Police track 900 N. Korean defectors

In the wake of a famous North Korean defector’s return home, police are tracking down 900 defectors whose whereabouts in Korea are unknown.

The National Policy Agency said it instructed intelligence officers to step up their efforts to prevent defectors from returning to the North.

More than 30,000 North Korean defectors are currently living in the South.

On July 9, Im Ji-hyun, who was well-known in the South, appeared in a propaganda video on Urimin- zokkiri, a North Korean website, claiming she was back home after an inhumane life in the South that was mired by materialism.

“I wanted to make money and worked hard at bars in the South,” she said in the video. “But in South Korea, money was everything and that took a heavy mental and physical toll on my well-being.”

The police are investigating the motive for her return to the North. While some claimed the North Korean regime might have kidnapped her from China, others alleged she was a North Korean spy.

In South Korea, Im appeared regularly on a cable television show.

This incident has raised a red flag on the police agency’s defector monitoring program.

Arriving in the South, defectors are sent to Hanawon, an adjustment training facility.

After this, they are paired with police officers who look after and monitor them. But in reality, communication is rare unless the defector had a good background in the North or is famous. The police’s intelligence unit has limited resources, and so monitors defectors selectively.

Im isn’t the only defector to have returned to the North. Authorities said 25 have done so since December 2011 when Kim Jong-un took power.

Some argue that Kim is using returned defectors to create chaos in the South, using deception to lure defectors back to the North.

A case in point is Kang, a man whose full name was not disclosed. He first defected to the South in March 2015. He went back to the North with the assistance of the North Korean regime last year. He afterwards appeared on television, slamming the South and glorifying the North. However, he arrived back in the South in May. Kang is currently in police custody and undergoing interrogation. In South Korea, visiting North Korea without government permission is a crime.