{"id":61289,"date":"2024-01-19T13:14:25","date_gmt":"2024-01-19T04:14:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2024\/jan\/19\/north-korean-defectors-to-south-tripled-in-2023-seoul-says"},"modified":"2024-01-19T13:14:25","modified_gmt":"2024-01-19T04:14:25","slug":"north-korean-defectors-to-south-tripled-in-2023-seoul-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=61289","title":{"rendered":"North Korean defectors to South tripled in 2023, Seoul says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>South Korea says backgrounds of recent defectors including some \u2018elite class\u2019 indicate growing discontent with regime of Kim Jong-un<\/p>\n<p>The number of North Koreans who defected to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/south-korea\">South Korea<\/a> tripled last year, as the easing of border closures imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic encouraged students, women and diplomats to make the perilous journey.<\/p>\n<p>At 196, the number was still well below the pre-pandemic average, but South Korean authorities said the backgrounds of many recent defectors pointed to growing discontent with the regime of the North Korean leader, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/kim-jong-un\">Kim Jong-un<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2024\/jan\/19\/north-korean-defectors-to-south-tripled-in-2023-seoul-says\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>South Korea says backgrounds of recent defectors including some \u2018elite class\u2019 indicate growing discontent with regime of Kim Jong-unThe number of North Koreans who defected to South Korea tripled last year, as the easing of border closures imposed duri&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,40,222,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-north-korea","category-south-korea","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/151"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61289"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61290,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61289\/revisions\/61290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}