북한의 이산가족 문제 인식과 정책 문제점

North Korea understanding, policies, and the problems on the Korean dispersed families

Governmental agencies, scholars, and mass media in South Korea have argued that North Korean agencies used to ignore and to be uninterested in the problems of dispersed families, or have stigmatized the displaced persons as ‘anti-revolutionaries’ or ‘reactionaries’. So they argued that it has taken a cool attitude toward this problem. Well the number of dispersed families, including Wollam’ins, Wolbuk’ins, spies, prisoners of war not to be returned home, and kidnapped people as well as their remaining was quite tremendous. Those of Wollam’ins, displaced from North Korea to South Korea during a period of about 8 years starting in August 15, 1945, were estimated at least one million. Some leaders of South Korea used this fact as evidence that the regime of South Korea was superior to that of North Korea. This article’s aim is analyzing these arguments in order to discover new information historically and critically. And i’ll find whether North Korea really ignored the problem of dispersed families or not, which policies North Korea made have concerning these families, and what it called to them, et al. I focused on North Korean attitudes and policies according to the types of dispersed families. These types include period, size, motivation, and direction. In short, it seemed that these families were considered a humanistic problem at first in North Korea, but they were transformed into a political problem according to the competition and conflict between north and the south Korea. In the post-cold war age, both north and south Korean agencies have to reflect on their hostility and conflict and quit the attitude of the cold-war in order to prepare for the Korean reunification peacefully and independently. It is solving the problem of these families that they should do first of all.