Can Koreans learn to live together if North, South reunite?

“Success” is a relative term for North Korean refugees building a new life in South Korea. Defector Yoo Kwan-hee found “success” in economic stability and a South Korean husband, but she’s still traumatized by her past, still struggling to forgive, still yearning for love and acceptance.

It’s been more than 10 years since she escaped to South Korea through China, but Yoo still hates talking about her past. When she does, she’s unable to hold back the gush of hot tears and bitter words towards the broker who sold her, the Chinese family who mistreated her, the South Koreans who discriminated against her.

“I have not found success,” Yoo told me. “I know that, because I still have so much unhealed scars. … Many times I even wondered if I’d have been better off staying in North Korea.”

It’s a common sentiment among North Korean refugees who escaped south. Materially, they are better off in South Korea, where they can enjoy freedom of speech, religion, mobility, and economic pursuits. But their new life also marks a period of fresh challenges and sufferings— so much so that a growing number of defectors have actually tried to return to North Korea.

The North Korean refugee issue is a serious problem and has become the testing ground for issues the countries will face if they are ever able to reunite. As of today, about 27,000 North Korean refugees live in South Korea, which offers a comprehensive support system—resettlement money, subsidized housing, free medical treatment, and limited monthly stipends. The refugees’ failure to adjust doesn’t bode well for a promising future.

If reunification happens soon—and many local analysts predict the North Korean regime will crumble in five years—Korea will face some major chaos.

The majority of refugees are not high-level, enlightened political dissenters. They’re farmers, housewives, and factory workers from humble origins and poor educational backgrounds who racked up huge debts to brokers in search of better economic opportunities. Three-quarters of them are women, of which 80 percent were victims of sex-trafficking and indentured servitude during their time in China. Many of them also are single mothers with children born through unregistered marriages to Chinese men.

That means the typical North Korean refugee is a middle-aged, emotionally battered, little-schooled, low-skilled, indebted, small-town woman with little interest in political ideologies or professional ambition. They are simply unequipped for South Korea’s hyper-competitive, image-driven, cosmopolitan, capitalist society.

More than half suffer psychological illnesses with symptoms such as depression, aggression, and domestic abuse—behaviors that damage South Korean perception of their work ethic and social civility. Suicide rates among North Korean refugees is up to six times that of South Koreans, who already have one of the highest suicide rates among developed countries. In 2014, the unemployment rate among North Koreans was three times higher than the nationwide rate, and their average income was half the nationwide average.

Meanwhile, resentment has been swelling on both sides. Many South Koreans peg North Koreans as ungrateful, lazy, uncivilized, and backwards, while North Koreans bristle over the stark inequalities and their marginalization as “second-class Koreans” in schools, workplaces, and even churches.

As vigilant and praying Christians in South Korea prepare for the day North Korea finally opens its doors, they also worry that people’s empathy towards their northern cousins is dissipating.

“Right now, South Koreans can barely maintain harmony with 25,000 North Koreans,” one underground missionary told me. “What will happen when North Korea releases 25 million of them?”