**1. Introduction**

North Korea's communist regime has been committing human rights violations throughout its three-generation-long reign of terror. Even at this moment, many North Koreans are in various kinds of anti-human-rights situations, enduring violence, torture, hunger, and social control. For this reason, many try to escape every year. South Korean society refers to those who have escaped from North Korea as 'North Korean refugees' ('NK refugees').

The number of NK refugees who have defected from the North and settled in the South is now at about 37,000 [1]. The entry of NK refugees to South Korea has gradually increased since the 1990s when the severe economic crisis began in North Korea, with more than 1000 NK refugees still entering South Korea every year [1] (p. 1). As the number of NK refugees has increased over the past two decades, a new type of family, termed a "North Korean family" (an 'NK family') has been created in South Korea. While the correct figures have not been aggregated recently, the pattern of escaping from North Korea with 'family units' has been increasing. And the fact that 77.3% of NK refugees in South Korea in their 40s or younger [1] (p. 1), thus in their childbearing years, implies that NK families could gradually become a meaningful family type in South Korean society. It is easy to erroneously believe that all members of North Korean refugee families are actually from North Korea, but by looking deeper into the families, it becomes clear that their countries of origin vary, including people from North Korea, China, and South Korea,

due to human trafficking, separation, reunion, and remarriage in the process of defection. This means that many NK families have low family bonds and cohesion, which results in frequent family conflicts or domestic violence.

In fact, according to a recent survey, 49% of NK refugees have physically abused their children, while 57.7% of them have ever committed emotional abuse [2]. This figure is about three times higher than the ratio of South Korean parents' abuse identified in the same survey. This clearly shows NK refugee vulnerability around the issue of child abuse.

The problem of child abuse is serious not only among NK refugees' families but also in other refugee families in Western society. Previous research has shown that child abuse in refugee families is more prevalent than among ordinary immigrant families, and they pointed out that it can occur in different patterns [3,4].

A multitude of services and interventions are being developed as social concerns over refugee family abuse gradually increase, but NK refugees have another different character compared to other refugees. Therefore, understanding these families' specific nature and environments is very important to solve the problem of child abuse in NK refugees' families. Unlike other refugees, NK refugees experienced fear from the reign of terror in North Korea, and they have been forced into particular actions and beliefs in a 'completely controlled society' for the past 70 years. Examples include forcing a belief that denies capitalism or providing socialist education based on loyalty to the leader. After entering South Korea, they face additional pressures, having to adapt quickly to a new society, experiencing a lot of stress due to job insecurity, economic difficulties, a lack of support, discrimination, and exclusion from South Korean society. They are also unstable in their roles as parents or have low confidence in their parenting abilities [5]. Such transitional experiences and processes make the risk of child abuse more higher.

The South Korean governmen<sup>t</sup> and many NK refugee support organizations are actively looking for social services and interventions to prevent child abuse overall, but they currently lack a concrete approach to 'NK families.' The interventions for preventing child abuse should be implemented based on an understanding of the specific situations NK refugees' families face because this is a good way to increase the effectiveness of prevention strategies and mitigate the recurrence of abuse. Therefore, this study, based on the qualitative interviews with NK refugee parents, identifies specific reasons why child abuse occurs within their family context, and ultimately seeks to examine measures that could prevent child abuse.

### *1.1. Characteristics of NK Refugee Families Living in South Korea*

In order to understand the child abuse behaviors of NK refugees, one must first consider the characteristics of NK refugees' families and the main characteristics of their distinctive environment.

First, NK refugees experience serious trauma during their defection. There are three main routes of defection to enter South Korea: -1 via China; -2 via East Asian countries through China; or -3 via Mongolia through China. Throughout the ordeal, a large number of NK refugees confront life-and-death situations. According to a previous study, 96.5% of NK refugees endured more than one traumatic event [6]. The study found that they experienced incidents repeatedly, which rarely happens to ordinary people in their lifetime [7], with trials encompassing food shortages, labor camp imprisonment, torture and beatings, human trafficking, and having to avoid arrest by the secret police. Unfortunately, they also experienced many traumatic events after arriving in South Korea because the social, economic, and cultural environments between the two countries have diverged since their division more than half a century ago. As the traditional culture in which these North Koreans had lived with is, for the most part, not accepted by South Korean society, they repeatedly face social discrimination and stigma in their daily lives caused by acculturative stress [8,9].

