If you were a student at a school in North Korea, your life would look very different. In the morning, you would do a session of marching on the spot and saluting the image of the leader, Kim Jong-un. You might have to spend 90 minutes a day learning about his greatness.¹

What delights would await you at the end of the teaching day? Perhaps you could switch on the TV or listen to music. But be careful: you could be sentenced to death just for listening to music and watching films from South Korea.²

You could go shopping, or try out the latest fashions. But dyed hair, jeans, sunglasses and even shoulder bags are banned. You could text your friends, but be careful what you say, because slang is illegal.

Perhaps a nice, tasty dinner awaits you at the table. Fat chance of that. North Koreans are facing a food crisis and mass starvation.

No wonder so many have tried to defect, to leave their home country for next-door South Korea. Since the 1950-53 Korean war, around 34,000 North Koreans have defected to the South. The journey is arduousRequiring a great deal of effort. and often fatal.

But what of the other way round? There is also a notable number of double-defectors returning to North Korea from their lives abroad. One particularly efficient double-defector crawled over barbed wire fences to reach the South in 2020, before going back the same way just over a year later.

Is it nostalgia? Fear of the authorities? Culture shock? Or just plain madness?

Some highlight the difficulties of assimilation for North Korean defectors in South Korea's capitalist society. Defectors perform mostly unskilled, poorly-paid work there, and can face discrimination. But perhaps it goes even deeper.

In psychoanalyst Erich Fromm's 1941 book Escape from Freedom, he argued that authoritarianismA form of government in which individual freedoms are severely limited by government power. Examples include Nazi Germany, Khmer Rogue Cambodia and contemporary China. can help us to escape the anxiety we feel about confronting our own freedom. Freedom, he thought, can make us feel hopeless and alienated.

Is it a kind of madness to crave authoritarian tyrannyCruel and aggressive use of power, often used to describe countries under the grip of a single oppressive leader.? Perhaps so. But some might say that it is also just human nature.

Are they mad?

Yes: The stakes could be no higher for defecting from North Korea. You can be caught and executed or sentenced to decades of hard labour just for trying. And even if you succeed, your loved ones could be put to death by the authorities. Going through all this to go back there is absurd.

No: It is understandable to wish to return home. Nobody would bat an eye at refugees saying they wish that they could go back. Defectors have family, friends, memories and experiences back in North Korea.

Or... It is the kind of madness that perfectly embodies the complex, dichotomousInvolving two completely opposing ideas or things. nature of the human character. Sometimes we crave that which is bad for us.

Arduous - Requiring a great deal of effort.

Authoritarianism - A form of government in which individual freedoms are severely limited by government power. Examples include Nazi Germany, Khmer Rogue Cambodia and contemporary China.

Tyranny - Cruel and aggressive use of power, often used to describe countries under the grip of a single oppressive leader.

Dichotomous - Involving two completely opposing ideas or things.