North Koreans who have fled Kim Jong Un’s regime in recent years have spoken out a more negative feeling than previous defectors regarding the North Korean dictator and the legitimacy of his family’s hereditary control of power, according to a report released last Tuesday by the South Korean Unification Ministry.
The 280-page document The book covers the economic and social situation in North Korea and has collected data from interviews with 6,351 defectors between 2013 and 2022. It highlighted the long-term changes taking place within Pyongyang’s closed society, particularly the growing importance of black markets and self-employment to earn a living.
According to the latest report, 43.8% of school dropouts said this disapproved of Kim Jong Un’s rise to power in 2011 when they still lived in the country. Of those who fled North Korea between 2016 and 2020, a larger share, 56.3%, said they disliked the North Korean leader.
“Negative public sentiment (in the North) towards leadership succession based on the so-called ‘Paektu Line’ has increased, and This perception appears to have gained momentum since Kim Jong Un took control,” the report said.
The North Korean regime’s propaganda often refers to Kim’s family as the “Paektu Lineage,” based on the claim that Kim’s father and predecessor, Kim Jong Il, was born in a secret guerrilla camp on the slopes of Mount Paektu, the highest peak in the Korean mountains.
However, records show that Kim Jong Il was born in 1941 Khabarovsk, in the Russian Far East, while his father and founder of the regime, Kim Il Sung, trained with the Soviet Army alongside the Chinese communists.
The views expressed by the defectors in the report may not reflect the broader North Korean population 81.8% of respondents were women and 82.1% were residents of the four northern provinces economically disadvantaged people who bordered China before defecting.
However, your answers could spell trouble for them Blatant regime effort to highlight Kim Jong Un’s daughterJu Ae, as her “most likely successor,” according to the assessment of the South Korean National Intelligence Service.
Although North Korea has never officially abandoned its involvement With socialism to protect the regime’s economic independence and autonomy, defectors interviewed for the report said North Koreans are increasingly engaging in activities in the unofficial private sector to cope with economic difficulties and meet needs.
These activities include Smuggling, selling and bartering products in the markets, cultivating land that they are not allowed to use and working on building houses.
More than 90% of deserters said they needed markets to survivewhile 68.1% reported that their main source of income came from outside their government-assigned jobs.
According to the report, the private sector is now an important source not only of food and clothing for North Koreans, but also for “Health care, education, transportation and information infrastructure”. And with the growing importance of the markets, the situation of women has also grown.
Although that is expected Men in patriarchal North Korean society Women who work in government-assigned jobs despite meager salaries are given more freedom to do other work that earns them money, increasing their economic influence.
According to the report, this change in status has resulted in women being forced into it delay marriage or file for divorceand fertility rates have fallen.
No matter how much the regime has Increased internal controls to prevent access to external information Destabilizing, 83.3% of refugees who fled between 2016 and 2020 said they had consumed media from outside the country while still in North Korea, compared to just 8.4% of those who fled before 2000 were.
54.8% of school dropouts surveyed for the report were people between the ages of 20 and 30. Just over a third of defectors said they owned cell phones in the countrybut the vast majority said internet access was virtually impossible and that they watched films or dramas produced in South Korea and other countries via USB and other devices.