Slipping through the Cracks in South Korea: The Uncertain Futures for the Children of North Korean Defectors

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July 8, 2025 Feature  By Noël Um-Lo and Eunsook Jang

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Map of North and South Korea (Map: iStock.com/omersukrugoksu)

More than 34,000 North Koreans, most of them women, have fled to South Korea since the two countries were divided 80 years ago. Over the decades, as geopolitical tensions and globalization have reshaped migration out of North Korea, the composition of this population has shifted in ways the South Korean government has yet to fully address. 

In This Article

• Defections from North Korea have fluctuated over the years

• Movement has become increasingly gendered

• Family reunification has brought third-country-born children into a legal gray zone in South Korea

• South Korean policymakers have made some strides, but significant gaps remain

Among the most notable changes is the quiet but steady rise of children born in China to North Korean mothers. In 2023, 71 percent of the approximately 1,800 children ages 6 to 24 with a North Korean mother who were residing in South Korea had been born in a third country (primarily China, although some may have arrived from Russia or elsewhere), up from 45 percent in 2014. These children were born during defectors’ years-long—and sometimes decades-long—stays in China, during which women and girls are often trafficked into sex work or forced marriages. Neither the children born of these arrangements nor their North Korean mothers are entitled to legal status in China, and many women live in fear of repatriation to North Korea by Chinese authorities. In order to secure safety and employment, many choose to continue to South Korea first on their own, with their children following years later.

As migration from North to South Korea has slowed over the years, the movement of these third country-born children appears to have increased. Yet data are limited. Due to South Korea’s fragmented policy landscape and narrow legal definitions for defectors, these children of North Korean background are not counted in official records and have been excluded from government supports aimed at facilitating full societal inclusion of North Koreans. 

Lacking a formal legal classification, the government of South Korea (formally known as the Republic of Korea, or ROK) has labeled them “children of North Korean defectors born in third countries after leaving the DPRK [the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or North Korea] but before entering the ROK,” a long-winded designation that places them within the law’s “multicultural” category and outside the scope of rights and resources allocated to North Korean families. This classification withholds from these children access to specialized language education, career counseling, mental-health resources, and education subsidies—resources which are all the more crucial given that these children often arrive with little to no proficiency in the Korean language. Media and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) often refer to these children using terms such as second-generation North Koreans, children of a North Korean background, or displaced youth.

This article outlines the increasing migration of third country-born children of North Korean mothers in South Korea, the government’s slow legal reforms to support them, and the gaps that remain.

North Korean Migration Trends across Asia

Migration pathways from North Korea have changed dramatically over the past eight decades, shaped by war, famine, changes in state power, and formation of new transnational networks. Although the geography, motivations, and politics of this emigration have shifted, many of South Korea’s policies have not.

Figure 1. North Korean Defector Arrivals in South Korea, 1998-2025*

* Data for 2025 cover the first three months of the year.
Note: Data are not available for 1999 or 2000.
Source: South Korean Ministry of Unification (MOU), “Policy on North Korean Defectors,” accessed May 30, 2025, available online.

Historical Shifts in North Korean Emigration

From 1945 to 1953, the period spanning Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule and the armistice ending the Korean War, approximately 900,000 North Koreans fled to the South. After the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) was fortified on July 27, 1953, migration between the countries all but ceased. Defections between 1953 and the 1990s were rare and highly politicized, often involving North Korean elites such as military leaders or high-ranking party members. Fewer than 1,000 North Koreans defected during this 45-year period.

That changed during the North Korean famine of 1995-98 and the collapse of the DPRK’s public distribution system, which caused an estimated 600,000 to 3 million deaths and triggered a new wave of survival migration. Following the famine, increasing numbers of North Korean peasants crossed the Tumen and Yalu Rivers into northeastern China in search of food. 

In winter, when the rivers freeze over, some attempt to bribe North Korean border guards and walk across the border. While a small portion of defections have occurred by sea or across the DMZ, most migration has taken place across the border with China.

Arrivals steadily increased after 1998, when South Korea’s Ministry of Unification (MOU) began releasing data on defectors, reaching a peak of more than 2,900 in 2009. Those who seek to reach South Korea often do so through Southeast Asia, relying on a network of Chosŏnjok (ethnic Korean-Chinese), brokers in China, churches, and NGOs. Because the People’s Republic of China is an ally of North Korea, harboring and aiding North Koreans constitutes illegal criminal activity.

