Tag: Defectors (Political)

Defecting From North Korea Is Now Far Harder

Media Library

The North Korean software engineer was desperate. He had been sent to northeastern China in 2019 to earn money for the North Korean regime. After working long hours under the constant watch of his minders, he found an email address on a website and sent a harrowing message in 2021: “I am writing at the risk of losing my life,” pleaded the engineer. A young woman who had been smuggled by human traffickers from North Korea into China in 2018 contacted the owner of the same website early this year.…

Are North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Tests as Safe as the Country Claims?

Chin@Strategy

SEOUL — North Korea has long maintained that all six of its nuclear weapons tests were conducted safely. But on Tuesday, a Seoul-based human rights group warned that radioactive contamination may have spread through groundwater from the North’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site, ​potentially jeopardizing the health of people in North Korea and neighboring countries​. The Transitional Justice Working Group said in its report that radioactive materials could have affected tens of thousands of North Koreans living near Punggye-ri and spread to China, South Korea and Japan ​through mushrooms and other…