10,000th N. Korean Refugee Arrives in S. Korea

[Update:   No, this can’t be right.  Compare it to Andrei Lankov’s figures on Page 54 of this study.  I suspect that the total number of defectors living in the South has just exceeded the 10,000 mark, and that the reporter is misinterpreting that figure.]

The arrival of 10 North Koreans here late last week heralds an era of 10,000 defectors a year arriving from the Stalinist country. Until the early 1990s, only a few dozen North Koreans fled the country annually, but the number increased since the mid 1990s famines, to exceed 1,000 people for the first time in 2002 (1,139) and the 2,000 mark in 2005, when 2,019 made the perilous trek. Experts say while it took almost a decade since the first refugees for their number to reach 10,000 a year, that number will double to 20,000 within less than five years. There is also always a chance of a mass exodus.  [Chosun Ilbo]

South Korean “die in place” policies managed to depress that number for a while, but only.  At the moment, conditions on both sides of the North Korea-China  border make it hard to cross, but there are at least tens of thousands more in China who would like to go to the South.  One wonders if the closing of the “safety valve” to China will bottle up social and political pressures in the North itself.