How many koreans are there in new malden

The church is also a gratuitous helping hand to North Korean seeking advice on translation and other minor inconveniences. But outside the Korean language bubble, contact with the British public is severely limited. There is also a good reason as to why a lot of North Korean defectors prefer to lead quiet lives even after escaping from their home country.

Most of them have families and relatives left behind and fear they could endanger the lives of their beloved ones back in North Korea if they expose their identities and make themselves too well known. The outcome of these hindrances is that the North Koreans are effectively, although unintentionally, segregated from mainstream British society.

I have colleagues who are British or American at work and we get along well and are on good terms. In many ways, New Malden is just the right recipe for segregation. However, there is one stark contrast between the two: while one is a place where people can live freely under good conditions, the other is a chilling dystopia plagued with famine and censorship.

Other popular destinations for defectors include Japan, Canada and the United States. Kim says the North Koreans in New Malden are just ordinary people trying to live their lives. The adults go to work to put food on the table and the children go to school to study.

They have hopes and aspirations but also regrets and fears like everyone else. We have no country to go back to. New Malden is our home. Get your copy of Huck 75 now , or subscribe to make sure you never miss another issue.

See the rest of the series here. The North Koreans, abused their whole lives, are constantly wary of being taken advantage of. The two nationalities work alongside one another, but do not mix socially. She arrived in on a student visa to attend Goldsmiths, and stayed. The salon is a place of gathering and discussion. Back home, South Koreans are legally banned from interacting with North Koreans — even those who are related to them by blood and who, just 70 years ago, would have sat at the same dinner table and shared the same past and values.

Bona can still remember the first North Korean she met. Bona was fascinated by him. She was very worried. All the while, the state media insisted that there was no famine, blaming the disturbances on CIA destabilisation plots.

No matter what the news said, the dead bodies were there for everyone to see: in the streets, in the fields, on train station steps. We have nothing to envy anyone! The broker told him he could pick anywhere he wanted to go: America, Europe, South Korea. Choi picked Britain. He wanted to see for himself, to see how different the great democracy was from the lie of North Korea.

Choi landed in Newcastle. There were language problems, community problems, shopping problems… many problems. Things soon looked up. A turning point for Choi came right after his visa was issued, when he realised that he was free to move wherever he wanted to go within the UK. In North Korea, citizens need a permit to go from one town to the next — and official permission to spend a single night sleeping somewhere other than their own home.

Choi moved to New Malden in , seduced by what he had heard of the supportive Korean community there. It is one of the ironies of this story that, having moved to the UK because of how wonderful a country they are convinced it is, most North Koreans very quickly give up on trying to assimilate.

New Malden is popular because here, new arrivals can speak Korean, eat Korean food, frequent Korean businesses, and spend time with fellow Koreans — almost, really, as if they were in some free, democratic, parallel-world North Korea.

Choi works in the Korea Foods warehouse, and has done for years, but small everyday aspects of his work — that he gets paid more when he works overtime, for instance — remain surprising, unsettling novelties.

Jihyun Park was 30 years old when, in , she left North Korea with her brother, a deserter who was wanted by the military police. Enticed by job opportunities made easier by a shared language, the number of North Koreans living here has risen from only 20 in to about today — the largest North Korean community in Europe. As the number of North Koreans grew, they started to form their own community, separate from the already established South Koreans. And in recent years, some say the division between the two groups has resulted in the rise of low-level tensions.

Baek, whose name has been changed, first came to New Malden in , one of the first North Koreans to settle in the area. When he arrived, he worked in the warehouse of a South Korean supermarket, and has since become assistant manager at another one nearby. Baek says that both South and North Koreans feel a certain level of discomfort towards each other.

Despite efforts to foster closer ties, such as South Koreans inviting North Koreans to formal community events, many North Koreans are unwilling to attend.