Fewer than 100 North Koreans a month defected to the South last year, Seoul said on Friday, the lowest for 15 years as Pyongyang and Beijing both tighten controls on movement.
A total of 1,127 North Koreans went to the South last year, down 21 per cent from 2016, according to data from the unification ministry. It was the lowest figure since 2001.
Most defectors from the impoverished North, which suffers chronic food shortages and is subject to UN Security Council sanctions over its banned nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes, go to China first.
They sometimes stay there for several years before making their way to the South, often through a third country.
“This decrease in arrivals is extremely concerning because it’s not that life became that much better in North Korea, it is because the Chinese authorities, while signing up for increased sanctions on the North Korean economy, also stepped up their crackdowns on North Korean refugees,” said Sokeel Park of Liberty in North Korea, which helps defectors reach the South.
Chinese officials were therefore “complicit in the North Korean government’s human rights abuses”, he said.