How North Korea Finally Made It Impossible to Escape

North Korea is the only country in the world today where it's illegal for any citizen living there to leave without receiving prior permission from the state doing so is legally considered to be treason by the North Korean government and if you attempt to do so and are caught you may be punished with a lengthy prison sentence in a hard labor camp or even senten to execution even moving about within North Korea's territory is difficult and strictly regulated by the state as you need official documentation and permits just to legally move from one internal province of

the country to another North Korea is almost universally regarded by just about every organization in the world to have the worst human rights record on the planet with no contemporary parallel all men in the country are forced into serving a minimum of 10 years in the North Korean army free speech is non-existent and the only media providers are all owned by the state as recently as 2017 Amnesty International estimated there were around 200,000 political prisoners being held in camps all across the country who are often subjected to slave labor torture and summary executions not to

even mention all of the other prisoners in the country for non-political related crimes one can be sentenced to a life in prison in North Korea for merely being related to someone who actually committed a crime such as an Infamous case that only recently came to light by way of the US State Department of a 2-year-old child who was sentenced to life in prison back in 2009 after his parents were caught by the authorities with a Bible in their possession a piece of foreign Contraband that had been illegally smuggled into the country all foreign media and

content from the outside world has been strictly outlawed within North Korea for decades with with various penalties being dealt out to anyone caught smuggling such content in distributing it or consuming it up to and including life in prison and death North Korea is one of only four countries remaining in the world that routinely carries out public execution of prisoners with the only others being Iran Saudi Arabia and Somalia it also has historically been extremely difficult for any foreigners to get permission to get into the country and whenever they have been allowed in they are permanently

placed under intense levels of surveillance the entire time they're Within and only taken on highly curated tours where they are only shown what the regime wants to be shown sometimes foreigners who visit are even killed when they run astray of any number of the regime's arbitrary laws like Otto War beer an American man who is visiting North Korea as a tourist back in 2016 who was arrested after allegedly attempting to steal a propaganda poster from the wall of his hotel a crime for which he was later sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in a

prison camp he was returned to the United States a little over a year later in a vegetative state with little explanation and died only days later as a result of all of this North Korea has long been regarded as the most isolated and secretive country that exists in the Contemporary world and the most difficult country to get anything or anyone into or out from escaping out of the country or smuggling illicit material into the country has always been difficult for a wide variety of reasons but it all starts with North Korea's rather unique geography for

many decades the Kim Dynasty in the country have worked tirelessly to essentially transform North Korea into a deao island completely separated and removed from the rest of the outside world to their east and their West this was already granted by geography in the form of the Sea of Japan and the Yellow Sea escaping out of the country across either of these Seas is incredibly challenging because boats are very hard to come by within the country and the North Korean Navy maintains routine patrols all along the coasts especially near to North Korea's southernmost territories next door

to South Korea South Korea itself obviously is the number one location the North Korean defectors attempt their escapes to mostly because not only is South Korea a vastly wealthier and more developed country but the South Korean government also officially considers that all of the Native Koreans of the entire Korean Peninsula are her own citizens including all of North Korea's 25 million residents any North Korean who can make their way into South Korea is automatically considered a South Korean Citizen and that alone provides an enormous incentive to leave of all the North Korean defectors who've successfully

made it out of the country since the 1990s 34,000 of them have found their way down to South Korea compared to only around a, in Europe and only around 200 in the United States but getting to South Korea directly has almost always been impossible because of the existence of the demilitarized zone or DMZ that runs across the entire length of the Southern border from coast to coast contrary to how its name appears this is the most heavily militarized border anywhere in the world through which hardly anything at all is ever allowed to pass there are

tens of thousands of troops on both sides who directly Patrol the numerous lines of walls fortifications and barbed wire in addition to around 2 million landmines the North Korean border patrol has orders to shoot anyone who attempts to cross there are 750,000 North Korean soldiers deployed within 100 km of the Border in the north at another 450,000 South Korean soldiers Plus 20,000 American soldiers deployed within 100 km of the border to the South breaking through this extremely imposing obstacle to get directly into South Korea has always been very dangerous and risky which is why very

few have ever successfully managed to do it historically the comparatively easier but still extremely difficult path to escape out of North Korea was by attempting a run across the northern border into either China or Russia at the same time this was also historically the easiest border to smuggle elicit contra band into North Korea from as well you see North Korea maintains an official military alliance with China and while relations have often still been strained between the two they're nothing like the outright hostility seen on North Korea's Southern border as a result there is little need

for North Korea to keep hundreds of thousands of soldiers deployed here because the risk of an invasion coming from China is fairly minimal simultaneously North Korea's border with Russia is very tiny at only about 17 km and North Korea's relations with Russia are also similarly worn so there's never really been a big need to park soldiers along the small border here to deter a potential Russian invasion moreover the North Korean border with China is massive it stretches and winds for more than 1,300 kilm as it generally follows the yo and tuman rivers through rugged mountains

