The South Korean immigration and labor laws make finding work south of the border incredibly difficult. North Korean expats are confined to menial service sector and grueling industrial work while being largely cut out of South Korean social life due to heavy stigmas against them. Its an incredibly hard life and not remotely like the glamorous existence of social elites that Americans claim drive the periodic defections.
They need access to a better place. I suppose they just get financially stuck in S Korea? Or do the move on to other countries too, more willing to give them a chance?
North Korean expats are functionally stateless, so it is very difficult to leave South Korea even when they do have money.
The largest portion of the Korean diaspora live in China and Russia.
Why don’t we have a law for North Korea like the Cuban Adjustment Act that allows anyone who makes it out of the country to quickly become a permanent resident, without regard for how they got out of their country. The situation seems fairly similar, where encouraging more defectors makes the target country look bad, and it can deprive them of workers.
Who's 'we' here?
I suppose the US, but it would probably have to involve us paying for moving them to the US from South Korea. Otherwise South Korea could have such a program so that they can become residents with actual rights (or maybe they already do).
We (US) could run the program from our embassy. Unsure how we’d help them get money though. Can the US embassy in SK permit people to work for US companies or something, to open up a portion of the market for these people to legally work?
I guess I’m not so clear on what portion of their fucked status is coming from law, what’s coming from culture, and what’s just the desperation of total poverty as a result of arriving with nothing.
Because South Koreans don't have ambitions of building up a large militant ex-pat community to try a Bay of Pigs on Pyongyang.
Is it difficult because airlines and whatnot won’t carry them, or because the receiving country won’t let them immigrate due to being “stateless”?
Are they stateless in a way someone coming from Bolivia to the US isn’t, because NK’s outside of some globally-recognized state system? I’ve never considered this before.
The 18% figure is a biased sample from an anti-DPRK NGO. More comprehensive research into North Korean defectors by Cho Cheon-hyeon for his book Defectors indicate that most North Korean defectors simply want to make money in China, with only about 40% of defectors wanting to go to South Korea.
So I did misremember, but my point still stands on the fact that most of them don't want to defect to South Korea, even before taking into account that even at their 2009 peak defectors were a tiny fraction of a percent of North Korea's population and the existence of them in no way implicates all of North Korean society in secretly wanting to escape.
If so few people want to leave, why are so many resources directed into preventing people from leaving? I can't think of any other country that works so hard to keep their citizens from escaping. Usually the largest barrier to leaving a country is the policies of the country you're entering.
The fact they're called defectors says it all. Anywhere else they'd be called emigrants.
That last statement is meaningless given the crazy levels of security they have on keeping people in. If they took away all the restrictions on leaving then the numbers would go through the roof.
About 18% of North Korean defectors regret it.
The number one reason is wanting to see family and friends who are still trapped in North Korea.
Around 20% of defectors have considered returning to North Korea. But that has less to do with the appeal of the North than the poor treatment of expats in the South.
The South Korean immigration and labor laws make finding work south of the border incredibly difficult. North Korean expats are confined to menial service sector and grueling industrial work while being largely cut out of South Korean social life due to heavy stigmas against them. Its an incredibly hard life and not remotely like the glamorous existence of social elites that Americans claim drive the periodic defections.
They need access to a better place. I suppose they just get financially stuck in S Korea? Or do the move on to other countries too, more willing to give them a chance?
North Korean expats are functionally stateless, so it is very difficult to leave South Korea even when they do have money.
The largest portion of the Korean diaspora live in China and Russia.
Why don’t we have a law for North Korea like the Cuban Adjustment Act that allows anyone who makes it out of the country to quickly become a permanent resident, without regard for how they got out of their country. The situation seems fairly similar, where encouraging more defectors makes the target country look bad, and it can deprive them of workers.
Who's 'we' here?
I suppose the US, but it would probably have to involve us paying for moving them to the US from South Korea. Otherwise South Korea could have such a program so that they can become residents with actual rights (or maybe they already do).
We (US) could run the program from our embassy. Unsure how we’d help them get money though. Can the US embassy in SK permit people to work for US companies or something, to open up a portion of the market for these people to legally work?
I guess I’m not so clear on what portion of their fucked status is coming from law, what’s coming from culture, and what’s just the desperation of total poverty as a result of arriving with nothing.
Because South Koreans don't have ambitions of building up a large militant ex-pat community to try a Bay of Pigs on Pyongyang.
Is it difficult because airlines and whatnot won’t carry them, or because the receiving country won’t let them immigrate due to being “stateless”?
Are they stateless in a way someone coming from Bolivia to the US isn’t, because NK’s outside of some globally-recognized state system? I’ve never considered this before.
The 18% figure is a biased sample from an anti-DPRK NGO. More comprehensive research into North Korean defectors by Cho Cheon-hyeon for his book Defectors indicate that most North Korean defectors simply want to make money in China, with only about 40% of defectors wanting to go to South Korea.
So I did misremember, but my point still stands on the fact that most of them don't want to defect to South Korea, even before taking into account that even at their 2009 peak defectors were a tiny fraction of a percent of North Korea's population and the existence of them in no way implicates all of North Korean society in secretly wanting to escape.
If so few people want to leave, why are so many resources directed into preventing people from leaving? I can't think of any other country that works so hard to keep their citizens from escaping. Usually the largest barrier to leaving a country is the policies of the country you're entering.
The fact they're called defectors says it all. Anywhere else they'd be called emigrants.
That last statement is meaningless given the crazy levels of security they have on keeping people in. If they took away all the restrictions on leaving then the numbers would go through the roof.