A study on the mental health outcomes of North Korean male defectors: comparing with general Korean males and searching for health policy implications

Jun-Hong Kim

doi:10.5124/jkma.2011.54.5.537

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Kim: A study on the mental health outcomes of North Korean male defectors: comparing with general Korean males and searching for health policy implications

Healthcare Policy

Journal of the Korean Medical Association

Journal of the Korean Medical Association 2011; 54(5): 537-548.

Published online: 11 May 2011

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5124/jkma.2011.54.5.537

A study on the mental health outcomes of North Korean male defectors: comparing with general Korean males and searching for health policy implications

Jun-Hong Kim, PhD

School of Media & Communication, Korea University, Seoul, Korea.

Corresponding author: Jun-Hong Kim, junnh@hanmail.net

Received 10 March 2011 Accepted 12 April 2011

(open-access):

This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The present study attempts to understand the features of North Korean male defectors' emotive, cognitive and behavioral responses to criminal victimizations when compared with general Korean male population, the reference group, and to explore mental health and medical policy implications from the statistical analyses. Using and analyzing merged data from 'Crime Victimization in Korea, 5 (2006),' and 'A Survey on North Korean Refugees (2006),' the author found that group differences do exist in the components of emotive, cognitive and behavioral responses to possible victimizations from crimes and violences. For each of emotive and cognitive responses to threat of victimizations, North Korean defectors scored significantly higher than general male population except perceived vulnerability. For behavioral responses, however, North Korean defectors scored significantly lower. These results were interpreted to provide the evidences for the need of transformations of micro- and macro-level health policies for North Korean defectors.

Keywords: North Korean male defectors, Posttraumatic stress disorder, Victimization of crime and violence, Mental health, Health policy

Figures and Tables

Table 1

Demographics of the respondents

Values are presented as number (%).

Table 2

Comparison between two groups

^*p<0.05, ^**p<0.01, ^***p<0.001

Table 3

Home-protective behaviors in each group

Values are presented as number (%).

^**p < 0.01, ^***p < 0.001.

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