North Korea is changing, but still dangerous

[TomSea]

North Korea is changing, but still dangerous
Attempts at reconciliation have stalled
The Economist
Apr 8th 2020

IN THE SUMMER of 2019, South Koreans were shocked by the news that a North Korean woman, who had fled her country through China a decade before, had died with her young son in her flat in Seoul. Weeks passed before a building manager found the bodies. Authorities concluded she had starved.

Though the case was unusual, it highlighted an important truth. Much is made of how Koreans have thousands of years of shared history and culture. But the split between the communist North and the capitalist South after the second world war was deep and traumatic. Today, people who flee the impoverished dictatorship of Kim Jong Un for the rich, free South find it hard to adapt to life in such a different society. This matters immensely if the two Koreas are ever to reunite.

The number of North Koreans making it to the South has declined of late. Some 33,000 have settled in total, but the 1,047 who registered for the first time in 2019 was the lowest number for nearly two decades. Tighter controls at the Chinese border with North Korea, as well as increased efforts by China to repatriate refugees, are major reasons. Another could be that the North Korean economy is going through a loosening of its own and heading in a less Marxist direction. That has raised hopes of loosening in other areas, notably the 70-year military stalemate on the peninsula.

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