Coronavirus, ‘robber-like brokers’ squeeze North Korean defectors’ remittances to their families

For years, the runaways have resorted to an underground network of brokers to send money to their families in North Korea

But now they’ve stopped or cut down the remittances because of falling incomes and the middlemen demand extremely high fees

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Choi Bok-hwa, a singer in a North Korean-themed art troupe, last year earned only about 10-20 per cent of what she usually gets because of cancelled performances. Photo: AP

Published: 8:42pm, 12 Mar 2021Updated: 8:45pm, 12 Mar 2021

For the first time in years, Choi Bok-hwa didn’t get her annual birthday call from her mother in North Korea. Each January, Choi’s mother had climbed a mountain and used a broker’s smuggled Chinese mobile phone to call South Korea to wish her happy birthday and arrange a badly needed money transfer.

Choi, who hasn’t sent money or talked to her 75-year-old mother since May, believes the silence is linked to the coronavirus pandemic, which led North Korea to shut its borders tighter than ever and impose some of the world’s toughest restrictions on movement.

Other defectors in the South have also lost contact with their loved ones in North Korea amid the turmoil of Covid-19 – and the trouble is not just on the North Korean side. The disconnection between defectors and their families in the North is shutting down an important emotional and financial link between the rival Koreas, whose citizens are banned from contacting each other.

Defectors in the South have long shared part of their income with parents, children and siblings in North Korea. But these defectors, who face chronic discrimination and poverty in the South, now say they’ve stopped or sharply reduced the remittances because of plunging incomes. Others are postponing them because they can’t contact the brokers who act as middlemen or because the brokers are demanding extremely high fees.

Choi, a singer in a North Korean-themed art troupe, last year earned only about 10-20 per cent of what she usually gets because of cancelled performances.