As emigration increased, the DPRK government responded with stricter border control and pressure on China for greater policing. Technological advances in the 2010s aided increased surveillance and made border crossing more difficult. This led to a sharp decline in defections which, in conjunction with COVID-19-era border closures, have remained low: Since 2019, no more than 236 defectors have arrived in a single year. While the cost of defection varies, the average price per person rose from approximately $8,900 in 2016 to as much as $16,000 in 2018; according to defector networks, these costs have continued to rise in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Once in South Korea, after a three-month orientation, North Koreans are automatically given citizenship and a one-time payment of 8 million won (about U.S. $5,700) plus financial incentives including a maximum of 25.1 million won ($18,000) for completing vocational training or getting a job and housing subsidies of 16 million won ($11,400). The defectors are also offered career counseling and job placement, employment protection, cash and other benefits via the Basic Livelihood Security Program, special admissions to college, and tuition exemptions at public universities.

Despite these immediate benefits, long-term institutional welfare support remains unavailable to North Korean defectors. Many work in manual labor, where they face social and employment-related discrimination. Their rates of unemployment and school dropout are about double the national average; they also have higher rates of suicidal ideation and face significant barriers to integration within South Korea’s high-stakes, hypercompetitive education system and workforce.

Journeys to South Korea

The journeys to reach South Korea are physically demanding and can be financially difficult, which can create long delays in transit. Many North Koreans take multiple years to achieve their destination, during which time some form new families (frequently by force or coercion; see below). The travel also carries enormous risks. Although some individuals may obtain falsified identification by bribing an official, most North Korean defectors travel without papers and face constant threat of arrest and deportation by Chinese authorities, extortion by brokers, and sex and human trafficking. Those from higher-income North Korean households or with family members already in South Korea often can facilitate shorter stays in China by paying large sums to brokers to provide protection and transportation during the journey. 

Although researchers and rights organizations have focused primarily on migration that ends in South Korea, many North Korean migrants have no intention of residing in the South. Some plan to stay in China permanently to send remittances back to family, including by gaining Chinese citizenship (often via bribery). Others seek to return to North Korea with money earned in China. Up to 200,000 North Koreans and their children may have been resident in China as of 2024, according to Council on Foreign Relations estimates, many without legal status. China does not recognize North Koreans as refugees, instead classifying them as “illegal economic migrants,” a status that allows them to be forcibly repatriated if discovered by authorities. 

Still, many see South Korea as a place with more freedom, including legal recognition. Over time, a route through China and Southeast Asia solidified into a de facto refugee corridor, offering one of the few viable pathways for North Koreans to seek protection, despite the absence of formal refugee recognition in most transit countries. The goal is typically to reach Thailand, Laos, or Vietnam, which have South Korean embassies that can facilitate transfer to Seoul. During the 2000s, a decentralized asylum infrastructure comprised of activists, churches, and NGOs emerged. This informal system has been compared to a modern-day underground railroad, and provided aid in the form of encrypted communication, safehouses, wire transfers, and transportation to help migrants move southward. As routes through Laos, Myanmar (also known as Burma), and Vietnam became more restricted, Thailand has emerged as the preferred destination. Migrants may trek for days through dense jungle terrain along the China-Laos border before crossing the Mekong River into Thai territory.

Once in Thailand, defectors typically turn themselves into the police and are detained, processed, and fined for illegal entry as “economic migrants.” From there, they wait for South Korea to negotiate their release from detention and deportation, a lengthy process in poor conditions. In 2007, hundreds of North Korean migrants jailed in Bangkok’s Immigration Detention Center went on a hunger strike to draw attention to overcrowded prison conditions and demand faster transfer to South Korea. This hunger strike led to negotiations between the ROK and Thai governments that shortened detention times, which helped solidify the China-Thailand route.

