The interview with Hwang Ji Sung, the defector activist
“Someone has to engage in defector rescue activities. If you are someone who yearns for the downfall of the Kim Jong Un regime”
In the era of 34,000 defectors, Hwang Ji Sung, a defector money transfer broker, is helping defectors and simultaneously conducting rescue and remittance activities for families left in North Korea through a secret route. This is due to a sense of mission that has been tightly knit through the poverty and torture he experienced with his compatriots when he was in North Korea.
In an interview on the 6th, activist Hwang said, “Before I defected to South Korea in 2009, living in Puksung and Chongori concentration camp (Reeducation camp no. 12)) was a hellish time.”
Hwang stated, “The experience of living in the Reeducation camp no. 12 is an inefficeable pain. I witnessed 2-3 people dying every day, and the environment made the people benumbed to death.”
In response to the continuous defection of defectors after the Kim Jong Un regime, North Korean authorities have strengthened control and pressured Chinese defectors. As a result, the cost of forcibly sending defectors back to North Korea, which was approximately $2,416 in 2010, has now soared to roughly $15,896, about ten times the cost, according to Hwang’s explanation.
The government is also constantly considering related government bills for the defectors’ hardships. President Yoon, who received a report on the 2024 Ministry of Foreign Affairs major policy promotion plan’ from Foreign Minister Cho Tae Yul at the Presidential Office on the 7th, said, “Presenting a vision for unification is important in firmly establishing our country’s identity in the international community,” and “The unification we aim for is expanding the freedom of every North Korean resident,” according to a written briefing by presidential spokesperson Kim Soo Kyung.
There was also an interpretation that Yoon indirectly expressed concern about the issue of enforced repatriation of defectors to North Korea, which often becomes controversial in China and other places, by mentioning the issue of defectors that day.
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