September 2026 Links

‘Currently impossible’: North Korea defections in freefall: Are SK or NK incentivized to report fewer defections? If the defections are high-profile people or high in number, then the answer is likely yes to avoid drawing attention to it or showing others that it’s possible? Feels like a shaky argument though. SK has a big interest in certain defectors (military, government, etc) but probably doesn’t want the average NK to defect (uneducated, difficult to integrate into society, etc), so they may have also increased border security to prevent the latter with some way to accept the former. Would be cool to be able to filter defectors by occupation, age, gender, etc. I wonder if NK will send defectors across as spies or saboteurs? I’m sure SK is wary of this. Doubtful that a NK saboteur would continue his “job” after seeing just how much better life is in SK, but who knows. Maybe NK is actually getting better for the average citizen, or at least the average defector, resulting in…