Help needed with North korean history on the DMZ

mossy95

Would it be historcally accurate for me to say that a short time after The DMZ was built Koreans had to decide what side to live on?

jonniebgood1

mossy95 wrote: »

Would it be historcally accurate for me to say that a short time after The DMZ was built Koreans had to decide what side to live on?

On what grounds would you say this?

tac foley

AFAIR those on the north of the Demarcation line didn't actually get a choice.

Still don't.

tac

jonniebgood1

tac foley wrote: »

AFAIR those on the north of the Demarcation line didn't actually get a choice.

That may be correct of the current situation but during the formative years, say 1945-50, the ruling powers in the north would have seen a gain from allowing the exit of landlords and other strident capitalists to the south. They also did not have the level of control as they do now as they were a country under occupation. The north south transfers certainly worked in the opposite direction as several prominent north Korean communist leaders had been from the south originally (The Korean War by Carter Malkasian pg 11).

tac foley

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

That may be correct of the current situation but during the formative years, say 1945-50, the ruling powers in the north would have seen a gain from allowing the exit of landlords and other strident capitalists to the south. They also did not have the level of control as they do now as they were a country under occupation. The north south transfers certainly worked in the opposite direction as several prominent north Korean communist leaders had been from the south originally (The Korean War by Carter Malkasian pg 11).

Again, I seem to have missed out in the translation from English. In my reading, the OP asked about the time AFTER the DMZ was put into place, on July 27, 1953.

The time-line 1945-50 that you quoted is not applicable.

tac

jonniebgood1

tac foley wrote: »

Again, I seem to have missed out in the translation from English. In my reading, the OP asked about the time AFTER the DMZ was put into place, on July 27, 1953.

The time-line 1945-50 that you quoted is not applicable.

Not applicable to what???

The information I posted referred to a quite widely recorded transfer of Koreans over this area before the outbreak of the Korean war. The DMZ came at the end of the Korean war. So I do not see what giving some recorded evidence of transfers from north to south and vice versa is "not applicable" to?

tac foley wrote: »

AFAIR those on the north of the Demarcation line didn't actually get a choice.

Do you have any source that might support this or are you just guessing?

tac foley

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

Not applicable to what???

The information I posted referred to a quite widely recorded transfer of Koreans over this area before the outbreak of the Korean war. The DMZ came at the end of the Korean war. So I do not see what giving some recorded evidence of transfers from north to south and vice versa is "not applicable" to?


Do you have any source that might support this or are you just guessing?

The OP's own written words - 'a short time after The DMZ'. You actually mention 'before the outbreak of the Korean War'. The DMZ quite plainly came into existence AFTER the Korean War.

It happened in 1953. You are quoting dates at least three years, and up to eight years, before that time.

Since you have ready access to the documentation concerned, instead of arguing with me, why don't YOU give the OP the answer to his question?

It's quite simple - how many citizens of North Korea decided to leave the North and go live in the South? Isn't that what he is asking? Me, I don't know, but bearing in mind what little I DO know about North Korea, I think that it is unlikely that a régime that would execute you for ownership of a cell-phone would take kindly to its citizens simply sauntering down the road to Western-style freedom..

tac

jonniebgood1

tac foley wrote: »

The OP's own written words - 'a short time after The DMZ'. You actually mention 'before the outbreak of the Korean War'. The DMZ quite plainly came into existence AFTER the Korean War.

It happened in 1953. You are quoting dates at least three years, and up to eight years, before that time.

Since you have ready access to the documentation concerned, instead of arguing with me, why don't YOU give the OP the answer to his question?

It's quite simple - how many citizens of North Korea decided to leave the North and go live in the South? Isn't that what he is asking? Me, I don't know, but bearing in mind what little I DO know about North Korea, I think that it is unlikely that a régime that would execute you for ownership of a cell-phone would take kindly to its citizens simply sauntering down the road to Western-style freedom..

tac

So you base your opinion on some guff about a mobile phone but deem reliable information from 3 years before the DMZ as being outside a timeline of relevence? Can you see the irony in that...


