Koeran government announced today that South Korea will not accept mass defectors any more into the country.

Unification Minister Chung Dong-young declared Tuesday that Seoul will stop allowing large groups of North Korean defectors to enter South Korea, saying that government has no desire to undermine the communist country’s leadership.

“The North’s conception that we are trying to shake the Pyongyang regime by bringing defectors to Seoul is quite different from our policy,” Chung said during an MBC radio interview. “We disapprove of the mass defections. There will be no more large-scale arrivals of defectors in Seoul.”

South Korea is hoping that by making it as difficult as possible for the defectors to come to South Korea and that they will not bother to leave North Korea in the first place if they are not guaranteed asylum in the South. What the South Korean government is forgetting is that these people are still going to defect because life in China is still better than in North Korea. China cannot crack down to hard on the defectors because they have the Olympics coming up in 2008 and do not want to do anything to tarnish those games. So the defectors are going to keep pouring into China for a better life as long as the Chinese doesn’t crack down severely on them.

That makes me wonder next, how much the US government is going to get involved now in relocating defectors to the US with the passage of the North Korean Human Rights Act? With the hope of relocating to the US the desperate North Korean defectors will probably increase their rate of defection from the North. What would be the North Korean response to this? They would claim the US is kidnapping their citizens but besides empty threats there is really nothing else they could do. Better yet would be the South Korean reaction. President Roh would be in a really tough spot if he comes out against the US providing asylum to North Korean defectors. It would be really ironic for a former human rights lawyer to advocate to deny North Korean defectors basic human rights by relocating to the US. Never the less, it is going to be interesting to see how this plays out if the US begins to allow refugees to relocate state side. It will definitely be an interesting year for North Korea watchers like myself.