SEOUL - For North Koreans, the country's northern frontier long offered rare access to outside information, trade opportunities, and the best option for those seeking to flee. But as the pandemic gripped the world in 2020, Kim Jong Un's regime embarked on a massive exercise to seal its borders with China and Russia, cutting off routes plied by smugglers and...
SEOUL - For North Koreans, the country's northern frontier long offered rare access to outside information, trade opportunities, and the best option for those seeking to flee.
"The traditional North Korea-China route is now effectively over, unless there is a major change in the situation," said Mr Kim, a South Korean pastor who has helped North Koreans defect. He and others who conduct sensitive work on the border spoke on the condition of partial or full anonymity, citing concerns for their safety and a desire to protect their networks.
Constraints such as incomplete imagery, geographical features and weather conditions meant that not all of the roughly 1,400 km border with China and 18 km border with Russia could be examined, including about 353 km for which updated imagery was not available. Images from satellite operator Maxar Technologies Inc. were used to analyse half a dozen key areas in detail.
Defectors, human rights activists and sources in China involved in smuggling goods or people across the border said the new security features were choking economic lifelines for vulnerable people, closing paths of escape from the authoritarian country, and further limiting North Koreans' access to outside information.
The US Treasury Department in December sanctioned North Korea's Border Guard General Bureau for human rights abuses, "including land mines and shoot-on-sight orders that have resulted in the deaths of numerous North Koreans". The early years of Kim Jong Un's rule saw the rise of a class of entrepreneurs known as donju, which loosely translates as "masters of money". Now, he seems to be trying to ensure those "petite bourgeoisie" stay in their place, J.R. Kim said.
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