and forests that are mostly very sparsely populated thus for most of North Korea's history this long border in the north with China has been lightly patrolled and guarded and so it has been fairly porous and relatively easy to smuggle both goods and people across this was especially true during the winter months when the Yoo and tuman rivers freeze over enabling defectors and Smugglers alike to simply walk across them or during the summer months when the river's depths are at their lowest enabling defectors and Smugglers to just easily wait across them but the biggest problem with

this route for defectors was that once they crossed the border into either China or Russia they still weren't exactly safe both Russia and and China have extradition agreements in place with the North Korean government meaning that any North Korean defectors they catch will be treated as illegal immigrants rather than as refugees and deported back to North Korea where they will face immediate imprisonment and potentially even execution that's why for nearly every Defector who did Escape across the border into China or Russia the goal wasn't to stay there but to eventually make their way into a

neighboring safe country which there are precious few of Myanmar and La were always out because just like China and Russia they will immediately Deport any North Korean Defector they catch in their territories right back to North Korea for the most part that only left Mongolia Thailand or Vietnam as nearby safe countries that defectors could flee towards because since South Korea considers all North Koreans to be their own citizens as well these three countries will Deport any North Korean defectors they catch to South Korea instead so the plan for defectors was to always cross the poorest

mountainous Border in a China and then eventually gradually make their ways to Mongolia Thailand or VI Vietnam where they would then immediately surrender to the local authorities there and get deported on a plane to safety and a new life in South Korea defections out of North Korea only truly began a spike however in the 1990s after the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991 which had been the primary Financial supporter of the North Korean regime then with its primary Financial benefactor and supporter gone and heavy Financial sanctions placed upon it by the United States

Japan and South Korea North Korea suddenly found its economy and agriculture ulture unsustainable with very little money and hardly any ability to import farming equipment or fertilizer with food imports from the Soviet Union gone with exacerbating droughts and floods and with a base of less than 20% of their land even being considered aable in the first place North Korea couldn't acquire enough food to sustain its entire population and the worst famine in the country's entire history followed because of the North Korean government's incredible levels of secrecy nobody really knows exactly how bad the famine during

the 1990s was but estimates range from about 300,000 deaths on the lower end to as many as 3 1/2 million on the higher end across only 4 years between 1994 and 1998 with masses of people desperate to escape from the famine defections out of North Korea consequently began to spike and sensing an opportunity to make some money a class of entrepreneurial smugglers in North Korea arose as well who began smuggling in much needed items like food and medicine but also illicit Contraband like Western and South Korean movies t shows and books by the early 2000s

thousands of North Koreans were successfully defecting out of the country every single year and the vast majority of them were escaping across the northern border into China making their way eventually to Thailand Vietnam or Mongolia and getting themselves deported from there to South Korea the number of defectors steadily continued increasing year after year long after the Great Famine had ended until they reached a peak in 2009 when a total of 2,914 North Koreans successfully managed to find their ways down into South Korea the largest number to ever defect in a single year since the conclusion

of the Korean War back in the 1950s defections out of the country remained high in both 2010 and 2011 with over 2,000 taking place each of those years but then at the very end of 2011 something different happened the man who had ruled North Korea as the supreme leader ever since 1994 suddenly died in December and his son Kim Jong-un succeeded him and ever since taking power back then at the end of 2011 Kim Jong-un has worked tirelessly to crack down on both defections and smuggling within his kingdom signal Jammers began getting installed all across

the northern Frontiers and remote mountain passes to block out foreign cell and satellite signals intelligence monitoring of phone calls in the Northern areas were increased while more border fences were being built up and patrols increased simultaneously things were changing in both Russia and China as well in 2014 Russia signed an agreement with North Korea that they would begin deporting any defectors they caught in the country back essentially eliminating Russia as a viable country for wouldbe defectors to escape into once and for all meanwhile China began increasingly developing its own massive surveillance state apparatuses after the

passing of the PRC cyber security law in 2016 within Just 4 years from then by 2020 the Chinese had likely increased the number of their surveillance cameras operating all across the country to more than 620 million more than 12 times as many surveillance cameras operating across the United States combined with increasingly rigorous monitoring of internet and cell Services since China has always treated all North Korean defectors as illegal immigrants these sweeping changes to surveillance in China made it far easier for the Chinese authorities to detect them in the country well they were trying to make

it across to the safer countries in Thailand Vietnam or Mongolia and made their Journeys significantly more dangerous and risky than they had ever been before to compensate for the increased levels of risk that were developing Brokers and human traffickers within China who often helped North Korean defectors Escape began charging more and more money to do so back in 2007 the average price that a broker in China would charge to help a North Korean Defector escape to Thailand or Vietnam was around $2,000 a lot of money for the average North Korean but still theoretically doable but

