WOW. Learning how to shop in supermarkets ... wow, just wow.

The things that we take for granted!

quote:

The Associated Press ANSEONG, South Korea (Jul 9, 2009) Dressed in white or yellow T-shirts and black slacks, the dozens of people at yesterday's ceremony looked like typical South Korean company trainees. But the high security at the fenced compound hinted at a different kind of induction. They are North Korean defectors learning a new way of life in a capitalist society. They have flooded South Korea in recent years to escape hunger and harsh political oppression in their communist homeland. Hanawon, located in the farming village Anseong, is the government facility where they go through a three-month course that teaches computer skills and such everyday lessons as how to use ATMs and shop in supermarkets. "While in the North, we knew there were computers, but we lived without ever touching a (keyboard) even when we were over 30 years old as we were eking out a daily living. But now it's very fun and interesting to learn the computer here," said one defector, identified only by her family name Lim. Hanawon, 75 kilometres south of Seoul, has expanded as the flow of asylum seekers has picked up. More than 16,000 North Koreans have defected to the South since the Korean War ended in 1953, according to South Korea's Unification Ministry, which handles South Korea's relations with the North.

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Whenever you go and buy something, you are affecting someone somewhere, be it environment, a person, or a community - you're making a statement with what you buy. So make it a smart choice ... Its a big picture