A group of nine North Koreans defected to South Korea by drifting southward in a motorless boat on June 11.

The group of three men, two women and four children slipped south of the Northern Limit Line that marks the edge of North Korean-controlled territory in the West (Yellow) Sea and made their way to U Island (우도, rhymes with “who”).

Over 20,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea over the past couple of decades and the rate of defection has been increasing as hope in North Korea’s future and central government control over outlying villages weakens.

Prison work camp in North Korea

Once these latest defectors have been processed and settled in to their new home, they will most likely start working any jobs they can to make money.

Joseph Cho, chief of research at the Police Science Institute, voiced concern over defectors’ apparent obsession over money:

Defectors are obsessed with the mistaken belief that they must make money at all costs in order to survive in a capitalist society. This is the wrong way to look at things, and it make their attempt to settle in South Korea that much more difficult.

Cho does have a point.  The social welfare system in capitalist South Korea takes better care of the poorest members of society than North Korea’s socialist system.  Additionally, if you are willing to work long and hard at jobs most South Koreans do not want to take, there is not shortage of work available (which is why South Korea hosts hundreds of thousands of migrants to work in its factories).

However, Cho’s concern does not consider several points*:

  1. Many defectors want to make money fast to help get relatives out of North Korea or from hiding in China.
  2. The majority of defectors were impoverished in North Korea.  Why wouldn’t they want to make money now that they are free to do so?
  3. The defectors were under the boot of government control in North Korea.  Why wouldn’t they want to make money in order to have more control of their lives?
  4. The previous generation of South Koreans helped lift the country out of poverty with the “mistaken belief” that they needed to work hard and make money.  It seems inelegant to denigrate that very tendency in South Korea’s new citizens who come from poverty at least as grinding that that which South Koreans faced in the 1950s and 1960s.

Once unification comes, Koreans from the north will need to work hard to help balance the nation’s development.  The desire to make money is the most natural motivation to achieve that end.

*Granted, the article only gives a short part of what may have been a much larger statement which may have been more nuanced.  However the thrust of the quote is still out of line.