Surveillance systems and artificial intelligence have increased the risks and costs for those trying to flee the Kim regime. If a face doesn’t match a profile, the police are ready to intervene. Covid-19 and surveillance reduced the number of fugitives. The fees charged by “middlemen” increased to 10-15 thousand dollars.
Beijing () – The facial recognition technology used by Beijing increases the risk of capture of North Korean refugees, while raising the prices asked by traffickers who organize the escape across the border. According to sources of Radio Free Asia (Rfa) with contacts in the smuggling environment, most try to cross the northern border into China; However, the control systems and the use of artificial intelligence in China -with cameras in every street, square and train station- make it possible to track every step of vehicles and people.
Added to this is the fact that nearly all Chinese residents are registered in a government database, making it easy to find unlisted North Koreans whenever they are intercepted and framed by a camera. “When a face doesn’t match a profile,” says Seo Jae-pyoung, director of the North Korean Defectors Association, a South Korea-based advocacy group, “the police are willing to investigate the person to determine why. “.
While it’s hard to know for sure whether the software has led to the capture of North Korean refugees and exiles in China, it’s equally clear that its widespread use has increased the cost and risks of fleeing. Already last March, Seo added, the surveillance software appears to have been one of the “key factors” in the capture of a group of five or six refugees from the North and a local intermediary who helped them “in their displacement” to the Chinese territory. It is “very likely” that they were captured by Chinese agents “near the northeastern city of Dalian” and allegedly discovered because they were “unaware of the dangers of facial recognition and tracking technology.”
The activist confirmed that the technology based on artificial intelligence, used on a large scale by Beijing, has increased the risks for North Koreans who want to flee the Kim regime. China is usually the first port of call to Southeast Asian nations before reaching Seoul as the final destination of the desperate migration attempt. According to experts, this could be one of the reasons why the number of North Koreans making it to South Korea is declining. Between 2001 and 2019, more than 1,000 refugees from the North entered the South each year, with a peak of 2,914 in 2009. However, the number fell to 229 in 2020 and then to double digits in 2021 and 2022, according to data from the Ministry. of South Korean Unification.
Of course, the figures were also affected above all by the strong restrictions on travel from February/March 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, during which Beijing and Pyongyang sealed the 1,350-kilometre border. To this, however, the experts also add the contribution of facial recognition technology, which has pushed many to give up the desire to flee, among other things because in the event of capture and repatriation the punishments in the camps of the Kim regime They are very hard, even deadly.
Choo Jaewoo, a professor at the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Seoul’s Kyung Hee University, said the technology is so advanced that Beijing can monitor fugitives at Pyongyang’s request. “If North Korea requests the tracking of a specific person and China agrees to it, the risk of being detected by facial recognition technology could be much higher,” the academic warned.
The software also increases the risk for brokers, leading them to raise prices. Before facial recognition technology was so widespread, crossing into China with the help of an intermediary cost about $2,000 per refugee, whereas now it costs between $10,000 and $15,000 and prices continue to rise. Before, fugitives could at least see the police coming and try to avoid them, or hide when they heard the sirens. “Now we are exposed to more invisible fears, and without realizing it,” concluded Ji Chul-ho, of Now Action & Unity for Human rights, a South Korean organization that helps fugitives from the North. “It’s a serious problem.”
