Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Hater Depot]

It looks like a whole family escaped only to get shipped back a day later. I wonder where these people are now and how the incoming Lee administration will handle things like this.

http://koreabeat.com/?p=762

[lastat06513]

That was not an escape, they were swept offcourse and only wanted to go home after that.

There are occasional stories where fishermen, sailors, farmers and such who 'mistakingly' wander into the south and request to go home....

As scary as it might sound, some N. Koreans would prefer to be repatriated back home to the North rather than be seen as traitors in the eyes of the Northern government and have their families sent to concentration camps for the crime of defection that one relative committed (used to be a capital offense that warranted the death penalty, especially during the famine years of the mid-1990's)

What I think is that the these people might've tried to defect to the South, yet because "Comrade Noh" wants his name to placed on a marker in the North for his "progress" in inter-Korean relations, that some officials told them the repercussions of defection and persuaded them to go home...

Unlike the North, where a Southerner who stumbles North is then considered apart of the collective, a Northerner who stumbles South of the 38th and NLL is given the choice of either staying in the South (considered a defection) or could go back home to the North (considered a repatriation)

[Hater Depot]

I thought defection was still a capital offense, no?

[lastat06513]

No......except for that time when some film maker posted a sign over a bridge that declared that North Korea needed to be free that was broadcasted on CNN back around 2004 or 2005....at that time the borders were closed and anyone caught with a video phone or camera was arrested and interrogated ruthlessly.....from the people I met, it was a total nation lockdown....even official travel to some extent was banned.
As for defection........defections have been punished according to the social status of the person committing the offense......most of the defectors I've met in Korea were citizens who held mid-level government jobs in the DPRK and subsequently, whose families were sent to internment camps until the perpetrator returns (remember, NK has over 200K people in prison camps across the country).....usually, execution is only used as a deterrant to stop others from following in the person's footsteps.....usually it was a peasant from the bordertowns that would slip in and out of the N. Korean/ Chinese border......

[Suwoner10]

[garykasparov]

They want to stay in South Korea, but if they do stay, their families will be put to death. Face it: with communists, there is no free choice.

[Typhoon]

Add another 22 to the total. When will the South start to care??

[jvalmer]

[wylies99]

King Jong Il murders another 22 of his own people.

[cdninkorea]

The North Korean defector who wrote "The Aquariums of Pyongyang" (can't recall his name, but the book is famous and he now works for the Chosun Ilbo) said that his family was neither put (back) in a camp or executed.
I don't recall the details, but he got in touch with someone who knew his family, and while they did fall under stricter supervision and a few interrogations, he said they weren't punished in any serious way.

[Suwoner10]