by 2012 shortly after Kim Jong-un took power the price had doubled to around $4,000 by 2015 the price the Brokers were charging had doubled again to about $ 8,000 and by 2017 the prices were anywhere between 13,000 and $116,000 per each Factor because most North Koreans earn less than $2,000 a year saving up those kinds of sums to escape would take them years or even Decades of scraping by to do so it became no longer realistic for most to hire a broker to help them unless they already had family members who had escaped before them

who could save up the money on their behalf with higher paying jobs in developed economies like South Korea thus at some point in the 2010s there became a point where the overwhelming majority of North Koreans could only escape the country if they chose to do so complet completely on their own without any help from the outside which would require them to travel on their own across the mountainous Border in the North and then somehow make it all the way through a massive country like China with an unparalleled surveillance state where they don't know the local

language at all in order to get towards a safe country like Mongolia Thailand or Vietnam and never get caught by the police along the entire way good luck with that for most as a result the trend of people successfully escaping out of North Korea began dwindling down downwards with every passing year after Kim Jong-un took power as it became increasingly difficult for people to do so by 2019 only a total of 1,047 North Koreans managed to get out of the country to South Korea less than half of the numbers that had gotten out back at

the beginning of the decade in 2010 and 2011 and then beginning in 2020 the ability to escape from North Korea became even more Bleak than it had been before in January of 2020 only 2 months after the very first reported case of covid-19 was made in China back in November North Korea became the very first country in the world to completely shut down and seal all of its borders citing its desire to keep the virus out of the country at all costs basically all travel into and out of the country was shut down every international

flight the North Korea had was immediately cancelled and nearly all foreign trade with the outside world was halted and at first glance it kind of makes sense why North Korea was so paranoid so early about the virus this is a country where it is estimated that around 42% of the population are currently considered to be malnourished one of the highest levels of malnutrition seen anywhere in the Contemporary world and of course malnourished people are significantly more susceptible to the negative effects caused by covid-19 than otherwise healthy people are North Korea would only end up reporting

its first confirmed case of the virus on the 12th of May 2022 and only 3 months later in August the regime had already self- declared its victory over eradicating it from the country with only a very minimal 74 of officially reported covid related deaths but the reality was almost certainly a lot worse than that Anonymous inside doctors and sources reporting to the BBC this year claimed that about 1 in 550 people in Pyongyang actually died from covid during that outbreak in 20122 if that source is accurate which honestly who knows and if you extrapolated it

out to the rest of the country it would suggest a potential covid-19 related death toll in North Korea of around 45,000 orders of magnitude worse than the officially reported number of only 74 though I suggest that that should be heavily treated with a grain of salt but regardless the North Korean regime was almost certainly genuinely worried about covid-19 getting into the country but they also have clearly capitalized on the pandemic as an excuse to finally finish locking down North Korean society and fully isolating it from the rest of the outside world in August of 2020

the regime established so-called buffer zones on their Northern borders with China and Russia while firm orders were given out to North Korean soldiers patrolling the borders to unconditionally shoot anybody on site attempting to either enter or leave without permission a shoot to kill order that evidently continues to remain in force more than 3 years later now today moreover the North Korean regime seized on the excuse of protecting the country from covid-19 to construct a series of vast new fortifications all across the borders with China and Russia satellite imagery has revealed hundreds of kilometers worth of

newly construed constructed walls fences barbed wire and guard post being constructed all along North Korea's northern border since the pandemic began all of which have seemingly sealed off nearly all of the historical mountain passes and routes the defectors and Smugglers alike have taken into and out of the country for decades the once poorest northern border has since become mostly solid and hardly anything or anyone is crossing it at all now but building out these vast new fortifications in the north with strict shoot to kill orders is not the only only way that the regime has

been making it increasingly impossible for any of its 25 million remaining subjects to escape much harsher restrictions have also been put into place on domestic travel within the country meaning the North Koreans need proper authorization and paperwork simply to travel from Province to Province and if you get caught without them it's straight to one of the country's many prison camps in December of 2020 the North Korean regime passed a new law called the reactionary ideology and culture rejection Act which heavily criminalizes receiving any information or object from the outside world and bans anyone from possessing

a non-government sanction cell phone under this new law smuggling and distributing foreign videos or books into the country can be punished by a public execution even simply being caught watching a foreign video or reading a foreign book can be punished with a 10-year prison sentence to hard labor under this new law historically foreign films and shows like South Korean kramas or dubbed American movies were smuggled in from China across the northern border on micro SD cards and then sold and watched in secret but evidently since the new extremely harsh laws were passed at the end

