Last week, John J. Miller wrote that Michael Elliott of Time should cheer for the North Korean soccer players to defect while in South Africa for the World Cup. Prof. Jae Ku, director of the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, spoke with National Review Online regarding the ramifications of a soccer player’s defection.
Ku said that whenever an elite North Korean citizen defects, Kim Jong Il’s National Security Bureau (NSB) will round up the defector’s immediate family and subject them to interrogation, followed by months if not years spent in labor reeducation camps. He described what happened when a former high-ranking official named Hwang Jang-yop defected. Hwang was the chairman of the Supreme People’s Assembly (North Korea’s rubber stamp parliament) and a prominent philosopher of the Juche Idea, the socialist ideology of North Korea.
When Hwang defected, over 3,000 of his family members, friends, and associates were arrested. Many of his distant relatives who faced arrest had no idea they were even related to Hwang.
Ku also brought up an incident where 100 North Korean cheerleaders traveled to South Korea for a sporting event in 2003. They were forced to sign a contract forbidding them from discussing anything they saw or heard in South Korea. Upon returning, they were sent to reeducation camp, and ultimately 20 of them were sent to the gulag.
Nobody leaves North Korea alone, according to Ku. He once attended a conference in Sweden and observed North Korean diplomats who traveled alongside NSB agents. He suspects that the NSB will closely monitor the soccer team in South Africa. An individual player can not go out alone, and must eat, sleep, practice, and do everything with his team.
“Defection will be logistically impossible,” Ku said. “The NSB has probably thought this through very carefully and has made assurances to prevent this from happening.” Ku also speculated that the NSB told the players that the cost of defection, meaning severe punishment inflicted on their family members, would be so great that the players would not deem escape worth the cost.