North Korean technicians were spotted unloading large crates and heavy construction equipment from trains at Myothit, Magwe Division, in central Burma, where the nuclear reactor was believed to be under construction, diplomats told FEER. The diplomats also saw aircraft belonging to Air Koryo, North Korea’s national airline, landing at military airfields in central Burma.

The international community had already learned that Burma’s regime wanted a nuclear reactor, possibly for peaceful purposes. In 2000, the military government formed the Department of Atomic Energy under its Ministry of Science and Technology. After that, Burma asked the International Atomic Energy Agency to help it build a nuclear research reactor. The regime had also approached Russia and China to that end.

In 2002, Russia agreed to sell Burma a nuclear reactor for peaceful research purposes. Burma selected and sent hundreds of students to study nuclear engineering and science in Russia. Moscow was to provide aid for the reactor, but the arrangement reportedly died when Burma’s government could no longer fund it.

By 2003, FEER’s report said, North Korea had taken over from Russia as the source of Burma’s nuclear technology. At roughly the same time, Andrew Selth observed that 80 Burmese military personnel had departed for North Korea to study “nuclear and atomic energy technology.”

The reason Burma wanted a nuclear reactor was not clear. The Burmese junta denied any ambition to possess nuclear weapons. Analysts noted that the reactor could be used as a bargaining chip against the United States and its allies.

Since the junta assumed power in 1988, it has been criticized by Western countries, especially the United States, for its poor human rights record and its oppression of political dissents. Because of its alienation from the West, the military regime buys its advanced jet fighter-bombers, warships, tanks, small arms and ammunition from suppliers such as China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Israel and Eastern European countries.

North Korea and Burma have not had formal diplomatic ties since 1983, when Pyongyang sent a three-man team to assassinate then South Korean president Chun Doo Hwan while he was visiting Rangoon. A remote-controlled bomb planted by North Korean agents exploded prematurely and the President escaped. But the explosion killed seventeen South Korean officials–including four cabinet ministers–and four Burmese officials. Burmese police killed one North Korean intelligence officer and arrested two more after the attack.

A secret trade in conventional weapons appears to have begun in 1990, two years after Burma’s military staged its bloody coup and fell under arms embargos. According to Selth, Burma seems to have succeeded in buying 20 million rounds of 7.62mm AK-47 rifle ammunition from North Korea in 1990. Burma managed to purchase 16 130mm M-46 field guns in the late 1990s, Selth says. Jane’s Defense Weekly has reported that North Korea has been exporting weapons to Burma since 1998. Some reports claim the arms deals were arranged through Thai and Singaporean agents. Others suggest China brokered a missile deal between the two regimes.

Officials from North Korea and Burma have exchanged several visits despite the absence of formal diplomatic ties. In June 2001, North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Pak Gil-yon and visited Rangoon with an unofficial delegation. Later it was reported that a team of North Korean technicians arrived and started working at Rangoon. Burma’s military officials also made secret visits to Pyongyang.

As unofficial ties continued, North Korea reportedly sold surface-to-surface missiles to Burma. In July 2003, according to diplomatic sources, around 20 North Korean technicians were sighted at Burma’s main Monkey Point naval facility in Rangoon. They were believed to be installing missiles in patrol boats. Residents and diplomats in Rangoon said the North Korean technicians were staying at a Defence Ministry guesthouse in the capital.

Meanwhile, talks took place between Rangoon and Pyongyang over the purchase of one or two small submarines, and possibly even a number of short-range ballistic missiles. In August 2003, according to Selth, there were unconfirmed reports of a secret meeting in Rangoon over purchase of the submarines and missiles. The submarine sale seems to have been postponed. Even if a missile deal occurred, according to Selth, delivery would take some years.

The diplomats quoted by Far Eastern Economic Review suggested that Burma, said to be Southeast Asia’s largest producer of illicit drugs, was trading drugs for weapons. A senior US official said in 2003 that Burma’s regime had agreed to supply heroin to North Korea in exchange for missiles and nuclear technology.

