North Korean Economy Watch

UPDATE 4 (2011-10-9): According to Yonhap, only 20 North Korean defectors are working as public servants in South Korea:

Only 20 North Korean defectors work as public servants in South Korea, an opposition lawmaker said Sunday, the latest sign that North Koreans are struggling to join mainstream South Korean society.

The figure represents just a small fraction of the more than 22,000 North Korean defectors in South Korea.

In June, Cho Myung-chul, a former economics professor at the North’s elite Kim Il-sung University, was appointed to lead a government body in charge of educating citizens on unification with North Korea.

Cho is the first North Korean defector to become a senior government official in South Korea.

Nineteen others work in the Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, in the Seoul Metropolitan Government, and in Incheon city, as well as in Gyeonggi Province, which surrounds Seoul, according to Park Joo-sun of the opposition Democratic Party.

Separately, 38 North Korean defectors are temporary workers in the central and local governments under a program aimed at expanding employment of North Korean defectors, Park said, citing the Unification Ministry.

A recent survey showed the unemployment rate of North Korean defectors stood at 9.2 percent, about three times higher than that of other South Koreans.

UPDATE 3 (2011-9-23): Yonhap reports that DPRK student defectors increase 3.5-fold since 2006:

A total of 1,681 elementary, middle and high school students fleeing from the communist country reside here in 2011, up 235.9 percent from 475 in 2006, according to the report by the education ministry and submitted to parliament for a regular audit.

Elementary school students accounted for 60.7 percent of the defector students below college level, followed by high school students with 22.2 percent and middle school students with 17.1 percent, the report showed.

The total number of North Koreans defecting to the South surpassed the 20,000 mark in November last year for the first time, almost double from around 10,200 in 2006, according to the Unification Ministry data.

Meanwhile, the dropout rate of North Korean defectors in schools here has gradually decreased over the past few years, from 10.8 percent in 2007 to 6.1 percent in 2008 to 4.7 percent in 2010, according to the report, a sign that efforts to help support young North Korean defectors paid off.

Reasons for their withdrawal from the regular schooling include adjustment failure, responsibilities for housework and taking a school qualification exam instead of completing high school for entering college, the report showed.

UPDATE 2 (2011-9-19): Yonhap reports that 378 N. Korean defectors under protection of S. Korea’s overseas missions.  According to the report:

“As of the end of July, a total of 378 North Korean defectors are under the protection of overseas missions and the ministry is working with relevant nations and international organizations to swiftly transfer them to South Korea,” the ministry said in a report to the National Assembly.

The number of defectors arriving in South Korea via its diplomatic missions totaled 2,423 last year, 2,927 in 2009, 2,089 in 2008, 2,544 in 2007 and 2,018 in 2006, according to the report.

From January to August this year, 1,797 defectors arrived in the South via the diplomatic missions, it said.

UPDATE 1 (2011-7-4): According to Yonhap:

The number of North Korean defectors to South Korea has exceeded 1,400 [1,428] in the first six months of the year, up 14 percent compared to the same period last year, a government official here said Monday.

The Choson Ilbo also reports on the emigration numbers:

The Unification Ministry on Monday said 52 percent of the 1,428 North Koreans who came to South Korea in the first half of this year took a year or less to complete the journey, significantly more than the 30 percent in 2009 and 39 percent in 2010.

…

After a sudden 19-percent drop last year, the number of North Koreans who come to the South is growing again. It steadily increased until 2009 to hit 2,927. But amid growing unrest, the regime cracked down on defectors and it seems asked China to help. But the Chinese crackdowns simply hastened defectors’ move to South Korea, so the figure skyrocketed again this year and is likely to exceed 3,000 by the end of this year, according to the ministry official.

Meanwhile, 47 percent of the new arrivals in the first half of this year had family members already living in the South, up from 36.4 percent from last year. Those who were accompanied by their families also took up a bigger share with 49 percent, up 10 percent from last year. The official said the reason is that many whole families are escaping as they see no hope in the isolated country and plan to go to South Korea from the start. “It’s not just because of economic hardship,” he added.

