Technology Leads to Rise in North Korean Defectors

Last week the number of defectors from North Korea that made it to the South reached 20,000.  More impressive than that number is how large of a percentage of that number happened so recently.

Source:

The number of North Korean defectors in South Korea has topped 20,000. A Unification Ministry official on Monday said their number crossed 20,000 last Thursday, when an airplane from Thailand carrying about 50 new defectors arrived in the country. In 1999 there were 1,000 defectors, and in 2007 10,000. 

The official said it took 59 years since defectors were first recognized in 1948 for their number to reach 10,000 but a mere three years to double. [...]

Why is that number skyrocketing so much so quickly?  Life in North Korea has been horrible and worse than the South for decades.  You would think something like the famines that ravaged the North in the 90s would have immediately led to an escalation of defectors.  

The reason for the sharp increase over the last decade has to be technology.  Cell phones, radios, and digital media has to be coming across the border from China and people in the North now know how much better life is in South Korea.  The risks of getting caught no longer seem to outweigh the benefits of potentially making it to the South.

The Economist recently published an article titled "No Paradise, But Better Than Hell".

“THOUGH it felt as if there was nothing left to lose, I risked everything to come here”. So says Park Cheol-hwan, a North Korean defector now living in Seoul, the South Korean capital. After crossing the border into China, as most defectors do, he spent nearly a year working in atrocious conditions to pay off his debt to the snakehead who got him there, living under the constant threat of arrest. [...]

It is no surprise that anyone would want to leave North Korea, but the sharp increase in numbers was unexpected, particularly by the South Korean government. It provides defectors with help, including a cash payment of 6m won ($5,300) per person and basic instruction in everything from how to use a bank card to applying make-up.

In Seoul the manager of one support group says that part of the reason for the increased numbers is the surprisingly easy access that North Koreans have to South Korean films and television programmes. In recent years, illegally copied DVDs from China have flooded the country, enabling citizens of the world’s most repressive state to see how sumptuously their southern cousins live.

Because family members left behind are persecuted, whole-family defections are also becoming more common. Two-fifths of new arrivals come with at least one other member of the family, while relatives back in North Korea nervously wait for their chance to follow. More than two-thirds of defectors are women, who also happen to make up the major part of the North’s black economy, on which much of the population depends.

Few labour under the illusion that life in the South is perfect, but for many defectors their new home still comes as a shock. Despite the supposed importance of blood ties, refugees from North Korea lead second-class lives. Fewer than half of defectors are “economically active”. Many employers are unwilling to employ North Koreans, whom they consider backward, leaving many to subsist on government largesse. Defectors do their best to disguise their origins, for instance, by faking a Seoul accent in order to secure even the most menial job. Even so, since November 11th about another 50 North Koreans have made it south.

I imagine living your whole life outside the motivation of economic incentives can make you appear backwards.  People assume capitalism is instinctive, and to a degree it is, but it is also something we learn.  Telling these people to find their jobs and then manage their own money has to be overwhelming when they have never been able to make a single significant economic decision in themselves their entire lives.