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China Elevator Stories
“He had to suffer discrimination in North Korea”
I chat with my Chinese father-in-law.
18/08/2014
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
My father-in-law tells me about one of his former co-workers: “He’s from the northern part of North Korea. At first, he didn’t understand anything we said. He would always stare at us without saying a word. At that time, we didn’t know he didn’t speak Chinese, so we thought it was strange that he just stared at us. Today, his Chinese is as good as ours. He speaks in the local dialect, and you wouldn’t know he’s not from here. He brought his whole family to Northeast China.”
I’m curious and ask him, “When did he come to China?”
He replies, “He’s over 50 years old now. It must have been about 30 years ago.”
“Does he have Chinese citizenship?”
“Yes, he does. He’s Han Chinese. He and his family had to suffer discrimination in North Korea. For example, he wasn’t allowed to get a driver’s license or drive a car, just because he was Han Chinese.”
“Was he born in North Korea?”
“He was. He was a North Korean citizen at birth. But the government discriminated against people who weren’t ethnic Koreans, so he fled across the Yalu River to China.”
Have you ever heard a similar story?
This is part of the series ‘Conversations with Locals in China,’ where I share conversations with Chinese people on my blog.