The June 19 defense pact signed between Russia and North Korea included a promise to provide military assistance to one another – within days Pyongyang said it was sending troops to Ukraine.
The South Korean immigration and labor laws make finding work south of the border incredibly difficult. North Korean expats are confined to menial service sector and grueling industrial work while being largely cut out of South Korean social life due to heavy stigmas against them. Its an incredibly hard life and not remotely like the glamorous existence of social elites that Americans claim drive the periodic defections.
They need access to a better place. I suppose they just get financially stuck in S Korea? Or do the move on to other countries too, more willing to give them a chance?
Why don’t we have a law for North Korea like the Cuban Adjustment Act that allows anyone who makes it out of the country to quickly become a permanent resident, without regard for how they got out of their country. The situation seems fairly similar, where encouraging more defectors makes the target country look bad, and it can deprive them of workers.
I suppose the US, but it would probably have to involve us paying for moving them to the US from South Korea. Otherwise South Korea could have such a program so that they can become residents with actual rights (or maybe they already do).
Around 20% of defectors have considered returning to North Korea. But that has less to do with the appeal of the North than the poor treatment of expats in the South.
The South Korean immigration and labor laws make finding work south of the border incredibly difficult. North Korean expats are confined to menial service sector and grueling industrial work while being largely cut out of South Korean social life due to heavy stigmas against them. Its an incredibly hard life and not remotely like the glamorous existence of social elites that Americans claim drive the periodic defections.
They need access to a better place. I suppose they just get financially stuck in S Korea? Or do the move on to other countries too, more willing to give them a chance?
North Korean expats are functionally stateless, so it is very difficult to leave South Korea even when they do have money.
The largest portion of the Korean diaspora live in China and Russia.
Why don’t we have a law for North Korea like the Cuban Adjustment Act that allows anyone who makes it out of the country to quickly become a permanent resident, without regard for how they got out of their country. The situation seems fairly similar, where encouraging more defectors makes the target country look bad, and it can deprive them of workers.
Who’s ‘we’ here?
I suppose the US, but it would probably have to involve us paying for moving them to the US from South Korea. Otherwise South Korea could have such a program so that they can become residents with actual rights (or maybe they already do).
Because South Koreans don’t have ambitions of building up a large militant ex-pat community to try a Bay of Pigs on Pyongyang.