Chinese police continue to keep a close eye on North Korean defectors in the country. While surveillance intensity varies by region, defectors in cities tend to be watched most closely.
“Surveillance of North Korean defectors keeps getting tighter. Nowadays, defectors in cities have it tougher than those in small towns,” a source in China told Daily NK recently.
Chinese police have been monitoring defectors, who are regarded as illegal aliens in China, for some time now. Surveillance is one component of the government’s management of this undocumented population.
More recently, however, police surveillance has become much stricter for defectors living in urban areas compared to those in the countryside. That represents a significant change, since surveillance levels used to be roughly the same regardless of where defectors lived.
“In big cities, police drop by defectors’ homes twice every week to verify their identity. A defector in her 30s living in Shenyang, Liaoning province, said police are coming by more often to confirm her presence at home and take her photograph. When questioned, police refuse to explain their behavior and only order her to ‘stay out of trouble’ and not to ‘get any strange ideas,'” the source said.
Defectors registered with authorities often leave their mobile phones at home when going out to avoid run-ins with police. As a result, officers in charge of surveillance have resorted to home visits to make sure defectors actually live where they claim, the source explained.
Rural defectors face less intense monitoring
While police keep watch over defectors in rural regions as well, surveillance there is not as intense as in urban areas.
In rural areas, police managing defectors typically pay home visits or call defectors into the station once or twice a month.
To support these reports, the source quoted a twenty-something defector who moved to a city from a rural district of Liaoning province.
“Surveillance of defectors is much more rigorous in cities than in the countryside. I only had to visit the police station about once a month when I lived in a small town, but now that I’m in a bigger city, police have been visiting my house not once but twice a week. It’s nearly giving me a heart attack,” the defector said.
The basic purpose of all this surveillance is preventing defectors from arranging passage to South Korea. There are more opportunities for making contact with outsiders — including brokers — in cities than in the countryside, which makes defectors there more likely to attempt reaching South Korea. That apparently explains why police have increased surveillance in urban areas.
“While small-town police aren’t as strict as their city counterparts, that doesn’t mean defectors there are free. Defectors are always anxious over the round-the-clock surveillance they face,” the source noted.
While surveillance may be tighter in big cities than in small towns, defectors are all caught in the same web of monitoring.
“As long as defectors are here in China, they’ll have to spend their entire lives behind the invisible bars of police surveillance. Most defectors long for the day when they can escape their bonds and enjoy a life of freedom,” the source said.
