The Welfare Standing Committee (chief: Lee Jin) of NUAC held its 8th committee meeting on Feb. 25 to discuss “Preparing for Unification and Fostering the Youth who Escaped from North Korea.”

“Nobody can deny the important roles to be played by North Korean refugees before and after unification; nonetheless, many parts of the support for them should be improved. I hope we can discuss the issue in depth today to solve the problems,” Lee said in his opening speech.

According to Song Doo-rok, secretary general of the South-North Education Development Institute, we need to cope with the strong homing desire of the North Korean refugees and heterogeneity of the people in the South and North for the past 7 decades of division. The approach to the youth who escaped from North Korea should change from the paradigm of supporting their successful settlement in the South Korean society to strengthening their ability as a “unification messenger and core communicator” between the two areas, he added.

“Both South and North Korean parents want their children to get good education and have a good job. The dream and continuing studies of the children are the main topic in educating and supporting the young North Korean refugees.

In this regard, I would like to suggest operating a class after school in key areas. Since education cannot be provided beyond the quality of the teachers or professors, enhancing their will toward national unification and understanding the young refugees are required more than anything else,” he explained.”

In relation to guiding their job finding and startup, the council members attending the meeting sympathized with his suggestion of developing teaching materials for license (by the DLI technique) written both in the words of South and North Korea and cultivating teachers with professionalism. He also emphasized that useful systems currently implemented as well as how to get benefits out of them should be advertised more broadly along with providing the relevant information more actively.

Discussion during the committee meeting covered establishing a village offering South and North Korea experience, improving and expanding the Merkel project to foster elite youth who escaped from North Korea, and establishing a social club for the youth of South and North Korea.

Discussions held during the day will be combined with those of other committees and will be reported to the Chairperson in March.