In 2009, 2,914 people escaped from North Korea. In 2019, it was down to 1,047. By 2022, this number had dropped to 67 people.
And if North Korea used to be the hardest country to escape from, now experts and observers agree that escaping from there is practically impossible. There's no getting through this without coffee. Excuse me, but I'm going to take a sip. Just an unobtrusive reminder for those who forget to hit the like button, don't forget to do it. To start with, we need to understand what North Korea's borders look like and what the government does to prevent people from leaving the country.
From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 until now, North Korean authorities have shut down the country's borders with reinforced fences, guard posts, strict controls, and new regulations. Of course, this started much earlier. The North Korean government has been controlling its people for decades. But under Kim Jong-un, after he took power in 2011, control was stepped up. Particularly on the northern border with China and Russia, which has drastically reduced the number of people crossing it, getting past concrete walls and high-voltage fences is incredibly tough.
Since late 2021, there have been unconfirmed reports about landmines buried along the Tumen and Yalu rivers to stop people from crossing the border into China. Later on, media sources with ties to North Korea reported that the authorities started placing land mines around the northern border since August 2023. These mines claimed the lives of six people in 2023 alone. But mines weren't the only problem. Almost the entire border is now lined with fences.
And these are secondary and tertiary layers that didn't exist before 2019. And now they've even been upgraded. New garrisons, extended patrol routes, watchtowers, guard posts, and fences. Fences, fences. Along the 200 miles of linear border in these six regions analyzed, observers found a total of 462 miles of fencing.
Sure, these barbed wire fences were around before, but back then, people wanting to escape North Korea could bribe the guards. Now they've got people from different departments stationed at the border to keep an eye on each other and report anything suspicious. The guards were also ordered to shoot anyone who entered the security zones, and nighttime bans on car and train traffic near the fences only made things worse.
But the authorities thought that wasn't enough. And recently, they even sent a drone to look for weak spots along the border. Honestly, I doubt there are any.
And I doubt it even more when people who actually managed to escape the country talk about the mined shoreline. This was done to stop people from escaping by sea. But they still try anyway. It can take several months, sometimes up to six, to prepare for an escape.
Like figuring out the layout of a minefield they need to cross. Yes, people actually do this. Walking around pretending to gather medicinal herbs while secretly memorizing the locations of the mines? Again, this is all based on people's stories and articles, so you be the judge if it's true or not.
What about the southern border? The Korean Demilitarized Zone is a strip of land dividing the Korean peninsula into two almost equal parts, the northern one, North Korea, and the southern one, South Korea. Although it's called a Demilitarized Zone, it's very militarized.
It stretches around 155 miles in length and is roughly two and a half miles wide. This zone has become a place where many people have died, both military and civilian, from both sides. In the end, the border between North and South Korea is considered one of the most heavily guarded stretches of land in the world.
And here too, there are dozens of mines, fences, barbed wire, watchtowers, basically everything you can imagine to make the zone incredibly hard to cross. But because people simply can't be there, Over 6,000 species of animals and plants live in the Demilitarized Zone, a nature reserve created by war. But that's a whole different story.
It's more important to understand where the Demilitarized Zone came from in the first place. It all started with the Korean War. And like any war, it was terrifying. By various estimates, 2 to 3 million civilians died.
Then in 1953, an armistice was signed. By the way, legally speaking, that's not peace. So the war is technically still going on? The North and South used to be separated by an almost impenetrable border.
No one could cross it. After that, the two countries began developing side by side. In the following decades, South Korea modernized, becoming one of the wealthiest and most technologically advanced countries in the world.
North Korea, on the other hand, became increasingly isolated. The issue, though, is that leaving North Korea illegally is considered a crime. Those who do it unlawfully are often regarded as traitors, defectors, deserters, and all that.
The punishment for trying to leave the country without the authority's consent is a minimum of five years of hard labor. What about legal travel? If you sum it up, it's pretty bad. North Koreans generally can't travel freely around the world. Leaving the country and entering it again are tightly regulated.
The list of people allowed to leave the country is very small. It includes, for example, diplomats, elite students, hired workers, and athletes. And all of them are under very close surveillance by the authorities if they do get permission to leave North Korea. Ordinary people can't even dream of leaving the country legally, so they escape.
The most common strategy for so-called deserters is to cross the border between China and North Korea. The border there is large, and it seems like there are more opportunities to cross it. At least that was the case before.
