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Court overturns conviction of defector who helped send money to family in North Korea
Members of a North Korean human rights group display North Korean 5,000 won notes to be scattered with anti-Pyongyang leaflets toward North Korea, at Government Complex Seoul in Jongno District, Seoul, Feb. 2, 2009.
By Park Ung
A court has overturned a lower court's guilty verdict against a North Korean defector who helped other defectors send money to family members back in the North, marking the latest ruling to push back against a string of prosecutions targeting such remittances.
The Uijeongbu District Court on Tuesday acquitted a 54-year-old North Korean defector on charges of violating the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act, reversing a lower court ruling that had handed the defector a suspended fine.
A police investigation found the defector helped North Korean escapees send money to family members left behind in the North in 2021, using their own bank account and that of an acquaintance in China a total of 11 times.
The Goyang branch of the Uijeongbu District Court, ruling in February last year, acknowledged that the defector's method of sending money had been unavoidable, but still found the defector guilty.
Legally sending money abroad requires currency exchange and transfer through a licensed foreign exchange bank, but that route is unavailable to North Korea.
Defectors instead rely on broker accounts in South Korea and China to relay funds, a process in which money often passes through multiple accounts to avoid detection and can cost fees of up to 50 percent of the amount sent.
With no legal alternative, past administrations tacitly allowed such transfers on humanitarian grounds, provided the defectors had no ties to espionage. But in 2023, under the Yoon Suk Yeol administration, investigations suddenly began nationwide and a series of defectors involved in the transfers were indicted.
Amid criticism that the investigations were excessive and inhumane, police halted probes into simple family remittances in 2024, though defectors already indicted still faced possible criminal punishment.
The ruling marks the second time a court has acquitted a defector for helping send money to family in North Korea.
The Seoul Northern District Court acquitted another defector on the same charge in November 2025. The defector, who had served as a broker for family remittances to North Korea, was cleared after prosecutors chose not to appeal, finalizing the acquittal.