Kim Regime Reportedly Executes 6 Officials Responsible for Overseas Workers

Being responsible for managing overseas workers looks like a very undesirable job to have in North Korea considering the increasing number of prominent defections happening:

North Korea publicly executed six officials in charge of supervision of its workers overseas in May following the defection of 13 workers at a North Korean-run restaurant in China a month earlier, a local Pyongyang watcher said Friday.

“North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ordered six officials, including intelligence officials, to be executed publicly on May 5 due to their lack of control over overseas (North Korean) workers,” Choi Seong-yong, chairman of the Abductees’ Family Union, claimed, citing people familiar with the matter.

Eighty public officials and 100 people who have their family members working overseas were forced to watch the execution, he said.

In early April, a group of 12 women and one man fled from a North Korea-run restaurant in China’s eastern port city of Ningbo and defected to South Korea. In the following month, three female workers at a North Korean restaurant in the midwest city of Shanxi reportedly defected to the South.

“North Korea locked the families of the defectors up and forced them to take ideological education at a training facility in Myohyang Mountain, in the northern part of the communist country,” Choi said.  [Yonhap]

The Korea Times has an article that explains how an increasing number of prominent defections are happening:

More and more North Koreans from various social backgrounds are fleeing their country in pursuit of better lives in South Korea, the United States and other countries.

A teenage math prodigy refused to return home and has sought asylum at the South Korean consulate in Hong Kong after participating in the International Mathematics Olympiad there in early July, media outlets there reported Thursday.

Diplomatic sources said Friday that a top military officer and three diplomats fled from North Korea this month and are on their way to third countries via China.

Some other sources claimed a construction worker and two employees at a North Korean restaurant in Malta presumably defected to South Korea after deserting their respective workplaces between 2015 and early this year.

Noting that those defectors are from the middle- and upper-classes, analysts speculated that a growing number of North Koreans regardless of their backgrounds are unhappy with their country’s young leader Kim Jong-un in the wake of sanctions and the country’s accelerated isolation.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but it makes me wonder if this is being caused by a combination of the sanctions, disillusionment with the Kim regime and the subversive media entering into North Korea challenging the constant propaganda that North Koreans have to deal with every day.