There at the moment are extra North Korean defectors working within the South’s public sector than ever earlier than, Seoul has stated.
By the top of 2024, 211 North Korean defectors held jobs within the public sector, 17 greater than the earlier 12 months, the Ministry of Unification stated in a press release on Wednesday.
That quantity is the very best since 2010, when North Korean defectors “started to enter the general public service in earnest”, the ministry stated.
Seoul has been widening its help for North Korean defectors who battle with unemployment and social isolation as they regulate to their new lives within the South.
“There’s a rising must increase alternatives for North Korean defectors to enter public service in order that they’ll straight take part in and contribute to the federal government’s policymaking,” the ministry stated.
Authorities in Seoul have lately intensified social integration programmes. It has additionally provided monetary help and tax incentives for corporations who rent North Korean defectors.
At an occasion on Wednesday, Unification Minister Kim Yung-ho shared a meal with North Korean defectors in public service roles.
There are about 30,000 North Korean defectors residing in South Korea. However defections have waned because the pandemic, which noticed nations shut their borders. Earlier than 2020, greater than 1,000 North Koreans fled to the South yearly.
North Korean defectors are denounced by the regime, and rights teams say that these caught escaping to the South are punished with imprisonment and torture.
Final July, former North Korean diplomat Tae Yong-ho was named the brand new chief of South Korea’s presidential advisory council on unification – the primary defector to be given such a excessive rank in South Korea’s authorities.
In 2020, Tae grew to become the primary defector to be elected to South Korea’s Nationwide Meeting.
Pyongyang had known as him “human scum” and accused him of crimes together with embezzlement.
The defectors supply a uncommon look into the extremely secretive regime underneath chief Kim Jong Un. They’ve informed tales of human rights abuses underneath the regime, together with widespread hunger, pressured labour and state-enforced disappearances.
However a lot of them face severe challenges as they settle into their new lives: difficulties discovering and holding down jobs, social stigma and psychological well being points stemming from traumatic experiences within the North.
