<strong>Monday</strong></p><p>One went to China to seek a better life. One lost faith in his government's leadership. Another saw his entire family harshly punished because of his father's misstep with authorities. On Monday afternoon, our editors group had lunch with a group of North Korean defectors, among the roughly 10,000 who now call South Korea home. Later, we had the opportunity to meet with Lee Jae-jung, who is South Korea's minister of unification, to hear his sense of what is happening in the North. </p><p>The story of the defectors had common threads. These days, no one is walking across the DMZ. Instead, they are escaping over the Chinese border. They stay in China, dodging authorities who will send them back to North Korea and to prison camps. And they try to make a living while searching for a fixer who will find a way into South Korea. Costs can be $3,000 per person. Their route to freedom is not a straight line. One of the defectors said that his fixer sent him on a six month-long path from China to Vietnam to Thailand to Singapore, before finally getting safe passage to Seoul. </p><p>Once in South Korea, they go through a ten-week course to learn skills on living in a free society. Successfully completing the course, they receive national identity cards, similar to our driver's license, and can apply for a passport. </p><p>But there are always scars. You notice it when you greet them. Most North Koreans are six-to-eight inches shorter than their South Korean counterparts. That's due to poor nutrition that started when they were in the womb. Yet, they are determined. Today's group spends their spare time, when not studying at the university, trying to educate their friends in the North through radio broadcasts about the simple opportunities in a free world, such as regular access to quality foods. </p><p>What frustrates the defectors more than anything is the many left-leaning young people in the South who are oblivious to an entire population of Koreans who do not have enough to eat or enough fuel to heat their homes this winter. They call their former homeland “a forgotten place.</p><p> Later in the afternoon, Lee Jae-jung talked about what his government is doing to re-unite with the North. While sympathetic to the defectors, he said that they do not know what the North Korean leadership is trying to do for its people. He points to joint cooperatives between South and North, including an industrial park, run by the Hyundai company, and a tourism project on the Northern side of the border. These are signs of hope, he says. But he also acknowledged, under questions from our group, that the that the GDP in North Korea is less than 1/100th of what it is in the south. </p><p>A great fear, he says, is that unification will occur like it did in Germany or Vietnam, causing many years of economic hardship for both sides. Everyone would like to see things go more slowly and with a plan, and that's what Lee believes will happen. </p><p>But the real question, to me, is whether history has gone too far, and the DMZ will become a symbol like the Berlin Wall. </p><p>While there are contingencies for many military scenarios, nobody seems to be ready for the possibility of thousand of poor North Korean peasants streaming across the border. It could happen instantly, perhaps within hours, with an economic collapse.</p><p><em>Editor's Note: For the next two weeks, Star editor Randy Smith will be traveling with a dozen U.S. journalists in both North and South Korea. The trip, set up through the Gatekeeper Editor's program with the International Reporting Project, provides journalists with a glimpse of countries often in the news but not well covered. Look for regular updates at KansasCity.com. Send questions or comments to him at <a href="mailto:rsmith@kcstar.com">rsmith@kcstar.com</a>.</em>