By Hollie McKay, Fox News
Escaping North Korea is a journey that is almost always a perilous one — thousands of miles on buses or motorcycles or sneaking on foot through mountains and valleys amid falling snow or torrential rain — in the desperate quest to evade border police and reach the frontier of a new life. Some pay a broker to traffic them out, some are too poor and bear the burden alone, and some are granted temporary visas to work in China but never return to their native land.
So how many North Korea defectors are there, and where do they go?
Since the hostilities of the Korean War ended in 1953, a an estimated 300,000 North Koreans have defected from the tightly controlled hermit country.
In estimated 300,000 North Koreans have defected from the tightly controlled hermit country. According to statistics from the Human Freedom Initiative at the Bush Institute, there is approximately 225 North Korean refugees that have been directly granted asylum in the United States since the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004. This was signed into law under President George W. Bush in an effort to promote freedom and human rights to those fleeing the dictatorship.
A further 250 North Koreans have arrived since as legal immigrants, after spending time in South Korea and receiving citizenship there. There are believed to be several hundred — although less than 1,000 — illegal North Korean immigrants also residing across the United States.
The European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea surmises that there are at least 1,400 in Europe, with the highest number — some 600 — reportedly in South West London. However, most defectors stay much closer to home.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/10/19/how-many-defectors-escape-north-korea-and-why-dont-hear-more-from-them.html
