard for her to process it

There were times I blamed my father [for my injuries] because I had to find coal. He often apologised to me. My father felt guilty towards me, but I felt guilty about my father because he died later. I realised [in time] that it wasn’t my father’s fault, but the fault of the North Korean regime for not taking care of people.

North Korea is already a society where everybody is trying to eat and survive on their own, so they don’t really care whether you are disabled or not. That’s just how it was. There aren’t any groups that focus on or cater to the disabled community. There was no help from the government. 

My treatment lasted for around 10 months, but there was no follow-up rehabilitation. I would have infections. My father would try to treat them at home. He would gather grass and things to sell at the market to get medicine or antibiotics.

North Korea is already a society where everybody is trying to eat and survive on their own, so they don’t really care whether you are disabled or not

I didn’t have any friends with disabilities. There weren’t wheelchairs. There weren’t any prosthetics. My greatest wish when I was in North Korea was to be able to walk again.

When I left North Korea the first time, I had gone across the border [to China] in search of food. I crossed through the mountains using my crutches. When I returned I was arrested and tortured by North Korean authorities. They took my crutches away. I didn’t know why I was being tortured. The reason was obviously that for anyone who leaves North Korea, they deface the image of the North Korean regime. Because [the authorities] know of citizens using cameras to film, they are afraid of that footage getting out.

That was when I realised that this was a land I never wanted to stay in. I wanted to move to a land where I could be treated as a human, whether that was South Korea or somewhere else. That’s why I defected in 2006.

The most well-known way of defecting is crossing over the Tumen River [that divides North Korea and China] and into the mountains. That’s how I left.

In North Korea, you are born in to whatever situation you find yourself in. There’s not much room to change it. Even in South Korea, not many people know about this issue of disability rights. But with the recent UN findings on the rest of the human rights abuses in North Korea, the international community has heard a lot more about it.

In North Korea, you are born in to whatever situation you find yourself in. There’s not much room to change it

Obviously the human rights situation in North Korea is dire to begin with. So for disability rights... it’s worse. North Korea is trying to cover up [the way it treats people with disabilities]. They asked one person to compete at the 2012 Paralympics, but it’s not true to how they actually treat the disabled community.

Ji Seong-ho was originally from Hoeryong City, North Hamgyeong Province, in North Korea. He is 32 years-old and now lives in Seoul, where he is a law student at Dongguk University, and president of Now Action and Unity for Human Rights (NAUH).

Interview by Michael Glendinning of the European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea (EAHRNK). Translation by Joanna Hong.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/30/-sp-living-with-disability-north-korea