Two More Refugees Take Shelter in the U.S. Consulate in Shenyang

As with a similar incident at the same facility this year, these refugees first entered the South Korean Consulate next door and then jumped the wall separating the two facilities.

The additional defections mean that nine North Koreans have defected today alone, with a striking number of refugees expressing a preference to go to the United States rather than South Korea. It may be time for those who predicted that the North Korean Human Rights Act would have no effect to offer a retraction. The trickle of refugees has become a stream, and if North Korea’s food and financial situations continue to worsen, may become a flood. North Korea’s regime is exponentially more brutal than Hungary’s or East Germany’s in 1989, which casts doubt on whether a North Korean refugee exodus would turn out the way the Hungarian one did. How many North Korean units would obey orders to fire on fleeing citizens? How brutal is Beijing is really willing to be to cover for Kim Jong Il? How, specifically, would the flight of refugees destabilize the regime?

Kim Jong Il has survived previous predictions of his fall, but things have never looked worse for him.