Economic Migrants?

That’s the Chinese position on why people are literally dying to get out of North Korea. Let’s look at the numbers. Here’s a chart that tracks the North Korean food situation since 1997:

And here’s how those improved harvests have impacted the number of defections during the same time period:

So why are so many people leaving North Korea? What would they say if we asked them? Responses like these are among the most typical:

• “We have come to the decision to risk our lives for freedom rather than passively await our doom.”
• Family members of traitors don’t even get food rations. They are starved to death.
• If a farmer or laborer had a radio, he could have been released . . . . But I was an official. In my case, it would have been torture and a life sentence in a political prisoners’ camp.”
• “Freedom.”
• “The markets were all full of goods, and I could just choose whatever I wanted. . . . There’s more freedom here [in Siberia!], and that called to my heart.”
• “We came for freedom.”

There is ample evidence to show us that the reasons for the defections are more than material, and that the material is closely linked to the political. To the extent that hunger drives North Koreans to defect, its cause is often political persecution. To the North Korean regime, hunger is just another tool of control.

And if they don’t make it? The North Koreans know what they’re risking. And yet they still do.