There are a total of 21,788 North Korean defectors in the South, of whom 75 percent are between the age of 20 and 49, and 72 percent women.

ORIGINAL POST (2011-6-13): According to KBS:

The number of North Korean defectors who entered South Korea this year numbered around eleven-hundred at the end of May.

This is up 14 percent from the same time last year.

A Unification Ministry official on Monday told reporters that the rise is considered unusual given the North has tightened border security.

Read the full story here:
Seoul says flow of N. Korean defectors likely to continue
Yonhap
2011-7-14

No. of NK Defectors who Enter S.Korea Rises 14%
KBS
2011-6-13

Sebastian Strangio points out a few interesting facts in the Asia Times about DPRK defection through Cambodia:

1. The Cambodian government has quietly worked to facilitate the processing of North Koreans as they move onto South Korea.

According to the US cables, the processing of North Korean arrivals is done in a quiet, ad hoc manner. In an October 2006 dispatch (06PHNOMPENH1927), Om Yentieng, one of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s advisors, was quoted as saying that the processing of North Koreans in Cambodia was “the result of an understanding reached between the prime minister and the South Korean ambassador to Cambodia”.

Secrecy was clearly a priority for the South Koreans. In a July 2007 cable (07PHNOMPENH925) documenting a meeting between South Korean and US officials to discuss the fate of five North Korean refugees in Cambodia who were seeking resettlement in the US, the South Koreans were “preoccupied with conveying their desire that the ROK [Republic of Korea - South Korea] pipeline for North Korean refugees not be publicly revealed”. They also demanded it remain separate from Washington’s own North Korean “refugee processing pipeline”.

A dispatch from April 2008 (08PHNOMPENH316) expressed gratitude to Cambodian officials for “expeditiously processing” the exit permits of two North Korean individuals who departed for the US on April 16. American officials were also “impressed” at Cambodian immigration officials’ “discreet handling” of the cases of another group of North Koreans who departed the previous November.

“During the quiet November departure, no one at the airport noticed the North Koreans’ comings and goings,” it stated. (According to figures released by the Office of Immigration Statistics at the Department of Homeland Security in May, the US resettled more than 100 North Korean refugees between 2006 and 2010 under legislation to help improve human rights conditions in the reclusive country.)

2. Cambodia is no longer a major hub in the underground railraod.  Thailand is now the prefered destination.

It appears, however, that Cambodia has since declined in importance as a conduit for North Korean defectors in favor of a route through Laos into northern Thailand. Pastor Chun Ki-won, head of the Seoul-based refugee aid group Durihana said that Cambodia – along with Mongolia – was one of the few Asian countries willing to aid North Koreans at the start of the 2000s when refugee flows were still relatively low.

Durihana has helped around 900 North Korean defectors reach South Korea over the years. Chun’s first aid mission, which he undertook in July 2001, involved the smuggling of a North Korean woman and her child from northeast China to Phnom Penh via Vietnam. Cambodia increased in importance after December 2001, Chun said, when he was arrested in a Chinese crackdown trying to smuggle a group of refugees across the Mongolian border.

Chun said that due to increased vigilance by Vietnamese authorities, most North Korean refugees now arrive in Southeast Asia via Laos and Thailand. The claim is mirrored in figures from the Thai Immigration Bureau which reveal a 50-fold increase in North Korean arrivals from Laos, from 46 in 2004 – around the time arrivals in Cambodia seem to have begun their decline – to 2,482 in 2010. 870 North Korean refugee arrivals have already been recorded between January and April of this year.

In a 2006 cable from the US consulate in Chiang Mai (06CHIANGMAI79), one official predicted that the increase in North Korean refugee arrivals – then still fairly contained – “may yet be the tip of the iceberg”. “[E]vidence suggests that the stream of refugees is unlikely to decrease, with a network of Christian missionary organizations in Thailand and southern China cooperating to bring in more refugees through Yunnan province, Burma [Myanmar], and Laos and into Thailand’s Chiang Rai province,” the cable stated.

