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| Picture taken April 12, 2016 and made available April 14, 2016 shows a man cycling in a street in Pyongyang, North Korea. /Yonhap |
By Lee Jin-a
The number of North Korean defectors has decreased since Kim Jong-un took power in 2011 because the state's crackdown on the border with China has made it more expensive to escape, according to CBS No-Cut News.
Strengthening of police control near the border has pushed the cost of arranging a broker to escape from the military state to 12 million won ($10,000) a person, compared with 8 million won last year.
After escaping, defectors have to pay another 2 million won if they want to pass between China and a Southeast Asian country. The total cost of escaping from the North is estimated at up to 15 million won a person.
"Many North Koreans cannot cross the border, not because they don't want to, but because they cannot afford the cost of arranging brokers," said a director from a North Korean defector support organization in an interview with CBS. "Although most of the defectors in South Korea financially supported their families to cross the border until three years ago, the cost has now gone up too high for them to afford."
During Kim Jong-un's regime, the number of the defectors has decreased from 2,706 in 2011 to 1,276 last year. A total of 342 North Koreans entered the South from January to March this year.
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