I would argue that treatment of people crossing north to south or vice versa in the years preceding the end of the Korean war is entirely relevent to the OP. These were the years when the respective ideals that were to shape both countries futures were formed and are not isolated from the years after the wars end. Furthermore the "Western-style freedom" that you refer to took some years to establish, certainly not a magical overnight thing once a DMZ was created. Based upon the point I made initially in response to the OP it would seem likely that such transfers would have been allowed (for the same reasons as they were allowed in 1945-50). It is likely that such a transfer may have suited both sides as there were Communist supporters in the South and Capitalist supporters in the North. The North Koreans however do not release this information so it is hard to be definitive although the information should be availiable from the South Korean/ western perspective.

tac foley

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

So you base your opinion on some guff about a mobile phone but deem reliable information from 3 years before the DMZ as being outside a timeline of relevence? Can you see the irony in that...

Daily Mail -
North Korean man executed for calling a friend in South Korea on mobile phone



By Richard Shears
UPDATED: 14:46, 4 March 2010

• Comments (25)
• Share

A North Korean man has been executed by firing squad for calling a friend in South Korea on his mobile phone.
The brutal communist regime, which is technically at war with South Korea, has warned its 24 million population that any contact with the nation south of its borders is a crime punishable by life in prison or death.
News of those who have been caught and punished for making contact with the south rarely leaks out - because anyone disclosing information about punishment also risks imprisonment.

Enlarge

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il (C) visits the newly-built Kumjinggang Guchang Juvenile power plant. The country bans citizens from contacting the south

But a radio station in Seoul, South Korea, said it had learned that a man identified only as Jung has been executed after security officials raided his home and found a Chinese-manufactured mobile phone.
He was taken away and subjected to extreme torture, when he confessed that he had told a defector friend in South Korea about the harsh living conditions in the communist state.
He revealed that he had given his friend details of how people were struggling to live and had also passed on information about the price of rice.
The friend had defected to South Korea in 2001, according to the Seoul-based Open Radio for North Korea, which has found a way of allowing individuals and private groups to broadcast to North Koreans through shortwave radio.
The station said Jung was a munitions worker living in the north east port of Hamhung.

Defected: Jung had rung a friend in South Korea on the mobile phone, which is illegal in the communist state, according to Open Radio for North Korea in Seoul

He is believed to be the first person to be shot since the capital, Pyongyang, tightened a crackdown on illegal mobile phones last month.
North Korea does allow mobile phones to be used, but they have to be registered and their range is limited to Pyongyang.
However Chinese mobile phones with pre-paid cards that make international calls possible have been distributed through the black market.
It is the owners of these phones who have been targeted by the country's secret police.
The execution of Jung is expected to be deliberately leaked by the regime as a warning to others who own similar phones.

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Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1255375/North-Korean-man-executed-calling-friend-South-Korea-mobile-phone.html#ixzz2GqaMosYc
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Well, Sir, since you are the one with all the answers about North Korea, you still haven't told the OP what he wants to know.

'bye.

tac

jonniebgood1

tac foley wrote: »

Daily Mail -
North Korean man executed for calling a friend in South Korea on mobile phone

.....
Well, Sir, since you are the one with all the answers about North Korea, you still haven't told the OP what he wants to know.

'bye.

Noone has 'all the answers' about North Korea for reasons you may have missed in my last point.

You are basing your history on the Daily Mail, rather than being rude I will just point out that you won't find your answer there.

Little_Korean

Well, decide in the sense of having a big border drawn across the country and then belonging to either half by de facto of where you live. It wasn't as if people were handed out questionnaires about their first-choice preferences.

Some communist-minded South Koreans went to the North in the early stages of the division but after the War, you were risking your life and/or freedom trying to cross, even if you had family on the other side.

Generally, it's North Koreans attempting to go Southwards and not vice versa (particularly these days) but there is this strange incident back in 2010:


South Koreans investigated for 'trying to defect to North'

Prosecutors in Seoul have applied for arrest warrants for the three suspects who attempted to defect while on a trip to China last February, South Korea's official Yonhap news agency reported on Friday.

It is extremely unusual for South Koreans to attempt to defect to the North which remains one of the most tightly politically controlled states on earth. In contrast, since the end of the Korean War in 1953 some 19,000 people have crossed over in the other direction.

The three are said to have met through an online community forum and decided to defect after becoming "disillusioned" with life in the South, according to sources at the prosecutors' office quoted by Yonhap.

No idea what became of these three.