SEOUL, Sept. 21 (Yonhap) -- An alternative boarding school reserved for student defectors from North Korea opened near Seoul on Friday to help their swift adaptation to Korean society, the school foundation said.

   The Mulmangcho (forget-me-not) School opened in Yeoju, Gyeonggi Province, some 105 kilometers southeast of Seoul, to take care of adolescent defectors under the age of 23, according to the Dream Makers for North Korea, a private organization that set up the school.

   The organization is headed by Park Sun-young, a former lawmaker of Seoul's conservative minor Liberty Forward Party.

   According to government data, a total of 1,681 elementary, middle and high school students fleeing from the communist country reside here in 2011, with primary school students accounting for 60.7 percent of the defector students below college level.

   The dropout rate of the defectors in schools here came to 4.7 percent in 2010, higher than the corresponding rate for the ordinary students, estimated at around 1 percent, the data showed.

   Students at the alternative school will be able to experience diverse programs designed to heal their wounds caused by a generally arduous process of fleeing their home country, the school said, adding each students will receive customized education programs according to their own interests and ability.

   The school will also provide their parents with counseling services and dental treatment, it added.

   "There is a handful of schools for defectors, but we try to differentiate ourselves from them by helping students get over past wounds for a bright future," school principal Kim Jung-soo said.

   "The school aims to raise young North Korean defectors as mature citizens of our country, so that we can have Korean versions of Angela Merkel. I expect them to play a key role in achieving peace in Northeast Asia and the unification of the Korean Peninsula in the 21st century," Kim added.

   Merkel is the Chancellor of Germany, who comes from East Germany.

   The situation of the Koreas is often compared to that of Germany in the past.

   graceoh@yna.co.kr
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