Read the full story here:
All aboard North Korea’s refugee railroad
Asia Times
Sebastian Strangio
2011-8-3

(2011-7-14) The International Crisis Group published a report on DPRK defectors living in South Korea.  Here is the executive summary.  Here is the full report (PDF).  Below are some statistics that others might like to know for future reference (Footnotes can be found in the original document):

There were only 86 defectors from 1990 to 1994, and the numbers remained under 100 each year until 1999. North Korea’s deteriorating economy and a subsequent famine in the mid-1990s, along with an erosion of border controls that opened an escape route into China, began to push the numbers higher by 2000. In 2001, 583 North Koreans arrived in South Korea. The following year the figure nearly doubled to 1,138. By 2007, about 10,000 North Korean defectors had arrived in the South, and by December 2010, the number reached 20,360. The number is expected to remain steady at about 2,500-3,000 per year or even to increase, although slightly fewer defectors arrived in 2010 due to tightened restrictions in North Korea, including greater punishment for attempting to defect.

…

In 1998, only 12 per cent of the 947 defectors in the South were female. But they surpassed males in 2002, and in 2010 they accounted for 76 per cent of the 2,376 defectors who arrived in the South. By January 2011, the cumulative total of defectors nineteen years of age and younger was 3,174 – 15.4 per cent of all defectors in the South.

About 70 per cent of the defectors arriving recently have graduated from middle school or high school, about 9 per cent have graduated from junior colleges, and about 8 per cent are college graduates. About 50 per cent were unemployed or dependents before they left the North, and about 39 per cent were workers.

…

According to Pak Chŏn-ran [Park Jeon-ran], a specialist on defectors at Seoul National University’s Institute for Unification Studies, “the health status of defectors who left their families in the North is five times worse than that of defectors who escaped North Korea with relatives or friends”.107 She also found in a study that 20 per cent of ailments afflicting defectors were psychosomatic. The medical staff at a government reintegration centre reported that about 70 per cent of their patients exhibited symptoms of depression or other stress-related disorders.

…

In 2007, researchers from Seoul National University disclosed that in interviews conducted with over 200 defectors, 80 per cent indicated they had contracted at least one ailment since arriving in the South. In April of the same year, the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs released a study on the health of 6,500 defectors who had arrived in the South between 2000 and 2005. Some 1.8 per cent were infected with syphilis in 2004 and 2.1 per cent in 2005. About 20 per cent of 700 women aged twenty to 49 suffered from some type of gynaecological disorder.

The Korea Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) reports that the average height and weight of defectors is much lower than their South Korean counterparts. The average North Korean male defector is 164.4cm tall and weighs 60.2kg, compared to the average South Korean man, who stands 171.4cm tall and weighs 72kg. The figures for North Korean female defectors and South Korean women are: 154.2cm and 158.4cm; 52.8kg and 57.1kg. The average teenage male defector’s height is 155.7cm, 13.5cm less than the average South Korean counterpart; the average weight is 47.3kg, 13.5kg less than that of the South Korean. The average heights and weights for teenage female defectors and South Korean teenage females are: 151.1cm and 159.4cm; 46.9kg and 52.3kg.

…

In January 2011, only 50 per cent of defectors were employed (10,248 of 20,539), and most of these were in unskilled manual labour jobs (7,901, or 77 per cent of those employed). Only 439 defectors (4 per cent) were working in skilled jobs, and 381 were working in administrative positions.

…

Those who do find work earn on average W1.27 million (about $1,170) per month, which is just above the minimum subsistence level for a family of three.

These levels of unemployment persist despite subsidies for employers who hire defectors; the government provides up to W500,000 of monthly salaries for the first year and up to W700,000 of monthly salaries for the second year.

…

Many defectors reach the South with the help of people known as brokers. The journey can cost anywhere from $2,500 to $15,000. Many brokers will defer payment until the government in Seoul has paid resettlement money. To prevent a developing business in bringing defectors to the South, in 2005 the government cut the payments from a W10 million (about $9,400) lump sum to W6 million (about $5,600) paid out over several years. This has left many defectors with considerable debts.

