[coolsdude2282]

Interesting side note that is rarely mentioned, a surprisingly large amount of defectors actually defect back to DPRK. When you are enclosed in something like DPRK a lot of the time people can't handle the stress of not being in that sort of system anymore.

One thing to note, there was a study that showed that even when they are in countries with an abundance of food, their eating habits remained the same. They ate the same sized small portions that they used to in NK.

As a comment on the article, I think it would be very easy for China to transition them into a sucessful Chinese model with capitalist reforms whilst still being totalitarian. The people don't necessarily want 'freedom' as long as they are adequately taken care of, transposing western mindsets onto them and assuming that they consider things like 'freedom of speech' as necessary isn't generally helpful.

[dominotw]

> a surprisingly large amount of defectors actually defect back to DPRK.

Do you have source for this?

A typical north korean escaping to china usually has the option of becoming a slave/wife to a chinese farmer. I would assume that was still a better option during 'arduous march' days but have things imporved that much since then ?

[coolsdude2282]

There are loads of sources for it, it isn't as odd as you would think, it is even listed on wikipedia with lots of nice sources. Apparently "their number is thought to be increasing." and "In one case, a double defector re-entered North Korea four times." [0]

Edit: I added the link to the nutrition study below also. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_defectors#Double_...

[1] https://synapse.koreamed.org/search.php?where=aview&id=10.41...

[dominotw]

I was questioning your claim of "surprisingly large" double defectors not that there are defectors. 13 out of ~1600 is not a significant number. Your second source is not relevant.

>"In one case, a double defector re-entered North Korea four times."

Constantly sneaking in back forth is a common thing from the documentaries I've watched. 1. People stealing goods and selling them back home 2. People stealing supplies to feed their family back home .

[coolsdude2282]

Thirteen publicly acknowledged by South Korea, and 700 missing. Most of which, if you read the cited article are thought to have defected back or attempted to.