A report by the Transitional Justice Working Group revealed that over 100 North Koreans have disappeared after being caught by secret police while attempting to defect from the country or contacting relatives in South Korea. The study, based on interviews with 62 North Korean escapees, identified 113 people in 66 disappearance cases, with 80% occurring inside North Korea and the rest in China or Russia.
The report highlighted that over 30% of disappearances have taken place since Kim Jong Un came into power in 2011, with reasons ranging from attempting to flee the country to being accused of contact with individuals in South Korea. The Ministry of State Security, North Korea’s secret police, was responsible for more than 81% of the disappearances.
The United Nations estimates that up to 200,000 people are held in North Korea’s gulags, where prisoners face torture, rape, forced labor, and starvation. Kim Jong Un has intensified border controls in recent years, and Pyongyang has labeled defectors as “human scum.” The North Korean government has refuted allegations of human rights violations, denouncing them as fabrications by Western powers.
The report comes just ahead of the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review on North Korea. The revelations shed light on the Kim regime’s transnational crimes involving enforced disappearances and underscore the role of China and Russia in the issue. Beijing denies the presence of North Korean defectors in China, labeling them as illegal economic migrants instead.
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