of 2020 and the northern border got much more heavily sealed these smuggled foreign films and movies into the country have virtually stopped entirely moreover defections out of the country have virtually ground to a halt since the pandemic began as well in 2020 there were only a grand total of 229 successful defections out of the country to South Korea a tenth of the amount that were seen only a decade previously and then 2021 and 2022 saw even less with only 63 and 67 successful defection attempts taking place throughout the entire years the lowest levels ever seen

in North Korea's entire history as a state since 1948 and so far this year in 2023 the trend is looking to be pretty similar as the entire first quarter between January and March some of the best months to escape When the Northern rivers are frozen over only recorded a poultry 34 successful defections taking place all of this is in comparison to the thousands of successful defections that were taking place every single year back in the early 2000s and 2010s North Korea in effect has become the largest and possibly most successful prison in all of human

history since 2020 but it isn't just the new laws and the new Border in the north they've built that is all contributing to this in truth they are all merely a component of Kim jong-un's Grand concept of transforming North Korea into a truly closed digital State wherein the digital realm as well as the Physical Realm within North Korea are each completely isolated and separated from the rest of the world this has been a longtime project of the North Korean state in the making the phones that you can get in North Korea for example work very

differently than the phones you're used to State sanctioned phones from North Korean state-owned companies are the only ones that you legally possess they can't connect to the internet and they can't make international phone calls outside of North Korea moreover they have state sanctioned software installed on them that cannot possibly be removed and that disables all foreign files apps clips and texture sound files that were not created on North Korea's own state-owned operating system called red star these North Korean phones will also continually and randomly take screenshots of messages and activity history that cannot possibly be

deleted and inspections of the phone are mandatory by the North Korean police in essence these phones are only usable within North Korea and can only be used in ways that the North Korean regime deems acceptable but foreign made phones from the outside world smuggled in across the northern border were always problematic to the Kim regime's desire for This truly closed off digital State foreign-made phones could actually make calls to the outside world and they could contain outside foreign made files like videos text and sound they were big business for a few entrepreneurial Smugglers because using

a foreign made phone might be the only way that a family within North Korea could contact a relative of theirs who had attempted an escape previously it might be the only way to have ever known if your relative was still alive or dead many North Korean families would thus save up enormous amounts of money to meet these Smugglers for the chance at a phone call to the outside or a chance to view or read something from the outside but no longer by slamming shut the border and increasing the harshness of its laws the North Korean

regime has probably destroyed destroyed the smuggling process that was undermining its closed digital State ambition once and for all and as the risks for getting defectors out have increased so have the prices that the Brokers are charging to try and help as of 2021 the average price the Chinese Brokers were apparently charging had increased more than $21,000 per Defector a full 10 times increase in the price from as recently as only 2007 and after North Korea became extremely sealed off from the outside world in 2020 the regime also began refusing all of the North Korean

defectors from being returned who had been caught across the border in China officially citing fears that they might bring the covid-19 virus back into the country with them there may currently be as many as 1,000 North Korean defectors being held in prisons within China near to the Border waiting to be sent back to the Kim regime when they finally accept them where they will almost all certainly be sent to prisons and or be executed but there is no certainty right now as to how much longer North Korea will remain even more isolated than it had

ever been before it could all be the new normal State of Affairs for The elusive regime and those 1,000 defectors sitting in China may be trapped in a limbo for a very long time and the 25 million people remaining within North Korea may as well from now on be basically stuck within a completely separate Universe the black hole on the world map that North Korea has become since 2020 has made it effectively impossible for nearly anyone within to get out or for anything from outside to get in aided by North Korea's own unique geography and

the Kim regime's own ruthless application of laws fortifications and new digital technology everything from the outside world is now thoroughly blocked within North Korea as it has never been before but it is also far from the only country that is placing restrictions on foreign media American websites like Google YouTube Facebook Instagram Wikipedia Reddit and dozens of others have been blocked in China for years but now popular Chinese websites and apps like Tik Tok are beginning to be similarly blocked in the United States just last month in May of 2023 Montana became the first US state

to pass legislation Banning Tik Tok everywhere on all personal devices for everyone within the state a band set to take effect in January of 2024 next year that'll block access to Tik Tok for all of the state's 1.1 million residents additional US states could end up following Montana's decision and there were many representatives and senators in the federal government who would like to see Tik Tok banned outright Nationwide the internet should be exactly the same no matter where you are but that's simply not the case even if you're living in a place like the United

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will offer cheaper ticket prices to people in their home countries while alternatively they may also Spike prices if interest from the same country suddenly increases all at once like during specific holidays in the United States or UK that aren't holidays somewhere else companies will also adjust their prices based on the user's country because they assume that someone from a wealthier country like the US UK or Canada will be able to afford a pay high prices and this is where using a VPN like today's sponsor nordvpn can come in handy and literally save you hundreds in

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