More posts on this topic below:

(more…)

According to KBS Global:

The Voice of America (VOA) said Wednesday that two North Korean defectors were granted refugee status and settled in the U.S. in June.

The VOA referenced a report by the U.S. State Department that said from October last year through June, a total of 21 North Koreans entered the U.S. as refugees.

The VOA reported that since the passage of the North Korean Human Rights Act in the U.S. in 2004, the number of North Korean refugees entering the U.S. has increased to 122.

Previous stories stories about DPRK emigration can be found here.

According to a recent article in the BBC:

Mrs Kwon says she makes $2,000-$3,000 (£1,250-£1,875) a month, helping people escape. And she says that is nothing to be ashamed of.

…

“Nowadays, they’re asking for 3.5m won per person to bring someone out of North Korea to China,” she says.

“That’s about $3,500. And from China to South Korea would cost another $2,500. I don’t have that kind of money, so I had to say ‘No’. The cost is rising because it’s getting more difficult to get people out.”

Recent reports – which are very difficult to verify – say North Korea is tightening security along its border with China; the main route for defectors trying to leave. As the risks increase, so does the price.

Additional Information:
1. Story citation: Shadowy world of Korea’s people smugglers, BBC, Lucy Williamson, 2011-7-6

2. Previous posts on emigration from the DPRK to the ROK.

By Michael Rank

A Chinese report has highlighted how villagers on the North Korean border live in fear of desperate North Korean refugees who rob and steal from them.

The villagers have launched a new internet monitoring system to guard against the refugees who frequently escape across the Tumen river, according to the Chinese-language report.

Inhabitants of Sanhe, near the town of Longjing in Jilin province, were in constant fear of “illegal border-crossers who would rob, steal and cause disturbances” until, in cooperation with the police, they installed an alarm system to warn each other of possible infiltrators.

Local police chief Wang Zeqiang is quoted as saying the system was “rather primitive” when it was first launched in 2003, consisting of a red light that people would raise in front of their houses when illegal border-crossers were detected, but three years later it was upgraded to a more sophisticated alarm system. Last month it was upgraded further, involving the internet and mobile phones. The report gives no details although it says that apart from increasing border security the internet also gives the villagers access to farming and scientific information.

The Sanhe area, which covers 182 sq km, has only 1,600 inhabitants, 90% of whom are ethnic Korean, and most young people have left the area to seek work elsewhere, including South Korea and Japan. (A separate report shows photos of another border village, Nanping near Helong, which has similarly been blighted by young people leaving the area. Only 1,700 people still live there out of an original population of 4,000, while the primary school has five teachers and only three children).

“This journalist walked around [Sanhe] for over 10 minutes and only saw old people, women and children. But the Sanhe area faces danger from across the river,” the report says.

To illustrate the threat posed by refugees, it tells how in spring 2003 a North Korean woman in her 70s and her son in his 40s were killed in a border incident in Sanhe, and also mentions how in 2004, after the red light system had been installed, villagers seized a North Korean border guard who had crossed the river and begged for food from a farmer who had just slaughtered some animals.

The report says the river is only 50 metres wide at Sanhe and is shallow enough to be crossed by children.

It notes that borders “are not only a geographical concept, but also involve extremely complex [matters of] security and struggle.”

The police chief said that after the monitoring system was launched, “there have basically been no more cases of illegal border-crossers entering the village to take part in illegal activities.” However, he added, “But border security must not be relaxed because ordinary people are the most direct victims” [if it were relaxed].

China rarely reports on incidents on the North Korean border, but in 2009 NKEW told how the bodies of 56 North Koreans attempting to flee to China, including seven children, were found floating in the Yalu river in 2003.

The information came from a notice issued by police in Baishan in Jilin province which said that postmortems showed that all the people had been shot. “The evidence suggests that they had been shot by Korean armed border guards when attempting to cross illicitly into China,” it added. The notice, which could not be authenticated, was found on an unnamed Chinese blog which had apparently reposted it from bbs.163.com.

UPDATE: Adam Cathcart provides some interesting context to this story.

