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Revised August 2 3PM. An earlier version of this post reported that the UN staff from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights would travel to Pyongyang; their office has subsequently denied this story. Thanks to Josh Stanton for alerting us.
The Kim Jong Un regime currently faces difficult tradeoffs with respect to cross-border population movements that are indicative of wider dilemmas of social control. As other sources of revenue may or may not be drying up—depending on how you read recent Chinese data (link is external)—the regime has a strong interest in maximizing labor exports as a source of much-needed foreign exchange. Yet at the same, labor exports are running afoul of the human rights community, which increasingly sees labor exports as an important target; the Wall Street Journal (link is external) recently offered a summary of the issue and Josh Stanton details US reporting requirements on the issue (link is external). More fundamentally, the regime is deathly afraid that unauthorized labor movements and outright defections could become a flood. Although we are without any firm data, a few recent stories pick up on these themes.
On labor exports, Leo Byrne at NKNews (link is external) offers up another of his typically well-researched exposés, this time on a Russian firm openly advertising the benefits of North Korean labor. The problem is a wider one we noted in our review of a recent book on how authoritarianism has "gone global." Europe has the free press and NGOs to try to monitor abusive labor practices; a recent report on North Korean labor in the EU (link is external)—which we will review in a subsequent post—shines a devastating spotlight on abusive practices and Malta has kicked North Korean workers out (link is external). The Russians do not appear to have an equal interest or capabilities for ferreting out such practices. (See a recent post on North Korea’s organized export of labor here.)
When high-ranking officials leave, it likely reflects either personal concerns for their safety in a regime characterized by recurrent purges or—more tellingly—the perception that the regime may be a house of cards.
In South Korea, the case of the 12 waitresses who defected from China in April is getting tangled in what can only be described as a mess of North Korean disinformation and South Korean politics. At the time of the defection, North Korea trotted out another group of waitresses (link is external) who claimed that their colleagues were tricked and effectively abducted. South Korea has kept the waitresses closeted, allowing a group of progressive lawyers to challenge their detention and even the claim that they left China of their own free will; Yonhap covers the latest legal point-counterpoint (link is external). Now human rights NGOs have gotten into the act, with Amnesty International (link is external) weighing in.
Another possible bit of disinformation: the case of Ko Hyon-chul. A North Korean defector who left in 2013, Ko was arrested after going back into North Korea earlier this year. In his confessional “press conference,” he claimed that he had been lured by South Korean NIS agents into a scheme to abduct North Koran orphans for money. Although the NIS strongly denied the report, the question of why a former defector would undertake the risk of re-entering the country is a puzzle, assuming that he was arrested on the North Korean side of the border; in any case, he is technically now yet another detained South Korean national. When high-ranking officials leave, it likely reflects either personal concerns for their safety in a regime characterized by recurrent purges or—more tellingly—the perception that the regime may be a house of cards.
The legal issues may be legitimate, but the larger game seems obvious: the regime has pressured the families of the defectors to plead their case, with the implicit message that the families may themselves be harmed; reports already suggest that they have been sent for political re-education. Stories from unnamed sources have also been coming out again about the network of North Korean agents active in China (link is external) and the more challenging threat that Kim Jong Un has ordered retaliation in the form of abductions of South Koreans abroad (link is external). Nefarious actions against South Koreans living abroad could also have implications for legislation in front of the US Congress aimed at forcing the State Department's hand to re-list the DPRK as a state sponsor of terrorism. More telling still: a story sourced (link is external) to the Abductees’ Family Union that six North Korean officials with responsibility for monitoring workers abroad were publicly executed following the defection.
The real concern of the regime is that personnel such as waitresses are typically from reasonably well-connected and reliable families; an increase in defections of this sort is particularly troubling (link is external). Most recently, an 18-year old student defected from an eight-member delegation (link is external) to the 57th International Mathematical Olympiad at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; he appears to currently be housed in the South Korean consulate. Even more stunning is the KBS report (link is external)—still lacking in any significant detail—that a general involved with Office 39 may have defected with $45 million in hand, following another embarrassing defection announced in April by a colonel from the General Reconnaissance Bureau. Defections among the relatively well-off could simply reflect the perception of better opportunities abroad. But when high-ranking officials leave, it more likely reflects either personal concerns for their safety in a regime characterized by recurrent purges or—more tellingly—the perception that the regime may be a house of cards.
