Following the forcible repatriation of nine young North Korean defectors from Laos in May, the fear was that one of the key defection routes in Southeast Asia, which runs through China and Laos to Thailand, may have been severed. However, Daily NK has confirmed that the route continues to be used normally.
A pastor who works helping defectors in Thailand revealed the news when he met Daily NK during a recent stopover in South Korea. He explained that although the number of defectors reaching Thailand through Laos has declined in recent months, defectors are still able to use the route with the passive acquiescence of the government in Vientiane.
The pastor commented, “The nine young defectors were repatriated to North Korea from Laos in May, but defectors have not stopped coming to Laos on the way to South Korea. Even in early June, immediately after the repatriation at the end of May, defectors were coming into Thailand. The Laos-Thailand route is OK.”
However, the pastor added that defector numbers are a different story. “The number of defectors coming to Thailand has been constantly declining,” he explained. “Last year there were three or four teams per week (one team containing 4-8 people) coming to Thailand via Laos, but this year it has been one or two teams, then since March there have been some weeks with no teams coming in, or just one.”
“I don’t know why it is,” he went on. “In May I went to a detention center in a city in eastern Thailand, and there were just six people there. Normally when defectors choose Thailand to get to South Korea they are arrested on the Laos-Thai border and detained there. Then they are moved to Bangkok, then on to South Korea.”
“Looking at recent defectors, at least two out of three have spent more than a year in China, and the other one only recently defected,” he went on. “Every team always has a child or two, and this year we have been seeing families from grandfather down to grandchildren defecting, too.”