The United States later warned the Burmese regime over its dealings with North Korea.

“The link-up of these two pariah states can only spell trouble,” said Senator Richard Lugar, Chairman of Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “North Korea's main export is dangerous weapons technology. These developments are the seeds of a major threat to Asian security and stability.”

The US State Department announced in March last year that it had registered an official complaint with the Burmese government over the rumored missile transfers from North Korea. Matthew Daley, deputy assistant secretary in the bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, confirmed the junta had been seeking a nuclear reactor but dismissed rumor the reactor was already being built as “not well-founded,” according to a Bloomberg report.

Otherwise, the story appears to have been forgotten.

The border decided by the agreement was still not secure in 1975, when a North Korean tunnel to Cheorwon was discovered. One of four known tunnels made by North Koreans sometime after 1953, its ostensible purpose was to transport thousands of troops quickly into South Korea in the event of future hostilities.

But remove man’s politics and weaponry from the DMZ and what you'll find is North Korea's beautiful rolling hills and rivers. On the South Korean side of the border in Cheorwon, the natural landscape has been obscured by a bounty of restaurants, homes and office buildings. It is a rural town of about 50,000 where visitors can leave their car engines running, step away for an ice cream break on a sweltering summer day and find their car waiting when they return half an hour later.

But as we approached the DMZ during a trip to Cheorwon in August, rolling along narrow rural roads outfitted with blockades hefty enough to prevent a tank invasion, the relaxed atmosphere disappeared. We were stopped by armed South Korean guards.

Make it past the sentries and you will sense the continuing collision of nature's beauty and man's capacity for destruction. From the Seungni Observatory at the center of the 150-mile DMZ, we saw pristine foliage layered with the wires and explosives that rig the entire 3-mile wide border. Land mines lurk beneath grassy fields. Barbed wired barriers keep majestic mountain ranges out of reach.

The DMZ is far from demilitarized, as many North Korea observers say. But what struck me most when I visited the DMZ in August 2005 is that Koreans in the north and south are both imprisoned--the North Koreans can't leave and the South Koreans can't enter.

This photo, posted on the abductee association’s website, shows South Korean fishermen on a group outing in North Korea in 1974. The men were identified as having been kidnapped during 1971-1972. One-third of the men in the photo are now believed to be dead, according to an abductee who escaped to South Korea in 2000.

Between 1955-1987, South Korea had its own version of a Bermuda Triangle near the 38th parallel, a place where ships and planes would mysteriously disappear. In this version, the vessels and their crews would reappear in North Korea after a few days, victims of abductions the North Korean government has become notorious for.

Over time, these abductees have slowly faded from memory, abandoned by a country that has the resources but not the will to bring them home.
Many were husbands, fathers and sons—some as young as 16—and many of them have not returned to their families despite the recent thaw in relations between the two Koreas.

Their story, for the most part, has been ignored, even when Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi met with North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il in 2002 and succeeded in securing the release of five Japanese abductees.

By far, the largest group of abductees was fishermen but there were also pilots and stewardesses, the crew of a navy communications ship, students, journalists and and diplomat. Abductions usually occurred in South Korean territory but kidnappings also happened in third countries, including Germany, Norway, Japan and Indonesia.

This tally does not include some 80,000 that were forcibly taken to the north during the Korean War. Nor does it include another 500 POWs who were prevented from returning to South Korea after the armistice in 1953.
For its part, the South Korean government insists that it is working continuously to “persuade” North Korea to resolve the issue, but no tangible progress has been made.

In contrast to the Japanese government, which has made the return of abductees the centerpiece in its negotiations with North Korea, South Korea has been reluctant to bring up the sensitive topic with the communist regime, concerned that it will alienate North Korea—which it has been ardently courting in recent years. In a 2005 white paper on inter-Korea relations published by the South Korean government, one out of a total of 254 pages was devoted to abductees.

