Vice-chairman of the Pyongyang city people's committee Choe Yun Sik in his welcome address warmly welcomed them in the name of the Pyongyang citizens, saying their defection was a due resistance against the South Korean society which has been turned into a living hell by the harsh colonial rule and corrupt politics of the U.S. and their stooges. Ro Chol Ho in his reply referred to the honor of being awarded a state order and his emotion of receiving a large sum of prize money though he did nothing for the country and the nation. He extended warmest thanks to the great leader Kim Jong Il for opening a way of his rebirth and giving him a true life.
Experiencing and witnessing the realities of the north, he has been convinced more than once of the truth that the rise and fall of a nation is influenced by a leader, he said, and stressed: Kim Jong Il, a great sage of Tangun's nation born of heaven and sun of a reunified country, is the national prestige and power of the DPRK shining all over the world, the happiness of posterity and the eternal heaven of our Korea. He said he would hold Kim Jong Il in high esteem and do his best to bring earlier the day when they will enjoy happiness in a reunified country generation after generation.
Pyongyang, February 11 (KCNA) -- Ri Chol Ho, 43, who defected from the south to the north of Korea with his 12-year old daughter shortly ago, was interviewed by reporters at Pyongyang Koryo Hotel today. He had made taxi service in Seoul before his defection. Noting that his family was broken by betrayal and swindles, that are a deep-seated fashion of the rotten and ailing South Korean society, he told reporters:
My defection was motivated by my yearning for the northern half of the country, quite different from the south, where all its people form a big family in clean and sound life environment and General Secretary Kim Jong Il's benevolent and independent politics is administered. My first impression of Pyongyang is that its streets are clean and citizens are full of life with their faces bright. Seeing them enjoy folk games, I felt that the north is my genuine motherland where the spirit of the nation is kept.
On the living conditions of people in the south, Ri said: The south looks gorgeous. However, it is a society in which those with money and power live in clover and the working masses without money and power find no other outlet but suicide. In the south preoccupied with the idea of submitting to the U.S., people's anti-American sentiment is radically growing after the GIs' mass killing in Rogun-ri during the Korean War was disclosed, the defector noted, saying: They will fight to drive the yankees, aggressors and murderers, out of South Korea.
He further said: I will do my best to terminate such practices as the misery of life and family I suffered, the South Korean authorities' shocking moves to do harm to the fellow countrymen, continued atrocities of the GIs, and the pro-U.S., pro-Japanese ruling quarters' treachery as soon as possible, and to hasten the day when the 70 million fellow countrymen will lead a happy life in one reunified country, holding Kim Jong Il in high esteem as its President.
His daughter Ri Son Mi said: I had badly hated my mother for her leaving home. But here in the north I came to feel, seeing children learn and grow in happiness, that South Korean society is worse than the mother.