The two incidents that have just come to light are not simply a handful of
defection or repatriation cases.
Two North Korean POWs who had been deployed to the war in Ukraine and later captured have now been confirmed to have already arrived in South Korea, while two members of the North Korean delegation to the Asian Games in Japan are reported to be exploring the possibility of staying in Japan rather than returning to North Korea.
These are incidents that arose in entirely different circumstances, yet they share a common question.
Do people who have left North Korea and experienced the outside world actually want to return?
The answer to this question cannot be said to be always the same. Nor can the thinking of the entire North Korean population be judged from the choices of just four people.
The Contradiction Created by the Kim Jong-un Regime
Yet these incidents reveal a fundamental contradiction created by the Kim Jong-un regime.
North Korea demands absolute loyalty to the system from its people. It warns them against the outside world, emphasizes the superiority of the North Korean-style socialist system, and demands individual sacrifice for the sake of the state.
But once North Koreans go abroad, they directly experience an entirely different world.
And at that moment, a gap can open up between the world the state describes and the world they have experienced firsthand.
When North Koreans Experience the Outside World
The case of the two North Korean POWs and the two members of
the Asian Games delegation shows us precisely the possibility of that fissure.
And as the United States and the international community watch this fissure unfold, they too must not lose their own caution remembering the painful experience of the past.
Sustained Contact with the Outside World
At this very point, there is one alternative available to us. Rather than prematurely expecting a change in the regime’s stance, we can work to ensure that the North Korean people continue to experience sustained, indirect contact with the outside world. Through information and broadcasting, economic exchange, participation in international events, and other channels, as North Koreans continue to encounter the outside world, the gap between the world the regime describes and the world they actually perceive can widen slowly but steadily. Even if pressure on the regime fails to produce short-term change, the cumulative effect of this indirect contact may, over the long run, plant the seeds of change in the hearts of the North Korean people — and that, in itself, is meaningful.
Peter Yang