By Kim Young-jin
The number North Korean defectors living in South Korea is expected to exceed 20,000 by next month, the Ministry of Unification announced.
As of late August, a total of 19,569 North Korean defectors were living in the South, the ministry said. Each month an average of 200 defectors arrives to make a new life in the South, meaning the mark could be breached by as early as later this month.
Defections have been on the steady rise since the mid-1990s, when the North was hit by famine, and the number spiked in the 2000s.
Most defect by crossing the border with China, then escaping to a third country. China, a close ally of the communist North, repatriates defectors in spite of the harsh punishment they are said to receive upon their return.
Some 100,000 are said to be hiding in China, the ministry estimates.
Women take up the lion’s share of the defections representing 77 percent between 2007 and 2009. In the 1990s, most defectors were single men.
Those in their 30s represented the largest number of defections at 32.5 percent. Twenty-something’s followed at 27.4 percent, and then those in their 40s at 15.2 percent.
Over 65 percent of the defectors settle in the Seoul area. All defectors in the South are required to spend their first months at Hanawon, a government-run resettlement center in Anseong, Gyeonggi Province.
According to the ministry, over half of the defectors were unemployed before making their escape to the South.