Do recent changes presage an imminent wave of mass defections?
An Image of Pyongyang citizens waiting in a que for public bus. More and more residents in North Korea are expressing willingness to move to the South Korea recently (Image: iStock.com/Omer Serkan Bakir.)
The arrival in South Korea of a senior North Korean diplomat based in Cuba, which was confirmed earlier this month by Seoul’s intelligence agency, highlights the increasing pressures that are likely to prompt more defections, both among the elite and ordinary citizens.
Ri Il-kyu was tasked with preventing Havana from signing diplomatic relations with Seoul. The two countries announced ties in February, by which time Ri had already fled with his wife and child.
But his real motive, he said, lay deeper than avoiding punishment for his failure.
“The exploitation of labor in North Korean society and the unfair evaluation system were the most fundamental reasons,” he told KBS-TV.
“I was disillusioned with the North Korean regime, thinking that the society had no future, that it was bleak, and that it would only become worse. Despite having achieved a lot and expecting to live without much hardship until old age, I wondered about my child’s future. I could no longer see a future together with this society,” he said.
Several factors conspire to encourage defection. Besides the rapid tightening of North Korea-Russia relations and other foreign policy changes, the increasing status of defectors in South Korea, the military confrontation over the DMZ, as well as internal political and economic instability are all likely to stimulate North Koreans at all levels to want to escape.
While each story has its own unique qualities, the pattern of defection from the socialist North to the capitalist South has become an inseparable feature of modern history. There have been some cases of southerners fleeing to the North, but the overwhelming majority have been the other way with North Koreans choosing South Korea as their destination because they consider it their homeland.
This history began just four days after the July 27, 1953, ceasefire that ended the Korean War when Lieutenant Colonel Ahn Chang-sik of the North Korean 15th Division crossed the DMZ. Since then about 34,000 defectors have settled in South Korea.
He was followed by a trickle of escapees, mostly soldiers running across the DMZ. But in the 1990s, it became a flood as ordinary people escaped the famine.
The numbers have sharply decreased over the past five years due to the North’s tight border controls and its cooperation with China in repatriating people who enter illegally.
Another factor deterring northerners was the forced repatriation of some defectors by the previous administration in Seoul.
Under the current government of Yoon Suk-yeol that policy has changed. Yoon’s establishment of July 14 as an official North Korean Defectors’ Day holiday has reignited the flame.
“We will never return any North Korean compatriot who seeks refuge in South Korea,” Yoon said in a speech marking the occasion.
A defector named Kim who attended the event on that day said the pledge reminded him of the image of defectors being dragged back through the Joint Security Area. “I shed tears thinking that there would no longer be unfair treatment of defectors in South Korea,” he said.
“The establishment of North Korean Defectors’ Day gave us new hope,” said Jung, who is from Onsong, North Hamgyong Province.
A defector named Jo predicted that, as news of Yoon’s position regarding defectors spreads in the North, the steady flow of defections will increase.
“When overseas workers decide to defect, their two main concerns are leaving their families behind and how the South will treat them,” he said. “The regime warns them against defection, saying the South would use them for biological experiments or try to send them back as spies. North Korean Defectors’ Day has removed that second concern.”
According to a source in North Korea, residents near the border in Yanggang and North Hamgyong provinces are hearing more people expressing their intention to go to the South.
“People here often listen to South Korean broadcasts through radios and satellite TVs to avoid the eyes of the regime,” the source said. “Someone in Hyesan City told me that the South had designated a North Korean Defectors’ Day and was waiting for us. She said she has no hope left and that if there is even a slight opportunity, she will go to South Korea.”
Broadcasts across the DMZ
Another factor that will encourage a different type of defector is the psychological warfare broadcasts across the DMZ which South Korea has just resumed in response to the barrage of balloons containing excrement and garbage, which the North has sent in the last two months.
“The broadcasts have an undeniable psychological impact on North Korean soldiers,” said Kang, 43, who escaped across the DMZ in 2010. “I developed a desire to go south because of similar broadcasts. If you hear them a lot, South Korea loses its unfamiliarity, and you gain the desire to live there, and the confidence that you can live there.”
“The broadcasts taught me that I was a slave,” said Lee, 31, a former officer who entered South Korea in 2022. “At first, I didn’t believe it, but gradually the logic got to me and I eventually understood and believed it. Once I realized that I was living a slave’s life, I didn’t want to bury my precious youth anymore.”
Even if soldiers hearing the broadcasts don’t defect immediately, after completing military service, they become people the regime can no longer trust, he said.
“I think the restarting of the broadcasts is a fatal blow for the regime,” he said.
Weakening China relations, strengthening Russia relations
China is the most reliable enabler of the Kim regime through its policy of forcibly returning defectors. The government in Beijing was hit by international public opinion this year by forcibly repatriating hundreds of North Korean escapees.
However, North Korea’s recent coziness with Russia comes at China’s expense. Since the end of June, for example, North Korea has been using Russian satellites instead of ChinaSat 12 to broadcast signals, the unification ministry in Seoul said. Reuters also quoted South Korean satellite broadcast providers saying that signals from North Korea’s Chosun Central TV are now being newly transmitted through Russia’s Express 103 satellite.
China expressed its displeasure by demanding the repatriation of all North Korean workers in China whose visas have expired. Beijing also sent a diplomatic delegation to South Korea to discuss diplomatic and military issues.
Instead of getting the message, North Korea is further showcasing its special friendship with Russia. Kim Jong-un met with a military delegation led by Deputy Defense Minister Aleksey Krivoruchko on July 18. A delegation headed by Kim Geum-cheol, Director of the Kim Il-sung Military Academy, headed to Moscow for talks.
Deteriorating internal situation in the North
After Kim Jong-un set a high exchange rate of 8,900 North Korean Won to the dollar at state-run exchange offices in October 2023 (when the market rate was 8,500), the rate skyrocketed.
Within a month, it almost doubled. Prices soared. Living conditions have gone from bad to worse.
Already back in November, a recent defector from Onjin County, South Hwanghae Province, told an interviewer that people had starved to death after the end of the pandemic.
“We cannot afford to eat in the markets. Beggars snatch food from passersby. There are continuous rumors in Byeok Song and Yongyeon that cannibalism persists,” he said, referring to two of the poorest counties. “It feels like something big could happen anytime.”
The defection of Ri Il-kyu’s family from Cuba feeds this expectation. Ri told South Korea’s TV Chosun that Kim Jong-un’s recent dropping of unification as a goal removed any hope of a better life.
“Every North Korean parent’s wish is to give their children a better life,” he said. “This can only be achieved through reunification. Kim Jong-un’s statement that there will be no reunification has taken away our last hope.”
Zane is a defector from North Korea. Before defecting in 2022, he worked at a state-run North Korean company based in Russia. Prior to his assignment in Russia, he had worked at the external affairs department of a company affiliated with the DPRK's Escort Bureau. He graduated from Pyongyang University of Architecture.
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