'North Korea-China Route Effectively Over' As Border Wall Comes Up To Stop Defectors: Report

During the Covid pandemic, North Korea built hundreds of kilometres of walls and fences to cut off the routes which were plied by smugglers and defectors after Kim Jong Un announced overall multiple blockades.

North Korea has built hundreds of kilometres of new or upgraded border fences, walls, and guard posts during the pandemic as per commercial satellite imagery. The purpose of the construction was to tighten the flow of information and goods into the country and also to keep foreign elements including people out of it. This initiative of the Kim Jong Un-led regime seals its borders with China and Russia while cutting off the routes which were plied by smugglers and defectors, reported the news agency Reuters.

For North Koreans, the country's northern frontier long offered rare access to outside information, trade opportunities, and the best option for those seeking to flee. A South Korean pastor who helped North Koreans escape said, "The traditional North Korea-China route is now effectively over unless there is a major change in the situation." He along with others conducts sensitive work on the borders. Only 67 defectors made it to South Korea last year, compared with 1,047 in 2019, official data show. The figures were declining even before the onset of the pandemic due in part to tighter restrictions in China, the preferred route for defectors.

Reuters' report mentioned that the project's scale was evident in the imagery analysed by it and the US-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, as well as accounts from seven defectors, activists, and others familiar with activity along the border.

North Korea's government and state media have said little about the construction at the border, however, official North Korean bodies have noted increased security to keep out the coronavirus and other "alien things". Kim Jong Un in a victory speech over COVID-19 last year ordered officials to "ensure perfection" of an "overall multiple blockade wall in the border, frontline, coast areas and in the seas and air".

Reuters cited a non-resident fellow at the U.S.-based Stimson Center who researches North Korea's economy, Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein, as saying that the sealing off of the borders is likely to have long-lasting effects. These borders will affect North Korea's nascent mercantile class as well as the towns where the thriving informal trade previously offered many people, particularly women, a chance to earn their livelihood with dignity.

Asserting Dominance

The new border barriers come as North Korean President Kim Jong Un strengthens his grip inside the country, which is under international sanctions owing to its nuclear weapons development. Reuters cited a former South Korean government official who is now Vice president at the Council on Diplomacy for Korean Unification in Seoul, JR Kim as saying that the tightening control of international trade in both official and unofficial manner is a way for the national capital Pyongyang to exert influence over the military and other party members afar from the border who otherwise might build power bases and pose a threat to the regime.