KB News Desk
A total of 63 North Korean defectors arrived in South Korea for resettlement in the first half of 2026, down 34.4 percent from a year earlier, as Pyongyang’s tightened border controls continued to make escapes increasingly difficult, the Unification Ministry said Thursday.
The figure included 59 women and four men, bringing the cumulative number of North Korean defectors living in South Korea to 34,600. During the same period last year, 96 defectors arrived in the South.
According to a ministry spokesperson, the latest tally does not include the North Korean soldier who crossed the Military Demarcation Line into South Korea in June, as he had not yet been formally counted in the government’s resettlement statistics.
The number of North Korean defectors entering the South fell sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic as Pyongyang sealed its borders. Arrivals later recovered to 196 in 2023, 236 in 2024 and 224 in 2025, though they remain well below pre-pandemic levels of more than 1,000 defectors typically resettling in South Korea each year.
The ministry has previously said many recent arrivals are believed to have left North Korea before the COVID-19 pandemic but spent years living in China or other countries before eventually reaching South Korea.
Women continued to account for the overwhelming majority of new arrivals in the first half, representing nearly 94 percent of all defectors. In an interview with NK News, Choi Hyeon-ok of the state-funded Korea Hana Foundation said the disparity is due in part to the different circumstances men and women face after reaching transit countries such as China. Men are typically employed in state institutions, while women have greater opportunities in restaurants, the service sector and other informal market activities, making it easier for them to sustain themselves while arranging onward travel to South Korea.