…by expanding the capacities of Hanawon.

According to Yonhap:

South Korea will build a new facility to accommodate a growing number of North Koreans fleeing poverty and political oppression from their communist homeland, an official said Wednesday.

The move is the latest reminder that the flow of North Korean defectors isn’t letting up despite Pyongyang’s harsh crackdown on escapees. Seoul is now home to more than 21,700 North Koreans.

South Korea has already been running two other resettlement centers, known as Hanawon near Seoul to help the defectors better adjust to life in the capitalist South.

Still, the government will break ground for another resettlement center in Hwacheon on July 7 as the two current facilities are running at full capacity, Unification Ministry spokeswoman Lee Jong-joo told reporters.

The area is about 118 kilometers northeast of Seoul.

She also said the government is planning to offer re-education for former North Korean teachers, doctors and other experts in the new resettlement center to be built by the end of 2012.

The announcement comes amid the latest dispute between the two Koreas over nine North Koreans who defected to the South earlier this month.

Seoul has indicated it will not return the North Korean defectors despite the North’s request for repatriation. The North usually claims South Korea kidnaps its citizens, charges that Seoul denies.

Some defectors have criticized Hanawon.

Read the full story here:
S. Korea to build new resettlement facility for N. Korean defectors
Yonhap
2011-6-22

Pictured above (Google Earth): Hyesan City’s Kanggu-dong (강구동), Wiyon-dong (위연동), and Songpong-dong (송봉동) mentioned in the Daily NK story below.

According to Daily NK:

A source from Hyesan revealed the news yesterday, saying, “On the 11th, an NSA agent responsible for the Kanggu area of Hyesan committed suicide at his office. In one soldier’s testimony during the process of an investigation into the border guard unit, it came out that he had aided smuggling and defections, and had taken bribes. Out of fear of punishment, he killed himself.”

According to the source, there has recently been one other similar case in the city. In that instance, an NSA agent responsible for the Wuiyeon area killed himself at his house during April, apparently during an NSA investigation centering on the fact that an abnormally large number of defector families were there.

In another instance, NK Intellectuals Solidarity recently reported a case from February, where an NSA agent covering the Songbong area of the city killed himself at the time of his arrest by smashing his head into a wall. In that case, however, the NSA investigation was focused around the sale of 1kg of narcotics.

This is causing tension in the city, the source went on, explaining, “They are warning people not to gossip to others about issues related to the National Security Agency. The rumor now circulating is that there will be an in depth investigation by the central Party soon, so the feeling here is uneasy.”

In North Korea, a local NSA agent is responsible for roughly 1,000 households or less. Through roughly 40 or 50 people’s unit heads and Women’s Union cadres, the agent obtains information on the activities of local people and passes on instructions to them, thus playing a key role in the preservation of the system.

For smugglers and defectors, stepping outside this surveillance net is both important, and also hard. For that reason, smugglers commonly buy off NSA agents. Sources and defectors both agree that abetting defection is rarer, since it is punished more harshly, with whole extended families facing extreme consequences.

Ordinary city residents, meanwhile, are not sad to see the back of any agent who takes his own life, the source added, pointing out that they are one of the most hated groups in North Korea.

Hyesan is an ideal location from which to stage a defection.  Though it is the capital of Ryanggang Province (Yangang, 량강도) , it is both geographically and administratively remote—on the Chinese and DPRK sides of the border.  The border itself is a very shallow, sometimes dry, Yalu River basin which is lined in both directions with railway service.

Read the full story here:
Spate of NSA Agent Suicides in Hyesan
Daily NK
Lee Seok Young
2011-6-17

According to the Korea Herald:

North Korea is a country that has been almost entirely isolated from news around the world for the past 60 years. The regime in Pyongyang allows Internet access to only a fraction of government officials and its power elite as it prepares for a third-generation hereditary succession to a young man in his late 20s.

The people of North Korea have been brainwashed since childhood to pay respect to the country’s idolized “Great Leader” Kim Il-sung and his son “Dear Leader” Jong-il.

