Good morning, afternoon, evening, or night, fellow Ask a North Korean-ers, wherever you may be!

Welcome back to the NK News feature where you can email in with your question about life in the DPRK and have it answered by our very own defector writers.

Today’s question comes from Sou Wong in Chiang Mai, Thailand, who asks how defectors in South Korea contact friends and family in the North.

When speculation about Kim Jong Un’s health was made worldwide as he disappeared for 21 days in April this year, defectors were often quoted in the media reporting what their contacts in North Korea had told them about the situation.

But isn’t the so-called Hermit Kingdom sealed-off from contact with the outside world? If so, how on earth do defectors get in touch with those in the country, and how do North Koreans avoid getting caught communicating with those in the South?

Tae-il Shim, who himself still keeps in contact with people in North Korea, shines some light on the situation.

Got a question for Tae-il? Email it to [email protected] with your name and city. We’ll be publishing the best ones.

Defectors in South Korea have maintained contact with their friends and family in the North for decades.

Though they have escaped severe oppression and the risk of execution in North Korea, they cannot for even one moment stop worrying about those they’ve left behind in North Korea.

I am overcome with emotion when I contact my flesh and blood back in North Korea.

After the arduous journey from North Korea to the South, defectors go through a few months of KCIA screening and education at the Hanawon resettlement facility. After this, we move on to our new residences among the general population.

After completing one’s Hanawon course, a defector can try to restart contact with their families in North Korea.

In my case, thanks to the help of the kind people who assisted me during the KCIA screening and at Hanawon, I was able to hear news of my daughter, who was unable to come with us when our family left North Korea.

It turned out that she had practically become a hostage after being captured and sent to a reeducation camp, where she was subject to forced labor for several years.

Even though North Korea is sealed off from the rest of the world, defectors are able to make contact with those in the country through phone calls.

I am overcome with emotion when I contact my flesh and blood back in North Korea

However, phones used by North Korea’s wealthy, screened by the Ministry of State Security (MSS) first to prevent them from being used in any non-permitted ways, cannot access the internet and so cannot be used to communicate with those in other countries.

Because of this, North Koreans use Chinese-made phones that have been purchased from smugglers in China.

These days, since the MSS can now monitor voice calls and arrest those making them, we often make contact through WeChat. Through this app, we can make voice calls, text messages, and video calls.

WeChat is also used to send money to our loved ones in North Korea so they can maintain a living and eat their next meal.

There are occasionally those supplying information of North Korean politics, the military, or the economy through the messaging service, but the vast majority use the app for communication with those they left behind and money transfers.

The transfer process involves the money passing through several countries before reaching the recipient in North Korea.

First contact between those back in North Korea and those that have left is made rather easily through connections in the now-over-33,000-strong defector community in South Korea.

Defectors have been coming to the South for decades now; in my neighborhood alone we number around fifty.

Meanwhile, families of defectors still in North Korea have been secretly sharing information about South Korea among themselves.

After initial links have been established through these networks in both North and South, money is sent to the account of a Chinese middle-man, who takes a cut for themselves.

There are many shops in the China-North Korea border regions that are jointly run by people from both countries. At such places, at a pre-arranged time and date, the money originally sent by the defector is given over to the North Korean broker.

The transfer is conducted not in South or North Korean won but in Chinese yuan.

The North Korean broker then takes their cut before taking the money and delivering it to the other side of the border.

After all is said and done, around seventy percent of the original amount makes its way into the hands of the recipient. Some unscrupulous brokers, however, take more, leaving only around half of the original sum.

Most money brokers are MSS spies, threaten to report the recipients if they pester for more of the money. These powerless ordinary folk have no choice but to accept half or the original amount.

Some even collaborate with MSS operatives to take one-hundred percent of the money. They scare those who should be receiving the money by claiming the MSS is onto them and that the money has already been reported and confiscated.

Fearing for their lives, the recipients have no choice but to accept this.

If someone were to be brave enough to keep insisting the money, they face several years of labor in a reeducation camp or even ending up in an MSS political prison camp for the rest of their lives.

Edited by James Fretwell