March 24th, 2013 at 5:51 am » Comments (0)

For those of you living in the Washington, DC area here is an event that may be of interest to you today that is being held by the group NKUS which is the first North Korean activist group that was active in the US:   NKUS’s Facebook link can be viewed here. You can also learn more about the defector pianist Kim Cheol-woong that is performing at this event by reading this New York TImes article that profiled him a few years ago.

March 23rd, 2013 at 2:40 am » Comments (3)

Supposedly an increasing number of North Korean soldiers are defecting to China: Twelve armed North Korean soldiers apparently defected across the border to China’s Jilin Province earlier this month but were captured by Chinese troops and sent back to the North. Late last month, two North Korean soldiers shot and killed their senior officer and fled to Jilin Province, prompting experts to suspect something unusual is going on in army units stationed along the border with China. The 12 North Korean soldiers stationed with a border unit defected across the
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January 26th, 2013 at 3:00 am » Comments (3)

This is something that is a new trend that is causing me to wonder if the North Korean regime is making an effort to pressure the families of defectors within North Korea to get the defectors to return home? Four more North Koreans have returned to their communist homeland after living in South Korea where they had to endure unbearable hardships, the North’s media reported Thursday. The North Korean Central Broadcasting Station said a couple and their daughter as well as a woman came back home and held a press
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November 13th, 2012 at 6:37 pm » Comments (1)

The Chosun Ilbo is reporting that many North Korean defectors eventually turn to crime to make ends meet in South Korea: The number of crimes committed by North Korean defectors in South Korea is rising dramatically. The offenses range from real estate and insurance fraud to drug dealing and the sex trade, and the victims are often other North Korean defectors. The number of defectors is expected to reach 25,000 by the end of the year. According to the [South] Korean Institute of Criminology, 899 defectors were nabbed between 1998
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November 9th, 2012 at 6:14 pm » Comments (11)

This makes me wonder if the North Korean regime isn’t putting increased pressure on families of defectors back home in order to lure some of them back to North Korea?: In a rare publicity coup for the North Korean regime, a couple who defected to South Korea have apparently returned to the North. The North’s official KCNA news agency on Thursday said Kim Kwang-hyok (27) from North Hamgyong Province fled to China in March 2008, while his wife Ko Jong-nam (29) followed him in September that year. The two met
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September 24th, 2012 at 5:30 pm » Comments (7)

Via a reader tip comes this unsurprising, but still interesting read about the propaganda play the North Koreans were able execute by likely using the son of a North Korea defector as blackmail: This summer, a 66-year-old woman surfaced at a news conference in North Korea to tell of her jubilant homecoming after six years in the “miserable” South. As a private citizen and a defector, the woman, Pak Jong Suk, made for an unlikely national symbol. But she also had the pitch-perfect tale for an authoritarian North Korea straining
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July 11th, 2012 at 7:59 am » Comments (1)

It looks like some North Korean defectors have found a way to continue on the DPRK’s long tradition of insurance fraud even in South Korea: Dozens of North Korean defectors have been booked for committing insurance fraud here, in which they gained more than 1 billion won (US$874,737), police said Tuesday. The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said they applied for arrest warrants for two North Korean defectors, including a 28-year-old woman whose identity is being withheld, on suspicion of getting falsely hospitalized to win insurance money. Twenty-five more North defectors
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June 11th, 2012 at 5:59 pm » Comments (82)

The TV show producers are obviously using the good looks of these women to attract viewers, but this is actually a pretty good way to raise awareness of the North Korean refugee issue in South Korea: Lee Seo-youn rehearses a dance routine she’ll perform in a couple of hours in a TV studio. Slender, graceful and dressed in a form-fitting hot pink maxi-skirt, Lee looks like a South Korean celebrity. Appearances can be deceiving. As a regular panelist on South Korean television’s “Eje Mannareo Gapnida,” which airs on cable’s Channel
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June 5th, 2012 at 3:30 am » Comments (19)

Here is an example of what some of these North Korea apologist lawmakers in South Korea think: Lawmaker Lim Soo-kyung of the opposition Democratic United Party yesterday made a second apology for calling North Korean defectors “traitors” in an alcohol-fueled tirade at a Seoul restaurant Friday night. Appearing at a party workshop in Yangjae-dong, Lim, who was jailed for three and a half years for making an unapproved trip to North Korea in 1989, said: “The whole controversy was prompted by my lack of virtue and I sincerely apologize to
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April 7th, 2012 at 3:16 am » Comments (1)

It must have felt like living in jail for three years but hopefully the wait was worth the escape from North Korea: Four North Korean defectors trapped in the South Korean Embassy in Beijing for nearly three years arrived in South Korea Sunday after China allowed them to leave, sources told the JoongAng Ilbo Tuesday. Seven other defectors taking refuge in Korean consulates in Shanghai and Shenyang for the past two years will soon follow. “The other North Korean defectors will be able to return to South Korea with the
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