SEOUL, South Korea — When Ju Jin-ho arrived here from North Korea in 2006, it was as if he had come to an alien continent, not just the southern half of the Korean Peninsula.

Even though Mr. Ju, a 14-yearold defector, was placed in a school with children a year or two younger, most of his classmates were a head taller. They teased him, calling him a “red.” They were far ahead of him in subjects like mathematics.

“During class breaks, they talked about nothing but computer games,” said Mr. Ju, who is now 17.

“I started playing them so I could join their conversations. I became addicted. My eyesight deteriorated. My grades got worse.”

Since last summer, however, he has been enrolled in a new program that seeks to overcome the yawning cultural gap that has developed in the six decades during which the Communist North and the capitalist South have been divided. The program, brings together South Korean teenagers and young defectors from North Korea in a rare experiment here in building affinity — and preparing for possible reunification.

The program, called the Weekend Program for South and North Korean Teenagers Together, was begun last August by the Reverend Benjamin H. Yoon, 80, the leader ofm the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights.

“Although we share the same genes, South and North Koreans live like completely different peoples, with different accents, different ways of thinking and behaving,” Mr. Yoon said. “We forgot that before Korea was divided, we lived in the same country, marrying each other.”

The program has brought together students from Kyunggi Girls’ High School in Seoul with young North Korean defectors for extracurricular activities.

They attend concerts and cook. The North Koreans have shown the South Koreans how to harvest yams and make scarecrows. The teenagers from the South give those from the North tips on how to succeed socially and academically.

Moon Sung-il, a 14-year-old North Korean, brought the South Koreans to tears when he recounted his two-and-a-half-year journey with other defectors. But he shocked them when he said that none of that was as daunting as a South Korean classroom.

“I could hardly understand anything the teacher said,” he said. “My classmates, who were all a year or two younger than I was, taunted me as a ‘poor soup-eater from the North.’ I fought them with my fists.”

After mingling with the North Korean teenagers for a semester, the South Koreans said they believed more strongly in unification, but less for economic reasons now than for something closer to good will.

Hur Ji-young, a freshman at Kyunggi high school, said: “Before I joined this program, I considered unification with a calculator, not with my heart for fellow Koreans in the North.” (NYT)