So was Kim Hung-kwang until he began watching South Korean movies and drama in 1995.

“Toddlers are taught by their parents to say ‘thank you, Dear Leader’ before every meal,” Kim said in an interview with The Korea Herald.

“I had been a brainwashed, proud member of the (North Korean Workers’) party myself, until I came across South Korean films in 1995 and eventually learned that the outside world was much better.”

The computer engineering professor managed to flee the North seven years later and arrived in the South in 2003. He was joined by his family two years later.

Born in the eastern coastal city of Hamheung in 1960, Kim graduated from Kim Chaek University of Technology in Pyongyang, meaning he had been one of the North Korean regime’s highly trusted party members. While working as a professor of computer engineering at the Communist University, he was caught for lending some CDs containing South Korean drama to a friend and was sent to a collective farm as punishment.

This prompted him to defect to the South via China in 2003.

In 2008, he launched North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity with about 300 professors, engineers, doctors, journalists and writers from the North.

Now, he runs a dormitory and school for children of fellow defectors from the North, an Internet broadcasting station and publishes a periodical of articles by his colleagues.

The NK Intellectuals Solidarity is also a well-known source of breaking news from the North such as the currency denomination measure in late 2008 thanks to its informants around the China-North Korea border areas.

About 3,000 mobile phones are believed to be secretly used in the North for business purposes or delivering local information across the border, according to Kim.

“About 10 of them are ours, through which we hear about what’s going on there from our informants,” he said.

The informants in the North face the danger of getting caught by the authorities while speaking on the phone near the Tumen and Yalu Rivers with their co-workers in China.

One of Kim’s informants was caught two years ago on charges of spying and was tortured to death.

“She was a mother of three in her 30s who told us things like how the locals perceive the latest economic policies, but (the North Korean authorities) branded her as a spy,” Kim said.

“(Her death) was traumatizing and made us question if we should keep doing this. But we decided not to stop because otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to know about the inhumane crimes committed in the North.”

Kim’s solidarity has also sent in about 300 USBs technically modified to avoid detection.

The USBs do not contain any propaganda, but information on “what the defectors found surprising in the South,” dozens of new media programs such as PDF viewer, MP3 player software and e-books to enable more North Koreans to view South Korean video and text files, Kim said.

“Contrary to what we had expected, copies of Wikipedia entries turned out to be the most popular (among the North Koreans),” he said.

Currently, only five homepage servers are registered under the North Korean domain (.kr). The country connected itself to the Internet in mid-August, but only a handful of selected people are believed to have access to the Web.

Over 20,000 North Koreans have defected to the South since the Korean War ended in a truce in 1953. Hundreds are entering the South each month now mostly via China.

“I think about 4,000 people will arrive (in the South) next year,” Kim said.

“Women used to take up about 80 percent (of the defectors) before, but lately the percentage of men is going up.”

The North still maintains tight vigilance along its borders, but an increasing number of people manage to avoid the authorities’ eyes mainly thanks to bribery.

“Nowadays, it costs between 3.5 and 4 million won to bribe a single person (a soldier along the border, for example) in order to cross the border. The price goes up as (the North) tightens borderline vigilance,” Kim said.

About the North Korean people’s consciousness that they were being mistreated by the dynastical regime in Pyongyang, Kim said it was still in a “germinal stage.”

Pyongyang has tried to soothe its starving people by promising that food supply will be normalized next year, the deadline Pyongyang has set to become a “strong and prosperous nation.”

“But if the food conditions do not improve next year and turns out that it was all words and no action, people will really turn their backs against the government,” Kim said.

“They will know for sure that they are merely being used by the government. They will think that an individual’s basic rights should be placed above their government and start thinking about why there is such a major gap between what the current regime says and the reality.”

The North Koreans are now starting to learn about the need for a social safety net and how the South Korean society is going about its welfare policies through the limited information they receive from outside, Kim said.

“The third stage will be discussing what they have learned among themselves,” he said.

“Starting from groups of two or three people, the discussions will expand and eventually allow certain groups to take action.”

