Korean divorce may not cross the border

YEONGJU, SOUTH KOREA —  Song will soon be able to get a divorce. The question is, will his wife ever find out?

Song, 49, is a defector from North Korea who left a wife and two children behind, took up with a Russian mother of three and brought them to South Korea. But so impenetrable is the iron curtain between the two Koreas that there’s no way of communicating. There are no phone, mail or Internet connections.

A new South Korean law permitting the divorces will take effect in March. But complications will remain.

Petitioners will have to make their divorce suit known on the Internet, and that, defectors fear, will make it easier for North Korean intelligence to track them. Even now, living a humble life as a gas station attendant, Song is so wary of spies that he won’t let his surname be published.

And what happens if contact one day opens up between the Koreas?

“The North Korean spouse can argue the court’s granting of a divorce is unconstitutional since his or her interests were not reflected in the ruling,” said Shin Young-ho, a law professor at Seoul-based Korea University.

“But, at the same time, we can’t keep the defectors here from starting a new family forever.”

Divorce for defectors has become a hot issue in South Korea as a growing number of North Koreans flee south, usually via China, to escape poverty and political repression. More than 9,600 have entered the country since the 1950-53 Korean War, and have automatically become South Korean citizens.

Song is among 223 who have divorce suits pending in Seoul Family Court. Only one has ever been successful.

Song says he lost touch with his family in 1998 after he went to work as a North Korean guest laborer at a Russian lumber mill. He says he fled the camp to avoid punishment for criticizing North Korea’s communist government over unpaid salaries and was sheltered for a year by Tsydenova, an ethnic Mongolian Russian.

He entered South Korea in 2003 with Tsydenova, who had sold her house and two cows to pay their travel expenses.

The couple, Tsydenova’s three children and a daughter born to them five months ago now live in Yeongju, a small town 140 miles southeast of Seoul.

Settling in hasn’t been easy.

Tsydenova entered the country on a tourist visa and has worked illegally as a janitor to boost Song’s $960 monthly wage.

It took nearly a year of coaxing officials to find a school that would accept the eldest child, 18-year-old Darima, who did not have residential status. Lacking medical insurance, Tsydenova and her children could not afford to see a doctor.

“I brought them here promising them a good life. I feel guilty every time I look at my wife and children for the hardships I am making them go through,” Song said. He said his other family, back in North Korea, had become a dim memory.

Tsydenova, speaking Russian with Song translating, said that she never expected to leave Russia but that she grew attached to Song. “I thought everything would be OK as long as the two of us were together,” she said.

When Song learned Tsydenova was pregnant with his child, he feared the baby would not be recognized as a citizen. The couple even considered abortion. He finally won a fight with the bureaucracy to register the newborn as his legal daughter.

“I couldn’t stand the idea of bringing another child of mine into that kind of uncertainty,” Song said, caressing the 5-month-old girl, asleep in her mother’s arms.

“But now she’s our hope who sustains our family through hardships and makes us laugh every day.”