If defectors manage to get to China, they usually travel further to some third country. Since China is a relatively close ally of North Korea, there's a serious risk that they might get caught there and sent back. So most of the time, defectors try to get to South Korea.
It's not a short path. First, you need to cross the border between North Korea and China, then get to its southern border from there, make your way to Vietnam or Laos, and then to Thailand. From there, defectors are often sent to South Korea. And this route is still considered simpler than going directly to South Korea.
In very rare cases, defectors manage to escape through the heavily guarded demilitarized zone, but these are more like exceptions that prove the rule. Crossing this border is impossible. It's easier through China.
Although this path is full of dangers that some don't even realize until they face them head on. Almost the entire northern border of North Korea runs along rivers. On the left side is the Yalu River, and the other part of the border with China and the entire border with Russia coincide with the Tumen River.
So if people want to leave North Korea through the northern border, they need to cross one of these rivers. In Russia, in the Far East, about 10,000 North Koreans live. many of whom fled from labor camps and all were forced to cross through the Tumen River. To put it mildly, doing this is not easy.
Many defectors drown while trying to do it because they're just not ready for the dangers of the wild. This is because those who choose to desert often spend their entire lives in the city and are not well adapted to what's beyond it. Besides, when crossing a river, you need to do it quickly to avoid getting caught by an armed patrol.
But people usually don't know where the water's deep and where it's not. During the rainy season, the river water rises, which also increases the risk of not making it to the other side. Even a prepared person can easily drown due to the strong current.
To give you an idea of the numbers we're talking about, in 1961, 245 corpses were found in the rivers Yalu and Tumen in North Korea. It's assumed that all these people drowned while trying to cross the border. Also, a long time ago, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed concern about the large number of people risking their lives crossing the border with North Korea. You might wonder, why is the data so old and vague? The answer is simple.
North Korea doesn't share this kind of information. Plus, it's physically impossible to count how many defectors have died in rivers over all this time. There are likely many more. People say it's simpler to cross the Tumen River than the Yalu River because the Tumen River is shallow and narrow, and in some spots you can cross it not just by swimming, but even on foot.
The Yalu River is a whole different matter. It's deep, wide, and fast, but that doesn't stop defectors, even if they don't know how to swim. Moreover, before crossing the river, you have to hide in the forest for a few days, waiting for the right moment. And the water in the river is cold, so it can easily cramp your muscles. But let's say a person managed to cross the Yalu River.
Now they need to keep going. Staying in China might be dangerous, so many decide to get to Mongolia. But on the way there, fugitives face another natural challenge. To get through this route, you'll have to cross the Gobi Desert.
Here's the upside. If a person survives, they basically get a free plane ticket to South Korea. But first, they need to survive. The route from the border of China and North Korea to the capital of Mongolia is almost 2,000 miles. First, you have to travel across the vast sandy plains of the Gobi Desert with your headlights off to avoid patrols.
Then you have to walk along the fence and pray not to run into Chinese border guards. Because if you do, there's literally nowhere to hide in the desert. People literally try to bury themselves in the sand.
If you don't get caught by the Chinese border guards, you only have to cut the fence and run before the Mongolian officials stop you. After that, you're safe. But this is just a rough description of the path. People who've gone through it say that they were constantly suffering from the heat, the water ran out, and there was a real risk of dying like this right in the middle of the desert. It's hot during the day, but at night, it's no better.
Like in any desert in the Gobi, night means torturous cold. In winter, nighttime temperatures can drop to minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit. And although these are extreme cases, an average of minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit when you're in the middle of the desert can also be a harsh challenge.
And you know what? Everything I've already described is not even the most dangerous route. The first place, if we don't count directly crossing the demilitarized zone, goes to escaping by sea.
And of course, there's a plus to it. You can get straight to South Korea by passing other countries. But defectors have to deal not only with border patrols on the coast and at sea, not only with mines on the shore, but also with unpredictable weather and just awful wooden boats.
These water conditions are really tough, even for seasoned fishermen. Their battered wooden ghost ships are regularly washed up on the western shores of Japan, along with the bodies of fishermen who ended up in the open sea and died, left without food and water. And these are experienced people who regularly head out to sea. Imagine what it's like for ordinary defectors who find themselves in a boat that barely stays afloat. South Korean fishermen who come across refugees often mention that their boats look like they should have been scrapped ages ago.
