S. Korean PM asks for young N.K. defectors' role in reunification
2013/08/14 15:31
SEOUL, Aug. 14 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's Prime Minister called on young North Korean defectors Wednesday to play an active role in national reunification and vowed support for them, officials said.
"As future leaders in the era of the reunification, elite North Korean defectors can vividly describe (to the North) the circumstances here, especially what freedom and happiness mean," Prime Minister Chung Hong-won said during a luncheon with a group of adolescents who defected to the South from their communist homeland.
The carefully selected youth now attend the so-called reunification leaders' academy, which provides the group of mostly university students with a government-sponsored educational program on diverse inter-Korean issues, such as national reunification and security situations on the Korean Peninsula, according to Chung's office.
Stressing that the sacrifice of predecessors for the independence against the Japanese 1910-45 colonial rule laid the national foundation, Chung asked the elite adolescents to play "a crucial role, just as the independence fighters did, in preparing for reunification down the road."
The prime minister also instructed concerned ministries to extend support "to help the defectors become the next-generation leaders with a proper view of the nation," his office said.
According to government data, South Korea is now home to some 25,000 North Korean defectors who fled their homeland to escape political oppression and chronic poverty.
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