The National Security Agency (NSA) has held a public lecture in which it explicitly encouraged local people in Hoiryeong to persuade family and friends in South Korea to return to the North. Those present at the lecture were informed that persons from the South who return to North Korea will not be punished and will receive both the right to live in Pyongyang and a modern dwelling.
A source from the North Hamkyung Province city told Daily NK on the 2nd, “The NSA is using these public education lectures to induce defectors settled in South Korea to return. The NSA agent stationed in this district said to us that ‘If people living abroad say they are going to return to the motherland, the state will provide the money to bring them back.”
“He did not use the word ‘defector’ in the lecture; he referred to them as ‘our brethren living abroad’,” the source confirmed. “He said that the state will invest in those who return so they can live safe and secure lives, including the right to live in Pyongyang and a modern home there.”
“The NSA held the lecture because they know that a large number of family members and relatives have already defected from here,” the source explained. “They have stepped up their crackdowns and controls to try and stop people from defecting, yet people still do it. It’s giving them an almighty headache.”
The source stressed that the authorities’ overall aim is to use the re-defector phenomenon to idolize the rule of Kim Jong Eun while also destroying the ‘South Korea fantasy’ that many people reportedly harbor, particularly around the border.
However, the people on the receiving end of the lecture reacted with almost universal negativity, the source said. This was not only because they have doubts about the official claims per se, but because it is also counter-intuitive to offer a better than average standard of living to people who have, in the official propaganda parlance, committed a treasonous act against the state.
“Some people are saying ‘I might as well just defect and live in Seoul for a while then return and get treated well like them,’” the source concluded.