The South Korean Red Cross, a main channel for inter-Korea communications, has posted only five statements about abductees on its website, the most recent one dating back to 2001. And Amnesty International, which has released several statements about the Japanese abductees, seems less vocal about the South Korean victims.

The fate of the abductees has been complicated by the fact that North Korea has so far denied their existence, despite photos and testimonies proving otherwise. Seoul has adopted an odd tactic to skirt Pyongyang’s denial by categorizing abductees and POWs as members of “separated families,” a term used to denote people separated during the Korean War. This way, the South Korean government claims, they will at least have a chance, albeit remote, to meet with families in South Korea via inter-Korea reunions held intermittently at North Korea’s whim.

“As a result of these efforts…a total of 19 families of abductees and POWs were able to meet, and the fates of 88 people were confirmed,” said the South Korean Ministry of Unification.

On the homepage of the abductee association, there is a long list of names of those who were abducted by North Korea. The list includes the circumstances under which they were kidnapped, their hometowns and their ages. It reads like a memorial paying tribute to those who were unwilling victims in a conflict that continued long after the last bullet was fired.

In the demilitarized zone separating South and North Korea, a bridge known as the Bridge of No Return, marks the site for the exchange of POWs in 1953. It is so named because once one crosses to the North Korean side, one cannot return. South Korean abductees have crossed that bridge without ever setting foot on it.

North Korean defectors play a unique role in outsiders’ understanding of what has since the 19th century been known as the Hermit Kingdom. They offer a rare glimpse into a country that most foreign journalists are unable to step foot in, much less have access to, making them one of the few first-hand recounts journalists can rely on. However, defector coverage – which often emphasizes their life in North Korea, their dangerous journey, or their reasons for escape – often lacks examination of the defectors’ subsequent experiences in South Korea. This is perhaps based on an assumption that their trials and tribulations have somehow evaporated upon entry into South Korean society. Yet some scholars argue that this is where a new set of challenges awaits.

“In the ‘50s and ‘60s, defectors were seen as national heroes,” said Kelly Koh, who co-wrote an essay titled “North Korean Defectors: A Window into a Reunified Korea,” published in Korea Briefing 2000-2001: First Steps Toward Reconciliation and Reunification. In this essay, Koh and Glen Baek expose the adjustment difficulties North Korean defectors face upon integration into South Korean society.

Yet today, Koh adds, due to their increasing numbers and South Koreans’ fear of having to accommodate a deluge of North Koreans should the two governments unify, defectors are often considered political liabilities and economical burdens.

According to a 1998 survey by the Citizens Coalition for National Reconciliation, 22 percent of 2,000 South Korean respondents believed defectors should be kept out of South Korea altogether. Results of a 2004 survey released by the South Korean Ministry of Unification indicated that 62.2 percent of South Koreans oppose the encouragement of North Koreans to defect.

Nonetheless, there is a sharp increase in North Korean defectors living in South Korea. According to the Republic of Korea Ministry of Unification, 1,118 defectors were living in South Korea as of December 2000. In 2001, 583 defected. Since, the numbers have soared.

From January to September of this year, 882 North Korean defectors entered South Korea, following the 1,894 who defected in 2004, according to the Ministry. In 2003, 1,281 arrived in South Korea; in 2002, it was 1,139.

Among the adjustment problems identified in the essay are unemployment, crime, suicide, depression, job failure, regrets about defecting, money management, untreated psychological trauma, finding marriage partners, and reading signs written in English and Chinese. Defectors also have problems surviving in a society that relies heavily on educational and social standing and familial roots.

According to a 2000 Korean Education Development Institute study of 70 student defectors, 43.1 percent “wanted to start a new life where no one knew of their origins.”

