“Ask a North Korean” is an NK News column penned by North Korean defectors, most of whom left the DPRK within the last few years. 

Readers may submit their questions to defectors by emailing [email protected] and including their first name and city of residence.

Kris from Copenhagen asks about North Koreans defecting through Russia. The majority of defectors reach South Korea by first going through China, so what makes others decide to go via the only other country that sits on the DPRK’s northern border?

Tae-il Shim — who lived in North Korea for decades before defecting in 2018 — talks about defectors he knows that came through Russia and why they ended up coming through this route.

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

While the vast majority of defectors go to South Korea by going through China, a small number end up going through Russia instead.

From the beginning of North Korea’s existence, Russia, which was then the Soviet Union, has maintained diplomatic relations with the DPRK.

The USSR was an important source of funding for the Kim regime. Today, North Korea earns an astronomical amount of foreign currency from Russia using the hundreds of thousands of man-hours put in by the temporary workers they send there.

However, the workers themselves only get to keep a slither of their wages. The rest is taken from them by the North Korean authorities where it ultimately ends up in the pockets of the Kim family.

As of a few years ago, the most workers were bringing back home with them after five years overseas was $5,000-10,000. Some only made $1,000-2,000.

Despite this, North Korean workers are eager to go to Russia. In North Korea, they’d be working all year long for meager wages and rations, but in Russia, they can eat well for five years while getting to see a bit of the world. They also want to help their wives, families and relatives back home by earning more money.

Among those who make the most money in Russia were the corrupt police officers and secret service operatives, who siphon money away from ordinary workers.

Next are the managers, party secretaries and other such cadres. After that are the doctors, the contractors specializing in home construction and residential renovation and then the drivers who transport the timber. Finally, at the very bottom, are the loggers who cut and pull the timber.

Regardless of what one’s role in Russia is, though, secret service agents and workers alike sometimes go deep into the mountains to enjoy pornographic videos, drink whiskey with female teenage and twenty-year-old Russian university students and even receive sexual services. You would never be able to do this in North Korea.

In order to qualify to go to Russia, you cannot have any history of being sent for educational reform or of expressing dissatisfaction toward the government. Also, you cannot go if any of your relatives are defectors.

Bachelors are excluded, too. The authorities choose men with wives and children back home because it reduces the chance they’ll run away from North Korea with a Russian woman.

Most candidates have completed their military service and are party members, but this isn’t always the case. Around ten years ago, your application started to depend less on these things and more on how much money you could pay in bribes to the relevant authorities.

The father of a childhood friend of mine, Mr. Park, was able to extend his stay in Russia three times and lived there for 15 years in total. He worked as the manager at a logging camp.

On Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il’s birthdays, he sent the leaders expensive presents, and in return was rewarded with the title of Labor Hero while still in Russia before his return. When he came back to North Korea he participated at a national conference of heroes.

At my friend’s house, there were over 50 gift receipts and certificates of thanks from Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. And on the wall next to the obligatory portraits of the Kims was Mr. Park’s Labor Hero certificate and medal. The family managed to enter to party cadre ranks and made a lot of money.

There was also Mr. Kim, who, twenty years ago when in his forties, met a Russian woman and disappeared, never returning to North Korea. Last year, he made it to South Korea.

Mr. Oh and Mr. Ri, too, came to South Korea recently. Mr. Oh left his wife and children behind in North Korea for over twenty years while living in several European countries, before catching a plane from Moscow to South Korea. Mr. Ri lived in Russia for 26 years, and received a visa for his Russian wife to come and live in South Korea with him not so long ago.

The main reason that North Koreans defect from Russia is that they feel at odds with society and the regime back home. Also, after living overseas for a number of years, they find out that Kim Il Sung actually served in the Red Army during the early 1940s and that Kim Jong Il was even born in Russia, not on Mount Paektu. This leaves them disillusioned with the Kim family personality cult.

They also wonder what they did to have been punished by being born in such a country, and to have to live apart from their wives and children for decades somewhere with a different language and customs.

Now, unable to return, they long to someday see what they left behind – their hometowns, wives and children, who have all grown into adults without them – once more.

While they leave North Korea to earn more money, however, defectors from Russia don’t go to South Korea for economic reasons but because of concern for their own personal safety.

The North Korean and Russian governments have a close relationship, so the Russian authorities will send a defector back to North Korea if they are discovered. They would face execution once repatriated.

Edited by James Fretwell