South Korea has reportedly been making contingency plans for various scenarios including a “sudden change” in the North such as the collapse of the Kim regime that will lead to a massive movement of refugees across the inter-Korean border.

“In case of a sudden change, the South can run a buffer zone just south of the border to temporarily house the refugees and prepare them for life in the South, although blocking the people’s free travel would be another issue,” Kim said.

“But because it would be a temporary measure, I don’t think we need to worry too much about a mass influx of refugees.’

Kim also noted that while preparing for a sudden change or unification, South Koreans should not underestimate the North.

“The South has no nuclear weapons, no inter-continental ballistic missiles, no cyber warfare troops, and most important of all, it suffers from internal conflict,” he said, mentioning an online survey last year that showed that some South Koreans did not trust their own government’s conclusion that the North torpedoed the Cheonan.

Kim said the North was training some 3,000 hackers to attack the IT systems of major South Korean institutions.

The prosecution concluded last month that North Korea was behind the cyber attack that paralyzed the banking system of the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation, or Nonghyup, in April.

“Our website was attacked in the same way they attacked Nonghyup,” Kim said.

“The North is very good at stirring up social conflict in the South, prompting certain pro-North groups to call on the government to ‘appease the North,’ or send money to Pyongyang. Their aim is to set up a pro-North regime in the South,” Kim said.

As for the “pro-North people” in the South, Kim said they seemed to hold an illusion that the North Korean system might settle their personal grudges or social problems in the South despite the fact that the Kim regime’s ideology has failed in reality.

Kim called on the South Korean government to set up a clear set of rules and conditions regarding the extent of humanitarian aid the South can send to the North in cases of natural disasters, for example, so that emergency aid to the North becomes more transparent.

Read the full story here:
N. Koreans use phones to sneak information out
Korea Herald
Kim So-hyun
2011-6-15

According ot the DailyNK:

The North Korean authorities are conducting an extensive investigation into the actions of soldiers attached to border guard units, based on the presumption that such guards are frequently guilty of aiding and abetting defection. Those found to have done so are being arrested and severely punished.

A source from Yangkang Province explained the news yesterday, “For the third time they are conducting an investigation along the border in Kim Jong Eun’s name, but this time it is focused on the soldiers.”

“The decree says to arrest and severely punish soldiers who have aided and abetted in defection, to pull out the roots; so the investigation has been harsh from the very beginning.”

The two previous investigations into defection from the border region, both said to have been launched in the name of the successor, happened in February and April this year, as reported by The Daily NK. However, this is the first time that attention has turned away from defectors themselves and towards those soldiers who help facilitate a lot of the escapes.

“There are two members of an investigation team from Defense Security Command going to every guard post, and they are questioning the soldiers one by one,” the source said.

It is well known both within and without North Korea that border guards are commonly bribed to turn a blind eye to defection. Through very serious questioning and the threat of severe punishment, the authorities are presumably hoping to kill two birds with one stone; both hindering further defections and re-instilling military discipline.

However, the new investigation has already inspired at least two guards from one post to desert instead of face censure, according to the source.

“Two men from a guard post in the Hyesin-dong area of Hyesan took their weapons and deserted, so now they are in the middle of a house-to-house investigation,” the source explained, adding, however, “People are saying, ‘They’ve already fled to China, why the hell would they still be in the country?’”

Although nobody knows why the two men chose to desert, the source said he had heard that they were indeed involved in defections, and feared punishment.

Across the Tumen River in Changbai, China, meanwhile, there is also an unusually intense investigation going on, according to sources there. It is suspected that the two events are related.

A source explained, “Public security officers and soldiers are stopping and investigating cars one by one. I heard that soldiers from North Korea deserted with their guns, so maybe it is because of that.”

Of course, the investigation is hurting small traders, too.

“Big-time smugglers are not having problems,” the Yangkang Province source explained. “But day-to-day small scale smugglers are complaining about the investigation. Border guards are telling them to put up with it just a little more.”

Read the full story here:
Border Investigators Turned on Soldiers
Daily NK
Lee Seok-young
2011-6-3