Since the COVID-19 pandemic, China has increased its state surveillance program along its border with North Korea, deporting an estimated 20% more North Korean defectors than previous years.
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00:00Fleeing China for freedom. These videos are said to show the journey of North Korean defector
00:06Shin Joo Ye as she leaves her adoptive country and makes her way across Southeast Asia to
00:13South Korea. In footage that cannot be independently verified, Shin's face and those of her companions
00:19has been blurred to protect their identities.
00:24Shin first escaped North Korea in the 1990s, settling across the border in China until
00:30the COVID-19 pandemic, when local officials said that in order to receive the vaccine,
00:36North Korean defectors, like her, had to register their biometric data with the police.
01:07Shin did not submit herself for registration, choosing instead to flee here to South Korea
01:13in 2023, and she is not the only North Korean defector to have moved here from China. Increasingly
01:20monitored by Chinese state officials, Choi Min-kyung made the same decision years earlier
01:26and now runs a rights group for defectors in South Korea.
01:36The fake ID is once a sense of freedom, now increasingly unavailable in China, as state
01:55surveillance intensifies, much of it centered here, along the 870-mile-long border with
02:01North Korea. There is now an electric fence, new deportation centers, facial recognition
02:08cameras and increased patrols, not only making border crossings nearly impossible, but increasing
02:15the risk of capture for those who have managed it. Human rights groups in South Korea estimate
02:20the number of defectors deported from China over the past two years has increased by nearly
02:2620 percent.
02:27Based on the interviews that TJWG has conducted, we estimate that roughly 7 out of 10 escapees
02:36who try to make their way out of the country are arrested and repatriated back to North
02:44Korea by the Chinese authorities.
02:46Beijing's official policy is that there are no North Korean defectors, instead calling
02:51them illegal economic migrants, which leaves them with no protection under international
02:57law. Foreign policy experts say the crackdown along the border could change the relationship
03:02between China and North Korea.
03:04China is controlling the defectors coming from North Korea, so it could be advantageous
03:11to China in this regard.
03:21From their new home in South Korea, Choi and Shin are now ringing the alarm for other North
03:25Korean defectors like them across China. Despite their fears, they made the perilous journey
03:31across borders, showing it is possible to have a life beyond the reach of China's state
03:36surveillance.
03:38Kris Mon-Harel Hughes for Taiwan Plus.