Gendered Migration and the Growing Sex Trade

The rise in Chinese-born children of North Korean mothers is linked in part to the increasingly gendered nature of North Korean migration. While North Korean men, women, and children have long faced risks of trafficking into forced labor and the sex trade, the gender imbalance among defectors has grown more pronounced since the early 2000s. In 2002, the number of North Korean women entering South Korea surpassed that of men for the first time, according to South Korean government data. The percentage of women has continued to rise (aside from the COVID-19 period), reaching a staggering 97 percent of all new arrivals in the first three months of 2025 (see Figure 2). 

Figure 2. Share of North Korean Arrivals in South Korea Who Are Female, 1998-2025*

* Data for 2025 cover the first three months of the year.
Note: Data are not available for 1999 or 2000.
Source: MOU, “Policy on North Korean Defectors,” accessed May 30, 2025.

A rare exception to this pattern emerged in late 2024, when reports surfaced of North Korean men escaping from Russian military training grounds. An estimated 10,000-12,000 North Korean soldiers and students had been stationed in Russia’s Kursk Oblast to provide services supporting the invasion of Ukraine; some have since sought refuge. While not yet statistically significant, these cases suggest the gender dynamics could shift as geopolitical pressures evolve.

This gendered trend reflects both push and pull factors. North Korean men are typically under stricter surveillance in government-assigned workplaces, making escape difficult and increasing the consequences for those who are caught. North Korean women, by contrast, are frequently targeted by brokers who offer false promises of jobs in China but instead traffic them into sex work.

NGOs estimate that more than 60 percent of North Korean girls and women between ages 12-29 who escape are trafficked into China’s lucrative sex trade. Most trafficked females are sold to brothels in northeastern Chinese border towns, while more than 30 percent are believed to be sold into forced marriages with rural Chinese men. In recent years, a growing number (approximately 15 percent of those trafficked) have been coerced into cybersex, which includes livestreamed sexual abuse and rape to a paying clientele of mostly South Korean men.

While in China, these women are typically hidden by traffickers or husbands, endure gender-based violence, and live under constant threat of arrest. They are ineligible for refugee protections and if forcibly repatriated to North Korea face detention, torture, forced labor, or internment in political prison camps. 

Some women who avoid trafficking marry into ethnic Korean-Chinese communities in border provinces and gradually acquire local language skills. Whether trafficked or not, most of these North Korean women give birth to children in China; according to a 2023 UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) survey, 80 percent of North Korean women residing in China reported having children while there.

Family Reunification Has Brought Children into a Legal Gray Zone

As a result of these trends, there has been a noticeable uptick in Chinese-born children of North Korean mothers entering South Korea within the last decade. Although these children are granted ROK citizenship through the Nationality Act, which offers citizenship to children and foreign-born spouses of North Koreans, the immigration system has been slow to accommodate their rising numbers because the legal status for defectors was not designed for families.

Figure 3. Share of Children (ages 6-24) of a North Korean Background in South Korean School Who Were Born in China, 2011-24

Source: Kim Jin-cheo, “탈북민이 중국에서 낳아 한국에 데려온 아이들은 ‘비보호 청소년’,” The Hankyoreh, November 15, 2025, available online; Migrant Youth Foundation, “Migrant Youth Status (General),” updated April 4, 2023, available online; Korean Educational Development Institute, “연도별 북한배경학생 수 변화,” updated April 2024, available online. 

In 1962, South Korea first established the “special law on the protection of defectors from the North,” which offered generous aid packages correlated to their status in North Korea and the amount of intelligence they could provide to South Korea. Under Article 2 of the 1997 North Korean Defectors Act, one must have resided in North Korea and left without acquiring foreign citizenship to formally qualify as a defector, a status that at that time reflected South Korea’s political framing of these migrants as emblems of anti-communism and South Korean exceptionalism.

In 1997, President Kim Dae-jung established the Ministry of Unification to manage DPRK defectors and enacted the North Korean Defectors Protection and Settlement Support Act as part of his Sunshine Policy aiming to improve relations with the North. At the time, defections had just begun to increase and had not yet become gendered, so defectors’ children were an afterthought. Starting in 2002, as the number of trafficked North Korean women and pregnancies began to rise, so too did the population of their children born in China. These children began appearing in South Korean schools a decade later, as mothers gradually secured the funds to reunite with them.