Second, their family functions are weak due to di fferences in family culture between the South and the North, especially in family-related experiences. The patriarchal family culture is dominant in North Korea, where male-dominant aspects of family authority and role distribution loom large [10]. They also have a strict parent-child relationship [11]. This is di fferent from South Korea's family culture, which emphasizes a democratic family lifestyle and gender equality [12].

These di fferences cause confusion among individuals and family members, weakening the family function and creating di fficulties in the child-rearing process. In addition, many North Korean defectors experience a break with their families still in the North. Because NK refugees usually bring their remaining family members to the South after some of them escape first, due to strict surveillance by the NK secret police. In this process, many children who experienced separation from their parents su ffer from physical and mental dysfunction, and have emotional problems such as anger, sadness, and so on [7] (p. 2). In addition, if a family member is known to have entered the South, the remaining family members in the North will be subjected to serious crises, including interrogation, torture, and detention in labor camps from the NK authorities [7] (p. 2). In this way, their special experiences in defecting from North Korea cause complex emotions and conflicts within their family, which consequently weakens the family's functionality, negatively a ffecting the process of adapting to South Korea.

### *1.2. Influencing Factors of Child Abuse in Migration Family*

### 1.2.1. Acculturative Stress and Child Abuse

NK refugee parents encounter di fficulties not only in raising their children but also in settling in an unfamiliar society. These have an important impact on both the growth and development of their children and on the parents themselves [13]. According to the acculturation model, 'acculturation' is a cultural and psychological change process that migrants experience when they engage with a new society [14], and many immigrants face a number of stressful situations in adapting to a new country [15,16].

In general, the more stress parents experience, the more likely they are to lose confidence in their parenting [17]. The parent's stress is closely related to child abuse, in that the stress causes them to choose punitive methods over more positive ones as their main parenting style [18,19]. Migration and refugee studies also show that many parents experience acculturative stress regardless of whether they prepared for the migration situations in advance or not [20,21], which means there is a strong correlation with child abuse by parents in immigrant families [21] (p. 3), [22].

NK refugees', vulnerability to stress is extreme because they face dramatic risks, including threats of forced repatriation during their escape. As previously mentioned, they are placed in very stressful environments even after resettlement, since North and South Korea have wide di fferences in their societies–social, cultural, political, educational, religious, etc. According to Park [5] (p. 2) study on the parenting of North Korean defectors, the stress of the NK refugee parents was found to be the main reason for dysfunctional parenting. NK refugee parents are not only exposed to constant stress, but they feel a lot of pressure related to their children's care and tend to negatively evaluate, criticize, and neglect their children [13] (p. 3). As such, the stress of NK refugee parents can be closely linked to child abuse, and the problem of child abuse can become severe, as they lack opportunities to relieve stress and also lack access to protective resources within South Korean society.

### 1.2.2. Parenting Self-E fficacy and Child Abuse

Parenting self-e fficacy refers to the confidence, belief, and ability in the parenting role that parents obtain as they raise their child [23]. This is important for parents to be able to successfully cope with the problems of child-rearing. In general, parents with low parenting e fficacy tend to choose a controlling and punitive parenting style [24,25]. Conversely, parents with high parenting e fficacy tend to choose a receptive attitude and a non-punitive parenting style [26,27]. These characteristic styles show close relevance to child abuse.

A study by Lee, et al. [13] (p. 3) showed that NK refugee parents had significantly lower parenting efficacy than South Korean parents, and that their confidence in parenting was extremely diminished. In fact, many NK refugee parents also feel they lack the ability to educate their children because the education methods and content between the two Koreas have changed during the period of division [7] (p. 2). Especially in the unusual context of 'migration' and 'transition', they are less confident about maternal roles and parenting abilities, defined as child-rearing e ffectiveness [5] (p. 2), [9] (p. 3), [13] (p. 3). Specific research such as this is essential in that unstable parenting e fficiency of NK refugees' parents leads to an inconsistent and abusive parenting style, which can lead to various forms of abuse.
