As North Korean refugees enter the US at a snail’s pace, it’s interesting to hear about the few dozen refugees already here. While it is not a walk in a park living in the states, it is much better than the alternatives

Washington D.C. — Among the 31 refugees who fled to the U.S. in May 2006 and March 2007, around 14 gathered in one place for the first time since their emigration at the 1st North Korea Refugees Residing in the U.S. meeting and retreat held in Washington D.C. from the 18th to the 20th and sponsored by “Durihana Missions Church USA.”

“Learning English and saving money takes up all of my time,” replied Kang Hwa Soon (born in Hamheung, entry in 2006), who is dressed as well as any South Korean and American female college student, to the question of “How is life in the U.S.?”

Ms. Kang, who said she is residing with her defected mother in a small college town in New York state, works as a waitress in a Korean restaurant making 8 dollars hourly. She has also worked in a store owned by a fellow South Korean, but moved to an American restaurant thinking she would learn English more quickly this way. Perhaps as a result, her level of conversation in English was at a surprisingly high level. She had no difficulty conversing with an American pastor.

Lee Eun Joo (female, pseudonym), who was seated adjacent to her, belongs to the “two-job holder” category. Ms. Lee, who lives in Chicago, entered the U.S. as a part of the 2nd group of defectors in 2007. She said, “Initially, I lived three months in the home of a fellow South Korean resident in the U.S., to whom I was introduced, for three months. I bought a car and rented a small room with three months’ worth of savings. I can only sleep four hours, but I do not take notice of my hardship, because I make as much as how much I put into work.”

Saving money? Now there’s a foreign concept.

Note to South Korea, see how this works?

TORONTO - A humanitarian aid worker from Edmonton who was detained in North Korea for nearly three months is free.

A spokesman for Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Helena Guergis told The Canadian Press Monday that Je Yell Kim was deported to China on Saturday.

Jeffrey Kroeker said Kim was met at the Chinese border by Canadian consular officials who were working to reunite him with his family.

Kroeker also thanked North Korean authorities for allowing Canadian consular officials to visit Kim on two separate occasions.

Jess Dutton, a counsellor at Canada’s embassy in Seoul, told The Associated Press that Kim has been reunited with his family, but declined to comment on his current location, citing their request for privacy.

Kim, who is in his 50’s, has spent several years working in a poor area of North Korea where foreign aid workers are normally welcome.

Good for Canada to be concerned about the fate of its citizens (probably because there aren’t that many of them). I do not think they even had to threaten anyone.

SEOUL: North Korea suffered the world’s largest number of deaths from natural disasters over the past decade, the International Red Cross said in a new report on Tuesday.

A total of 458,435 people died in disasters that hit North Korea from 1997 to 2006, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said in its World Disasters Report 2007.

The figure accounts for about 38 per cent of some 1.2 million deaths from natural disasters reported worldwide during the period, the report said.

The figure was more than double the number in Indonesia where 181,977 people died. Pakistan and Sri Lanka ranked third and fourth.

While it is true that no person can control nature, how they cope with it makes a huge difference in lives lost. A flood in North Korea has a greater impact than a flood in the Midwest. The biggest natural disaster by far is the 2004 tsunami which impacted Indonesia the most and yet casualties are dwarfed by the floods and the subsequent famine that struck North Korea. By being poorly prepared before disaster and isolating itself after the fact, North Korea caused further casualties as a a result.