North Korean Family Defects to South Korea by Boat, Defying All Odds, Authorities Say

It's the first time in 6 years an entire family of North Koreans has defected to the South

A North Korean woman soldier patrols the bank of the Yalu River which separates the North Korean town of Sinuiju from the Chinese border town of Dandong, northeast China's Liaoning province on April 26, 2014. STR/AFP via Getty Images

On a pitch-black stormy night, a small fishing boat appeared near the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the disputed maritime boundary between North and South Korea in the Yellow Sea.

Around midnight on May 6, South Korea’s military detected the boat heading toward the NLL from the North Korean side, according to ChannelA, a South Korean media.

As soon as it crossed the boundary line and entered the South, a navy patrol boat was mobilized to intercept it.

Nine North Koreans were on board, including two children.

“We didn’t drift here by mistake; it was by design,” they said to the Korean maritime police during an interrogation.

South Korean authorities believe that the boat’s trajectory and other conditions at the time make drifting unlikely.

‘Expressed Their Intention to Defect’

“As soon as they arrived, they immediately expressed their intention to defect,” South Korean authorities told reporters in a press conference.

A further joint investigation was being conducted by the South Korean military police, the National Intelligence Service, and other relevant government departments at the time of this reporting.

The authorities also revealed that the group of North Koreans appear to be two families related to each other, including two children. They are said to have meticulously prepared for their defection for about a month.

They reportedly modified a wooden boat, equipping it with emergency food, clothing, and fuel, meaning that they thoroughly prepared for the possibility of drifting for a long time.

Instead of using the border between North Korea and China, which has historically been the go-to route to defect from North Korea, they chose to cross the sea, which presents a much risker way. They were betting on the tides taking them in the right direction and being found by the South Korean maritime patrols instead of the North’s.

Luckily, the weather had been stormy, with heavy rain and low visibility, making it possible to avoid North Korean maritime surveillance.

Disgust With the Communist Regime

This is the first time in six years that a family of North Koreans has defected to South Korea.

The family’s planned escape from North Korea was not only due to economic hardship but also their disgust with the communist regime, according to the authorities.

The Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) revealed on May 19 that the family had longed to come to South Korea through viewing Korean TV programs. And with the intensified social control during the COVID-19 pandemic, they finally decided to defect from the North.

The NIS did not reveal more details about the identity of these people due to the consideration that it might affect the safety of their families that are still in North Korea.

Despite the widespread reports of starvation and suicide tragedies in North Korea, the country’s leader Kim Jong-un appears to have no intention of changing his policy of consuming large sums of money on nuclear weapons development.

Many argue that tragedies could be avoided if the country spent money solving food shortages instead.

Defections

According to the Ministry of Unification, the number of North Korean defectors entering South Korea has been on the decline since 2009, which saw a peak of 2914 defectors. The number dropped to 229 in 2020, coinciding with the North’s draconian COVID-19 restrictions. Meanwhile, the number further decreased to 63 and 67 in 2021 and 2022, respectively.

However, the successful defection of the two North Korean families may encourage more to defect, the report suggests, as many South Koreans are now closely observing the case.

Kim Taewoo, former head of Seoul’s Korea Institute for National Unification and a former senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, told the Epoch Times on May 19 that the decrease in the number of defectors in recent years was due to the increased penalties imposed by the North on residents who were caught trying to leave the country.

However, in the face of severe food shortages, COVID-19, and a lack of medical and pandemic prevention measures, the North Korean authorities still insisted on launching missiles frequently and performing nuclear tests. In those situations, North Koreans could tolerate no longer, and some would rather risk their lives in attempts to leave the country, Kim said.

He added that according to the South Korean government’s past statistics, most North Koreans who defected through the West Sea were often not poor but mostly North Korean intellectuals, some from the middle and upper levels of North Korean society, as well as military and civil servants.

“Such people leave the country not to fill their stomachs but to find freedom,” Kim added.

According to Channel A, one of the main reasons the two families with kids would attempt such a dangerous escape from the North was due to children’s education.

Citing the Korean government’s investigation, they “wanted to go to South Korea before sending their children to a kindergarten where the North’s brainwashing education began.”

And that they said they had lost faith in the unorthodox ways of Korean society, where bribery and exploitation are a daily occurrence.