Pyongyang calling: how North Korea pressures defectors to the South

Ju Gyung-bae’s sister defected to South Korea but was pressured to return. She turned herself in at the North Korean embassy in Beijing

Defectors who reached the South have been contacted more often since Kim Jong-un came to power in 2011. They are now being strong-armed in organising delivery of items banned under UN sanctions to the North

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North Koreans who defected to the South tear pictures of Kim Jong-un in Seoul. Photo: AFP

Published: 4:30pm, 13 Jul 2019Updated: 4:14pm, 14 Jul 2019

Ju Gyung-bae recalls being with his sister when the phone calls came through from North Korea.

He could overhear the voices in distinctive Northern accents cajoling her to re-defect and promising she would not be harmed if she returned. He also heard their threats when she resisted.

By 2017, three years after she fled the North and made the perilous journey to Seoul, the regime in Pyongyang was applying pressure to her weakest point; she had been forced to leave her husband and daughter behind. Ju, 51, realised his older sister’s resolve to stay in the South was weakening.

And then one day she was gone.

She did not go back to North Korea. She went back to her family

Ju Gyung-bae

“She did not tell me she was planning to go, probably because she guessed I would try to talk her out of it,” Ju said. “But she went to China and I later found out that she had handed herself in at the North Korean embassy in Beijing.”

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