NORTH-SOUTH KOREA Seventy years on the run from Pyongyang to Seoul

The northern route through China and into Seoul via Mongolia or Southeast Asia has been the only chance for thousands of refugees. Since the late 1990s, 33,000 people have made it to South Korea, but the pandemic has tightened the net. Tens of thousands of North Koreans who are in Chinese territory fear that the reopening of the borders with Beijing is the prelude to repatriation.

Milan () – The phenomenon of migration between the two Koreas has marked the history of the peninsula since the division, which will be 70 years old on July 27. However, since the 1990s, migration from North to South has had a turning point, acquiring the humanitarian connotation attributed to it today. North Korea survived the collapse of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the communist bloc, but the consequences for the country were devastating. Massive deforestation, forced by the need to speed up the industrialization process and open up new farmland, has left the country in a state of profound vulnerability. North Koreans who have decided to leave their country since the 1990s have done so for humanitarian reasons, related to hunger, the search for better living conditions and the hope of escaping political persecution. According to the South Korean Ministry of Reunification, between 1998 and 2023 more than 33,000 North Koreans managed to reach South Korea.

Migrating from North to South involves innumerable risks. With North Korea’s strict freedom of movement laws, unauthorized travel, both domestic and international, is illegal, so it’s necessary to involve “middlemen,” who often charge very high fees, even up to $15,000. dollars, increasing the risk of falling into the hands of human traffickers. The victims are mainly women and girls seeking to improve their economic situation and often become victims of trafficking linked mainly to the sex industry.

Some of the risks in leaving the country have been exacerbated during the pandemic. According to a recent Reuters investigation, the northern route is highly compromised at the moment. The North Korean government would have taken advantage of the pandemic to strengthen border control with China, which, given the impossibility of crossing the demilitarized zone at the 38th parallel and entering South Korea directly, was the safest way to escape. According to data from the Ministry of Reunification, only 67 North Koreans managed to reach the South in 2022, a small number compared to more than 1,000 in 2019.

To the new difficulties associated with crossing borders, the end of the pandemic adds a renewed fear: forced repatriations. After three years of blockade, North Korea has decided to reopen its borders, which was already scheduled for June 2023. The reopening plays a key role in the security of refugees because the possibility of forced repatriations from China would return. Although North Koreans are granted international refugee status – which makes it easier to enter South Korea, which recognizes all Koreans on the peninsula as citizens – those who leave the North do not enjoy the same status in China.

However, China is the first necessary stage for those who want to escape from Pyongyang, because from Chinese territory it is possible to reach both the countries of Southeast Asia and Mongolia, which generally send the refugees they identify to South Korea. Due to the agreements with North Korea, Beijing does not allow the UN refugee agency to exercise its mandate, and applies forced repatriation to those it finds on its territory. And the chance of being caught today has increased with the use of artificial intelligence for facial identification.

China does not disclose any information about the North Koreans on its territory, and those who are refugees in that country live in hiding, without documents, without access to medical care and exposed to human trafficking. The secrecy on the one hand and the lack of cooperation from the Beijing authorities on the other make it extremely difficult to know exactly how many North Koreans are in that country today. However, according to some estimates shared by Radio Free Asia, there are now close to 60,000 unregistered North Koreans in China, of whom at least 2,000 are in detention and are at risk of repatriation.