35 percent of North Korean defectors cite freedom as key motivation

More than a third of North Korean asylum seekers settling in the South cited freedom as the key motivation for defecting, data has shown.

Hanawon, a facility in which defectors receive three months of resettlement education after making it to South Korea, said 35 percent of the defectors surveyed (2014) said they escaped their homeland to seek liberty, marking a sharp rise from 9.6 percent tallied in 2001.

17.5 percent said they escaped from the North due to the discontent against the communist system, compared with 6.2 percent posted earlier.

As to the makeup of the defectors, women make up 78 percent of the total North Korean refugees now in South Korea.

[Yonhap]

This entry was posted in Humanitarian Aid and Relief, North Korean refugee by Grant Montgomery.