Jumping the ship

Aug. 17, 2016 file photo, people watch a TV news program showing a file image of Thae Yong Ho, a minister at the North Korean Embassy in London, at Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea. North Korea on Saturday, Aug. 20, 2016, said Thae, a senior North Korean diplomat who recently defected to South Korea, is a criminal and “human scum,” in its first official response to the defection. The letters read “A high-ranking North Korean diplomat.” (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon. File)

Andrei Lankov – The Korea Times

The recent few months have been marked by a significant increase in the number of the elite defection from North Korea ― a defection of the North Korean minister from London is yet another such incident, but it is believed that up to seven North Korean diplomats have defected this year.

Some analysts have expressed belief that this increase is an indication of the growing legitimacy crisis the North Korean regime faces. Some even suggest that an outbreak of a North Korean revolution might be closer than we think. However, there are reasons to be skeptical about such predictions.

There are two facts about defections which are not widely understood by the general public. First, defection from North Korea is a relatively recent phenomenon. Second, majority of the defectors in the last 15 years have consisted of people of very humble origin.

Indeed, between 1953 when the Armistice ended the Korean War and the late 1990s, the number of defections was very small, usually few persons a year. It was only in the late 1990s when the situation in China and the disintegration of domestic control in North Korea made large cross-border movement to China possible, the number of defections began to climb. Now, there are roughly 31,000 North Korean defectors living in South Korea. However, 95 percent of them arrived in the last 15 years.

Second, most of defectors come from low income, low status social groups (normally, farmers or unskilled workers) in borderland provinces. It would be misleading to say that the middle class and elite North Koreans have never defected. However, frequency of such incidents increased in the last year or two.

Talking about the best known events, one can mention a widely publicized defection of 13 North Koreans (largely, young women) who worked at a North restaurant in southern China. Their job as waitresses might appear quite humble to the Western readers, but in North Korea, this job is highly prestigious and difficult to get, so the girls’ parents definitely come from the top 5 per cent of the North Korea’s population.

Another important incident took place in mid-July when a North Korean official whose name is publicly unknown, defected from an overseas trip taking with him a large amount of money from the Kim family slush fund.

However, many observers say that these defections indicate the growing uncertainty of the North Korean elite and their worries about their future, or even discomfort allegedly imposed on them by the international sanctions. These estimates, however, are at best only partially true.

There are two other factors which provide far more plausible explanations for the recent hike in the elite defections.

First, Kim Jong-un has been remarkably harsh on the top North Korean officials including both military commanders and party apparatchiks. His reign has been sometimes described as a ‘reign of terror’. This statement is clearly an exaggeration, because in most cases, his purges target not the common population but the top elite. Nonetheless, such purges created an atmosphere of uncertainty and fear ― especially at the top of the North Korean society.

In the past, in the bygone days of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, the members of the top elite were usually physically safe. They could be ousted from their jobs and even sent to the countryside for “re-education through physical labor”. But after around 1970, very seldom were they killed ― such harsh treatment was reserved for common folks.

This is not the case anymore: the young leader is quite willing to shot the generals and Central Committee secretaries. So if the North Korean elite members find themselves associated with somebody who has been recently purged or likely to be purged in the near future, their most rational reaction to such is to run ― especially if they are stationed overseas.

Another factor of course is the growing awareness about life in other countries. For the common people, the knowledge about prosperity enjoyed by the South Koreans is important because they increasingly want to experience themselves the unbelievably luxurious life they see in the smuggled South Korean movies and TV dramas. For the elite, the economic inefficiency of North Korea is a sign that in the long run the country has no future ― so many of them begin to consider jumping the ship.

However, one should not overestimate the political consequences of such developments. If you have a look at the history of communist regimes in Eastern Europe, you will see that members of the elite kept defecting for decades, but this had little, if any, impact on the political stability of these countries. This might be the case in North Korea as well.