N. Korean defectors' wages are 67% of national average: data

The average wage of a North Korean defector in South Korea stands at 67 percent of what local workers in general take home each month, data by the National Assembly Budget Office showed Sunday.

The parliamentary office said North Korean escapees earned 1.54 million won ($1,380) per month in 2015, much less than the 2.29 million won for the country as a whole in the one-year period.

The latest findings showed that while overall economic circumstances of defectors have been improving, a gap still exists between them and ordinary South Korean workers.

In 2011, NABO said the economic activity rate for those that arrived in the capitalist South from the communist country stood at 56.5 percent, and this rose to 59.4 percent as of last year.

Employment moved up from 49.7 percent to 54.6 percent, with unemployment dropping to 4.8 percent vis-a-vis 12.1 percent.

The data then showed that the percentage of defectors on social welfare, which stood at 62.9 percent in the first year of arriving in Korea, fell to 29.6 percent by the third year of residence.

Numbers improved only gradually afterward and dipped to 21.7 percent in the sixth year.

Still, it said many defectors had a hard time finding full-time jobs.

Even among professionals who were doctors, teachers and researchers in the North, only 51.3 percent were employed in the South, with just 16.8 percent being hired in their original areas of expertise. Government data showed 685 North Koreans who held professional jobs had arrived in the South so far.

Among young people, those that gave up their studies have decreased over the years, but the high school dropout rate for defectors stood at 7.5 percent, which is much higher than it is for their South Korean counterparts.

"Despite many gains over the years, the latest data on defectors showed the need for more systematic and active support to help those that have escaped the North to become productive members of South Korean society," NABO said. (Yonhap)