Ironically, it's safest to sail in a storm. Yes, it's easier to drown that way, but the patrols understand this and try not to go out to sea in bad weather, or at least do it as rarely as possible. But even if the defectors don't run into a patrol and survive the storm, the boat might drift far off the planned route.
Once, people who hoped to reach South Korea drifted at sea for five days because they were carried off course and eventually ended up on the shores of Japan. Of course, it's still a result, but... And here comes the question. How many people have died trying to escape from North Korea? Especially considering that the defectors who try to cross the sea this way are not professional sailors at all, they're not familiar with navigation, with operating a boat, and making a mistake in the open sea is very easy.
However, only two deaths were confirmed. This might be partly because few people dare to make such an escape, and partly because those who die at sea might just never be found. What surprised me the most is that people occasionally, but still, try to cross the border without a boat, just by swimming. For example, in 2021, a man wearing a padded jacket under a wetsuit swam for six hours to get into South Korea. Then he hid the suit and fins, went into a drainage ditch that ran under the barbed wire fencing off the beach, and just walked.
South Korean border guards didn't notice him and only caught him three miles from the border. But this is, of course, a unique case, and a person with special training, ordinary North Koreans have to seek help. And this help is not cheap. In 2009, crossing the border cost about 3 million Korean won, that's 2,800 US dollars. The money goes to special brokers who guide people on what to do and often even lead them.
Since then, escaping has become more expensive and now costs almost 9,300 dollars. Getting to South Korea costs about 15 million won, US $14,000, but crossing the border is the most expensive part. Everything else is cheaper. Even giving help for free is not something anyone wants to do. Official salaries in North Korea are very low and usually range from 5,000 to 10,000 won per month, which is equivalent to one to three dollars.
You can calculate it yourself, but even without doing the math, it's clear that things are pretty bleak. It's worth noting that these aren't the money you use to buy everything yourself. The government supposedly provides so-called rations, which include food, oil, and even alcohol.
Anyway, that's not the point here. However, people keep fleeing. In 2016, there were 1,418 defectors registered in South Korea. In 2017, the South Korean Ministry of Unification registered 1,127 defectors. In 2018, it was 1,137 people.
In 2019, 1,047 people made it to South Korea. But then everything changed drastically. The cost of escape rose nearly tenfold after the pandemic started. And in 2020, only 67 defectors reached South Korea. In 2021 and 2022, there were just 63 and 67 people.
Just compare that to the record number in 2009, 2,914 people. If about a thousand people used to cross the Chinese border annually, only 20 people have done it in the last four years. And only four of them ended up in South Korea, all because of the pandemic. When it started, the North Korean government panicked and isolated the country from the rest of the world.
Escaping, which was once fairly common, has essentially stopped. because it became nearly impossible. Now only rich people with good connections can get across the borders. Different satellite images. If you look at North Korea from a satellite at night, it's almost invisible.
This is especially noticeable compared to neighboring countries which are brightly lit while North Korea sinks into darkness. Beijing and Seoul shine like beacons and it's no wonder since over 60% of the world's population lives in Asia. And people keep going about their business after the sun goes down.
And for that, they need electricity. The per capita electricity consumption in South Korea is 10,262 kilowatt hours, while North Korea uses just 739 kilowatt hours. No wonder it's so dark there.
North Korean Defectors Day. Recently, South Korea established a new holiday, and now July 14th is designated as the day for North Korean defectors who manage to escape and find a new home in South Korea. The plan is to celebrate with music, food, and other symbols from both North and South Korean cultures.
By the way, South Korea is home to over 34,000 defectors from North Korea, and the holiday reflects the South's policy towards Korean reunification. The first festival in honor of North Korean Defectors Day took place in Seoul recently, on July 14, 2024, and it looked, well, quite modest. But that's always the case with new holidays.
People are ready again. In January 2024, South Korean authorities announced that the number of North Korean defectors entering South Korea nearly tripled in 2023 compared to the previous two years. Now, a large number of young people and also members of the North Korean elite are fleeing to the country.
In 2023, 196 defectors were registered. Remember that in 2022, there were only 67. Although this number is just a small part of what it was before the pandemic, it still means that people have had a chance to leave the isolated country. However, there's a catch. Most of those who entered South Korea last year actually left North Korea many years ago and had been living in third countries for a long time before heading to Seoul.
That's the way it is. You owe me a like. See you later.