By Joanna Hosaniak and Michele Sonen | Project Leader and Staff
Over the years, Sungju has taken part in several programs run by the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR). Many of these programs are supported in part by the Learning Freedom Global Giving campaign. He was also a captain of NKHR’s L4 Soccer Team, which is made up of North Korean, South Korean, and foreign players. He recently graduated from Sogang University in Seoul, with a major in Political Science. With the help and initiative of our partner organization in Canada, HanVoice, Sungju was invited to participate in a special, 6-month internship program in Canada, where he is interning for a Member of the Canadian Parliament. With the generous support of Global Giving donors, Sungju was given a small scholarship in amount of $600 to assist with his living expenses.
Sungju was born in Pyongyang in 1987. Because his father had been a military officer under Kim Il Sung, Sungju lived an affluent life in his early life with an abundant amount of food and luxuries that other North Koreans classified as members of the “hostile” class never saw.
His family’s fate changed in 1994, when his father was purged and his family expelled from Pyongyang. Facing imminent starvation, Sungju’s parents crossed the river to China in search of food. When they never returned, Sungju starved until he finally went to see a friend to ask for food. That friend, who had already become a kkotjebi, or street child, taught Sungju how to survive on the street.
Sungju lived as a kkotjebi for four years. Often, he and his seven other kkotjebi friends slept in train stations. During winter, to stay warm, they looked for crowded areas in the station. During summer, they slept at the riverside or on the beach. Sungju and his friends feared death most of all. And because skipping one meal meant he was one step closer to death, he hated skipping meals more than anything. During those four years, Sungju lost two of his friends, whom he buried with his own hands. Kkotjebi, Sungju says, endure all their suffering for one reason: to see their parents again.
Four years later, while begging for food, Sungju was found and taken in by his grandfather, whom he had not heard from in years. Sungju’s father, who had successfully reached South Korea, had contacted Sungju’s grandfather and asked him to look everywhere for Sungju. Once Sungju was found, his father sent a broker to bring Sungju to South Korea.
When Sungju arrived in South Korea, many people told him that he was now a free man, that he had earned his freedom by coming to South Korea. But Sungju could not understand what “freedom” really meant. It was not something he had ever learned or experienced in North Korea. He tried very hard to grasp the concept, but despite his efforts, he realized that freedom was not something he could learn from a book, but something he would have to find within himself. Eventually, Sungju discovered that, to him, freedom was about choice. He recalls the day he understood when he went to buy a pen at a stationery store. When Sungju asked the clerk where he could find a pen, he was led to an aisle filled with hundreds of pens. He was shocked to see so many; in North Korea, there was only one kind of pen, and it was made by the government. Sungju spent the next three hours testing each pen, trying to distinguish the differences between all of them. Finally, when he left with the pen he liked most, Sungju finally understood that freedom was about making choices and decisions himself, instead of being made by the government.
His dream of a united Korea led Sungju to focus his academic studies on North Korean politics. After completing the internship in Canada, Sungju would like to continue his education and pursue a career in foreign affairs, with a focus on Korean unification.
Your continuous support is helping many North Korean young people like Sungju achieve their dreams, both big and small. As this year slowly comes to an end, the staff of NKHR and our students would like to thank our donors for a year of steadfast support.
By Michele Sonen & Joanna Hosaniak | Project Leaders
By Michele Sonen, Grace Nam and Joanna Hosaniak | Program officers and Global Giving Project Leader
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