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North Korean refugees were until the early 1990s officially described as "heroic defectors," a daredevil example being Lee Woong-pyung, a North Korean Air Force officer who flew a MIG fighter jet to South Korea in 1983.
These people provided the South Korean government not only with useful information but were also a propaganda tool. But in the latter half of the 1990s, famine hit the North. Billed by the North Korean regime as "the Hardship March," it claimed an estimated 3 million lives, and one consequence was a mass exodus to China.
North Koreans crossed in droves simply to escape from hunger braving strict patrols by Chinese border police. The food shortage has abated in the last decade, but the flow of North Korean refugees never stopped. There are now more than 10,000 North Korean in the South and an estimated 40,000 in third countries including China.
North Koreans in China are considered illegal migrants rather than refugees. They enjoy no legal protection, and when discovered are deported to North Korea. With the political thaw expanding throughout Northeast Asia, "heroic defectors" have become "new arrivals" in search of a new life. With China, North and South Korea almost equally unconcerned about them, the rights of North Korean refugees in third countries are everywhere trampled upon.
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