In 2013, while I was mentoring new North Korean arrivals at a civil society organisation in Seoul, I met Mr. Yu, a well-known North Korean migrant who worked as a civil servant at Seoul City Hall. To many of the young people I supported, he represented hope—a concrete example that successful integration was possible. But everything shifted overnight when the National Intelligence Service (NIS) suddenly arrested him on fabricated espionage charges. Within hours, he went from being celebrated as a role model to being publicly condemned as a dangerous “spy.” The reaction was swift and brutal: all North Korean migrants were painted as potential threats, as if suspicion was part of their identity.

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Naturally, my mentees were terrified. Many of them began to worry that they too could be accused at any moment, especially under the harsh National Security Law. They felt the weight of the public’s backlash deeply, and it exposed something I was only beginning to understand—the extent to which the division habitus shapes everyday life in South Korea, creating a system that quietly but powerfully excludes. Two years later, when Mr. Yu was fully acquitted, it became clear that the charges had been manufactured to spark ideological conflict for political purposes.