Once they arrive, second-generation North Korean children find themselves in a legal gray zone. They are excluded from many resources offered by the 1997 North Korean Defectors Act and have complex backgrounds that are not accounted for in the language education programs and vocational training offered through the Multicultural Families Support Act, which is designed for immigrant spouses. As a result, ROK government agencies lack coordinated classification systems and service protocols. The result is a growing population of children excluded from settlement subsidies and the Korean language education necessary for integration. 

Many also fall through the cracks of China’s system. According to Article 4 of China’s Nationality Law, any person born in China to at least one Chinese national is considered a Chinese citizen. However, because most North Korean women residing in China do so without authorization, many are unable to legally register their children’s births or enroll in the household registration (hukou) that is essential for accessing public education, health care, and legal protections. Some families are able to purchase hukou for their children through bribes, and some fathers legally adopt their children. But many Chinese-born children without these protections grow up effectively stateless.

Although they become South Korean citizens upon arrival, the children remain in many ways more vulnerable than their North Korean-born peers.

Legal Reform and Remaining Gaps 

These exclusionary outcomes are reinforced by statistical blind spots. South Korea’s MOU does not collect data on third-country-born children, despite granting them legal recognition; data from the Ministry of Education shows their increasing presence in the school system, but tracks only enrolled students ages 6-24, omitting younger children or those not in education. As a result, analysts lack the data to conclusively measure the rising number of Chinese-born children of North Korean mothers now residing in South Korea.

By the time the Chinese-born children arrive, some North Korean mothers have married a South Korean man and have started a new family. This situation—along with prolonged separation, language barriers, and inadequate access to mental-health resources—can result in strained relations between reunited mother and child. In some cases, mothers abandon their children, sending them back to family in China or relinquishing legal guardianship to a South Korean. In 2017, the MOU announced a new support program granting North Korean defector parents a one-time subsidy of 4 million won (about $2,900). This policy, however, does not apply to children of a North Korean background with South Korean legal guardians.

 In 2024, the National Assembly passed an amendment to the North Korean Defectors Act (effective April 2025) expanding educational support to “North Korean defectors and their children.” This was a meaningful step toward inclusion. However, its implementation has stalled, and with the inauguration of new President Lee Jae-myung, who has a peace-oriented approach to North Korea, the political will to expand inclusion beyond the education system remains uncertain. The fact that these children are still treated as special cases suggests the government lacks a comprehensive and inclusive policy framework to accommodate shifting North Korean migration trends.

North Korean defectors would seem to meet the international legal definition of refugees: individuals who would face persecution upon return to their origin country. However, UNHCR typically classifies North Korean escapees as “persons of concern,” a nonbinding designation that offers no formal protection or legal status. This legal ambiguity is further complicated by South Korea’s own framework, which considers North Koreans to be South Korean citizens, who therefore are not eligible for refugee status. 

This unique legal position leaves most North Korean defectors and their children excluded from protections typically granted to refugees. China has exploited this ambiguity. Under its 1986 Mutual Cooperation Protocol with North Korea, Chinese security officials are required to arrest and deport North Korean escapees, treating them as criminal trespassers rather than humanitarian migrants. Despite criticism that this violates international law, China has continued to forcibly repatriate North Koreans; more than 600 individuals were returned in 2023 and 260 in 2024.

Citizenship but Not Full Inclusion

Under Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, refugees’ children are entitled to equal protection regardless of their parentage, nationality, or political or legal status. South Korea’s Constitution likewise prohibits discrimination and guarantees equality before the law for all citizens. Yet in practice, third country-born children of North Korean defectors are often denied the resources necessary for full participation in South Korean society.

Rights advocates and NGOs commended the 2024 amendment to the Defectors Act as a step in the right direction. However, neither the government nor public media has otherwise addressed the situation for these children. Advocates have called for greater government coordination and media attention to provide meaningful inclusion, such as by extending college tuition support, creating Korean language textbooks catered specifically to second generation North Koreans, and providing career counseling that leverages Chinese language skills.

South Korean officials often refer to defectors as a “bridge” toward unification, and “the first to enact unification” (mŏnjŏ on t’ongil). If that is so, observers note that defectors' children represent a test case for the inclusiveness of that unification process. While no policy is perfect at inception, continuing to overlook the needs of this growing population of children risks reinforcing structural inequalities.

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