The adjustment problems that follow relocation negate prevailing assumptions. Both North and South Koreans interviewed for Koh and Baek’s essay assumed that North Koreans would easily adjust to South Korean society because of their common language and the culture and history they shared before the Korean War (1950-1953). Yet despite their common race and ethnicity, stereotypes, discrimination, feelings of hostility and indifference, and fear of mistreatment or attack plague the relationship between North and South Koreans.

Koh and Baek argue that this phenomenon “offers a preview of the potential problems involved in integrating North Koreans into a reunified Korea…Historically, laws regulating the treatment and resettlement of North Korean defectors have focused on utilizing defectors for short-term propagandistic gain rather than facilitating successful integration into South Korean society.”

By highlighting the current status of North Korean defectors living in South Korea, Koh and Baek offer the interesting and important conclusion that not until the small defector population adjusts to South Korean society, can the present discourse of reunification advance.

“North Korean Defectors: A Window into a Reunified Korea” is published in Korea Briefing 2000-2001: First Steps Toward Reconciliation and Reunification, edited by Kongdan Oh and Ralph C. Hassig.

Lee Hee Sook, 74, was born in Cheongjin, North Korea in 1931. A member of one of the 11 million Korean families divided on either side of the 38th parallel after World War II, she is also among the few who have been able to travel back across that line to see her relatives again.

In 1946, communists shot and killed her father. In 1950, when the Korean War broke out, the family decided to flee to South Korea.

Lee Hee Sook (right) and her sister visiting North Korea in 2004.

Although the 38th parallel had been established five years earlier at the end of WWII, Lee recalled, immigration wasn’t tightly controlled and many were able to cross the border with relative ease. She and four family members fled on one of the Hungnam “miracle boats” that conducted a mass 2-week evacuation of UN forces and nearly 100,000 refugees. Thinking they would return in a few days, Lee and her family buried clay jars of preserved food in the ground around their home so they would have food to eat when they got back. Besides the clothes on their backs and a few blankets, Lee also thought to pack a handful of photos from the family album.

In South Korea, the family had to start all over again, but their education afforded them good jobs – her brother worked as an English interpreter for the US army while her husband managed South Korean laborers for the US army. Later she and her husband would both work for the U.S. Embassy in Seoul.

It was difficult to communicate with relatives in North Korea, but Lee’s family managed to smuggle a few letters back and forth to each other. The letters they received from her brothers in the north, however, sounded unnatural.

“I could tell that what they were saying was very forced, as if someone was watching over them,” said Lee.

In 2004, Lee and her sister had the chance to visit North Korea for the first time in over half acentury. The Hyundai Corporation, which arranged the tour, spent two months processing visas and paperwork for 50 tourists, most from South Korea, and declaring all known South Korean relatives of each tourist for security clearance. From Seoul, the group traveled by bus for less than an hour before arriving at the Demilitarized Zone, where guards conducted an extensive search of their luggage. Lee was disturbed to see the condition of the North Korean soldiers, who were posted every 50 feet on the North Korean side.

“They were extremely malnourished. Though they were 16 or 17 years old, they were short, like 5-feet tall, and skinny,” Lee said.

On 90-minute bus ride to Mount Geumgang near the eastern side of the DMZ, the visitors were instructed not to stand up or look outside.

“But I stood up really quickly because I had to have a peek,” said Lee. “I saw shantytowns, dirt houses and people wearing just threads. It was like a town that had been swept away by a tsunami.”

The group stayed at a tourist resort on Mount Geumgang for three days and two nights. Lee talked to employees in the hotels, restaurants and stores and found that many were Chinese. They had been brought in and taught Korean so that “real” North Koreans wouldn’t have any contact with wealthy tourists, she said.

The brief visit to North Korea didn’t change Lee’s opinion of her former homeland. “The regime is evil but I feel for the people’s suffering,” she said. Seeing the emaciated North Korean soldiers and the barren land made her decide not to go again.

“It’s too horrible, too sad,” she said. “These people have no idea what’s out there. In their minds, life is suffering. They think that is the norm.”