By Jun Ji-hye
Most North Koreans who defected to the South in recent months were in their 20s with good family backgrounds, meaning that the Kim Jong-un regime is losing trust among young people.
Defectors say an increasing number of young North Koreans are willing to flee their impoverished country and start new lives in South Korea. Their “South Korean Dream” is evident in recent cases.
According to the Ministry of Unification, three female North Korean restaurant workers recently deserted their workplace in China in pursuit of lives in Seoul.
Believed to be in their 20s, they are reportedly in Thailand now and waiting to be sent to Seoul.
This follows the mass defection in April by a group of 13 North Koreans — one male manager and 12 female employees — who fled from a Pyongyang-run restaurant in Ningbo, northeast China. Among them, 11 of the females were in their early 20s, while the male and the other female were in their 30s.
Experts and officials here are paying attention to the fact that the three defectors in the most recent case pushed ahead with their defection even though the North is enforcing a strict crackdown on some 5,000 restaurant staff working abroad in the wake of the April’s mass defection.
This reflects that the desire to defect among young North Koreans is strong.
Other young defectors, who have already settled in South Korea, say that the generation in their 20s and 30s in the North, often called the “jangmadang generation,” has become individualistic and capitalistic having grown up shopping in informal, private markets.
Defectors also note that the young people born in 1980s and early 1990s experienced the 1990s famine, which killed hundreds of thousands, as small children. This has made them less loyal to the ruling family, which has passed its power down through three generations.
Recent testimonies indicate that the defections might have been an inevitable choice for better lives.
A 24-year-old defector, who escaped in 2002 and is currently studying at Kookmin University in Seoul, said that the many young people in the North no longer trust the boasts made by the Kim regime about economic development.
“They hope to follow their relatives or siblings who have already fled to South Korea,” he said, asking not to be named.
Defectors and experts alike attributed a change of mind among the young generation because of the wide access to outside media and information such as K-pop videos and DVDs, which are available in the markets of the North.
“Seeing movies and music videos from South Korea have inspired many North Korean youngsters to talk openly about wanting to live here,” Park Yeon-mi, 22, who escaped in 2007, wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post, co-written by Casey Lartigue Jr., in 2014.
One notable thing that experts cited is the increasing number of the elite willing to defect, which indicates that doubts have also been growing among even those with high social status within the North Korean system.
According to the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights, Tuesday, some 20 North Koreans, currently staying in China, have been asking the group to help them defect since the beginning of this year. This group includes people in charge of trade affairs, who were apparently handpicked by the Kim regime.
Experts said that the recent defections could become a prelude to the possible collapse of the Kim regime.
“It seems certain that a big change in the North is already taking place,” said a former government official who specialized in North Korean affairs in 1990s, on condition of anonymity.
Ahn Chan-il, head of the World North Korea Research Center, also told reporters that the young generation and the elite could become a major force for change in the reclusive state as their desire for reform and openness is apparently growing.