200 NK defectors have settled in Japan in recent years: scholar

By Hwang Doo-hyong

WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 (Yonhap) -- About 200 North Korean defectors have settled in Japan in recent years with most of them being Korean-Japanese who moved to North Korea from Japan for more than two decades from the late 1950s, a scholar said Tuesday.

Tessa Morris-Suzuki, professor of Japanese history at Australian National
University, made the assertion in a bulletin posted on the Website of the
East-West Center of the University of Hawaii.
More than 93,000 Koreans, mostly descendants of North Koreans living in Japan,
and their spouses moved to North Korea between 1959 and 1984. Among them are
nearly 7,000 Japanese.
Suzuki expected more will follow suit to return to Japan amid the worsening
economic plight of the reclusive communist state.
Most North Korean defectors settle in South Korea which provides economic
assistance and a living environment of the same culture and language.
More than 10,000 North Korean defectors have settled in South Korea since the end
of the Korean War in 1953.
Under the North Korean Human Rights Act, which was extended in September for
another four-year run to promote human rights in the North and help their
refugees, the U.S. has accepted more than 70 North Korean defectors in the past
years.
Most North Korean defectors risk deportation and political persecution when
passing through China, which considers North Korean defectors to be economic
migrants rather than refugees under an agreement with its communist ally North
Korea calling for their immediate deportation.