Five North Koreans, including two soldiers, have defected in June 2017 (so far)

Nat Kretchun’s latest report on Pyongyang’s efforts to control the spread of outside and subversive information suggests that the state has mostly written off its thirty- and forty-somethings as a lost generation, irrecoverably disillusioned by the collapse of the state’s rationing system, corruption, and the influx of South Korean DVDs. Instead, Kim Jong-Un is focusing his War on Glasnost on the detection of cellular signals and the watermarking of digital files to control the spread of dissent. Demographically, he is concentrating his indoctrination efforts on the younger generations. But judging by a small surge of north-to-south defections this month, the Propaganda and Agitation Department has some work to do.

• On June 8th, a fishing boat drifted across the maritime boundary with four men aboard. As noted in this post, two opted to defect to the South.
• On June 14th, less than a week later, a soldier walked through the mine fields of the DMZ in Gyeonggi-do, not far Kaesong, generally thought to be the place where Pyongyang puts its most disciplined forces. According to this Korean-language report, South Korean loudspeaker propaganda was a factor motivating his defection. South Korea expanded the use of the loudspeakers in February, to inform the North Korean soldiers of the assassination of Kim Jong-Nam.
• On June 18th, a man in his 20s swam across the Han River estuary using styrofoam floats. Contra UPI, which reported that the man was a soldier, NK News’s Hamish Macdonald thinks the man was a civilian (though he does not specify in his report).
• On June 23rd, another soldier walked through the minefields of the DMZ to defect, this time in the central sector (so presumably somewhere in the vicinity of Cheorwon).

Thanks to Hamish Macdonald for pointing out that, contra this tweet, the number of defections this month is five, not six (one of the incidents I linked here turns out to have been from 2015 — duh).

For an aggregation of other reports of North Korean military defections or disciplinary problems, click here. Collectively, the reports suggest that Pyongyang is having difficulty maintaining the discipline and cohesion of its forces along both borders, and across the whole length of the DMZ. When discipline erodes sufficiently in an area, there are small surges of defections there (admittedly, two defections may not qualify as a surge). The regime then sends inspection teams in to crack down and rotates new units in to reverse the decay. It usually works … for a year or two. Then, corruption starts to take its toll and the cycle repeats.

Any defection from a front-line until along the DMZ is telling. For at least two to occur in the space of nine days says that even in the North Korean army’s best regular units, discipline is uneven. (The qualifier “regular” distinguishes them from the North Korean Special Forces, who are the most cohesive.)

The June 14th incident suggests that information operations have the potential to catalyze more dissent. So does the fact that Pyongyang made the termination of the loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts a top demand for “resolving” that incident suggests. Pyongyang is deathly afraid of subversive broadcasts. All of which suggests that they may be one of the South’s most effective deterrents. I’ve previously taken a skeptical view of the loudspeaker broadcasts. I may have to reevaluate that skepticism.

Unfortunately, these factors almost guarantee that Moon Jae-In won’t use the information weapon, at least until Pyongyang commits some egregious provocation. Too bad. The message Seoul should deliver to the soldiers is a message of peace. That message would offend Pyongyang, but it would also help to protect the lives of Koreans on both sides of the DMZ by mitigating the threat of war.

First, the broadcasts should urge the soldiers to refuse orders to kill their brothers and sisters in the South. Naturally, their officers will tell them that they’re firing on Yankee Bastards. The soldiers should know that their targets are more likely to be South Korean cities — and the men, women, and children who live in them. Targeting them is a crime against both the law and the nation itself. And by firing on targets in the South, they will also draw counter-battery fire. The best way to prevent both consequences is to quietly disable their weapons or intentionally miss their targets (they can be provided the coordinates of unpopulated areas to target instead).

Or, we can tell them how to cross the minefields to the South, where rice, peace, and freedom await.

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Update: See Hamish Macdonald’s updated post for a statement by the ROK government confirming that the June 18th defector/refugee was a civilian.