Six North Koreans with 'strong desire' to go back repatriated by South Korea

Source: South Korean Ministry of Unification, 2025

South Korea repatriated six North Koreans who drifted into South Korean waters; all consistently wished to return home.
Failed efforts to coordinate repatriation persisted for months between South and North Korea. This return is the first under South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who campaigned on improving inter-Korean ties.
Upon their return to North Korea, the six individuals will face extensive interrogation, according to Nam Sung-wook, the former head of the Korea National Strategy Institute think tank.
Sources: BBC, AP

North Korea bars foreigners from newly opened 'world class' beach resort days after opening

Aerial view of Wonsan-Kalma Coastal Tourist Area

Just days after opening with significant fanfare and hosting its "first foreign guest," the Russian Foreign Minister, North Korea's official tourism site announced the massive resort for 20,000 people was "temporarily not receiving foreign tourists."
The move dims economic prospects for the resort and Wonsan Kalma Coastal Tourist Zone, which was a major national construction project intended to attract much-needed foreign currency.
Analysts cited in the article speculate the ban could be due to a Russian media report that suggested the "local tourists" seen during the official visit were staged, causing embarrassment for the regime.
The story provides a glimpse into the unpredictability of state policy and its direct impact on both the country's economic ambitions and the image it projects to the world.
Sources: BBC, Independent.co.uk

Six American arrested in South Korea for trying to float rice and bibles to North Korea

Heavily guarded Gwanghwa area of South Korea that borders North Korea

South Korean police detained six U.S. citizens attempting to float 1,300 plastic bottles filled with rice, $1 bills, USB drives, and Bibles up the coast to North Korea.
Since taking office earlier in June, South Korean President Lee suspended anti-North Korea loudspeaker broadcasts on the border and asked activists in the South to stop launching helium balloons with leaflets.
North Korea drove South Korean border residents to tears and pleading with their local government officials over a mixture of ghastly and “evil” sounds pointed towards the south over the past several months.
Sources: NBC News, Reuters, NPR

Justice Department charges North Koreans posing as IT contractors using stolen credentials

The Justice Department charged four North Koreans who posed as IT workers using stolen credentials, scamming U.S. companies out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The reports show a U.S. company unknowingly hired North Korean operative Jong Pong Ju, believing him to be Malaysian IT worker "Bryan Cho."
Authorities said that it is not only for financial gain for the North Koreans, but access is used to attempt to steal U.S. secrets as well.

Source: ABC News

Even though some experts speculate that Pyongyang will unlikely open its borders in the near future, China’s new ambassador to North Korea recently became the first diplomat to enter the country since the pandemic as he began his official duties in Pyongyang. As trade between North Korea and China has resumed, it brings much hope to North Koreans in China who have not been able to work or contact their family back home since 2020, “I haven’t been able to see my father and mother in Pyongyang for three years,” explained a woman working at a North Korean restaurant in China.

However, for the estimated 600 to 2,000 defectors arrested and detained in Chinese prisons, the possibility that the country may gradually lift its border restrictions after April 15 to mark Kim Il-sung's birthday means forced deportation to the country they escaped from.

CHINA’S POLICY ON REPATRIATION

Despite China’s status as a signatory to both the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol relating to the status of refugees, it dutifully honors the 1986 bilateral agreement with Pyongyang to legalize the forced repatriation of defectors to North Korea, where they would be received with brutal punishments. In the past, repatriated defectors faced torture, imprisonment, sexual violence, forced labor in prison camps and even public execution. Chinese law labels North Korean defectors as illegal economic migrants and the authorities actively conduct nationwide crackdowns on North Koreans attempting to transit through the country to seek freedom and protection.

On December 28, 2022, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the DPRK, Elizabeth Salmon, sent her first public letter to Beijing. She sought information about health conditions and risk of forcible repatriation in relation to a North Korean woman, who was “arrested at an acquaintance's house” in June 2021 and subsequently detained in China. The identified individual was one of the seven North Koreans held by Chinese authorities, whom the previous United Nations special envoy, Tomas Ojea Quintana, claimed to be at risk of arbitrary arrest and forcible repatriation. China had since denied having any knowledge of Quintana’s allegations in its reply in April 2022, highlighting that “people from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea who illegally enter the country are not refugees and that their actions violate Chinese laws and undermine the country’s order for the management of entry and exit.”

Refugees in Crossing Borders’ network have reported that local police made visits to their houses during the pandemic to reassure them that they would not be deported. They were cautioned by the police, however, to “stay quiet and don’t speak to any foreigners.”

THE TERRIBLE PRICE OF DEFECTION

Despite strict border restrictions imposed by Pyongyang that prevented the Chinese government from freely and routinely repatriating defectors back to North Korea during the pandemic, a source told Radio Free Asia that 50 North Koreans were sent back to Pyongyang by the Dandong customs office in the summer of 2021. Among the escapees were North Korean soldiers and pilots who served in the air force. Chinese citizens expressed sympathy toward the group facing deportation, with one Chinese citizen of Korean descent recounting that, “They said ‘If they leave, they will die. It is horrible that after escaping their country to survive, they are going to be executed young.’ The witnesses even showed hostility toward the police, who are essentially sending them off to die.”

North Korea is not only known to be unforgiving toward defectors, the safety and wellbeing of defectors’ family members are often compromised. A North Korean woman who defected to the South in 2017 told Bloomberg that she could only afford to bring one of her sons with her at the time, and her eldest son who volunteered to stay behind was beaten to death when North Korean authorities found out about their escape.

MASS REPATRIATION

As the number of defections has increased since China lifted its zero-Covid policies, the number of North Korean detainees in China is also projected to rise amidst on-going arrests and “severe” crackdowns by Chinese authorities. As a result, China is expected to resume forced returns of three years’ accumulation of detainees to North Korea as soon as Pyongyang reopens its borders. Although the fate of hundreds or even thousands of North Koreans awaiting mass repatriation remains uncertain, the prison break of defector Zhu Xianjian in 2021 sheds light on the extent defectors are willing to go to avoid returning to North Korea.

Top Headlines From North Korea - July 2025