How post-traumatic stress disorder follows North Koreans all the way south
She defected from North Korea 15 years ago, crossing over into China, Vietnam, and Cambodia before finally reaching and entering South Korea. The process was “relatively” trouble-free. There was one thing she had not expected, however — the constant, reoccurring nightmares that followed her for three years.“I was never tortured or taken away in the North. I didn’t experience any traumatizing pain. However, after Kim Il-sung, the founder of North Korea, died, many people starved to death and died for other reasons. I did undergo the troubling times then,” said Nam Young-hwa, a North Korean defector.
Nam’s family was an upper middle class, and she was part of the elite. She majored in chemistry and worked as the secretary for an agricultural organization – a sign of wealth and independence uncommon for North Korean women. But no amount of individual wealth could protect her from the economic and social hardship that plagued the nation.
“After experiencing national famine and crossing over to China and into South Korea, I started having nightmares for three years. I was afraid someone would hunt me down, and it felt like someone was coming to get me. I dreamt North Korean police was raiding my house in the North,” she said.
Nam was not the only defector suffering from such dreams that persisted.
https://www.koreabiomed.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=3464