So Won told her. Two months later, after going through China and then Thailand (So Won’s mother paid brokers about $8,000), So Won sat in a sterile room at the South Korean National Intelligence Service in Seoul. She was quarantined, undergoing the routine interrogation to prove she wasn’t an enemy of the state. A man and a woman asked her all about her life in North Korea. Describe your house. Draw your hometown. Talk about your school. Be specific. Tell us more. After the National Intelligence Service came the Hanawon Resettlement Center, the agency charged with handling the intake of North Korean defectors and giving them three months of mandatory citizen training before releasing them into society. They also assign North Koreans a city and accommodations, show themlook like ordinary South Koreans,” says So Won. Standing out as North Korean only invites prejudice. There is a widespread stereotype in South Korea that talbukcha are lazy, ignorant, prone to alcoholism, and a drain on the welfare state. North Koreans who move south are confronted by a people who are unfathomably foreign. The growing cultural and economic divides also mirror decreasing support for reunification. Older South Koreans remember a time when the two countries were one and treat peace talks with more optimism than their grandchildren. (A majority of the South Korean population viewed unification as necessary in 2017, but among those in their 20s, it’s just 38.9 percent.) For Kim Ga Young, a 27-year-old North Korean student who moved to Seoul in 2013, the first step