North Korea spent much of the pandemic reinforcing and building a huge border wall to close off its frontiers with China and Russia — and prevent defectors from leaving the hermit kingdom.
Beginning in 2020, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s regime constructed hundreds of miles of border fences, according to satellite imagery analyzed this week by Reuters, the Monterey-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies and the accounts of activists and defectors who have recently escaped from the repressive country.
“The traditional North Korea-China route is now effectively over, unless there is a major change in the situation,” a South Korean pastor who has helped North Koreans defect and did not want to be identified told the news agency.
He said China was the most popular escape route for those fleeing the North Korean regime.
Only 67 defectors made it to South Korea last year, compared with more than 1,000 who escaped in 2019, according to reports.
Although North Korean authorities have not specifically addressed work on the border wall, they have reportedly referred to increased security measures to keep out COVID and “other alien things.”
In a speech declaring victory over COVID-19 last year, Kim Jong Un ordered officials to “ensure perfection” of an “overall multiple blockade wall in the border, frontline and coast areas and in the seas and air.”
With Post Wires
