A followup posting by Michael Wells:
Two weeks after my previous post on North Korean defections, 25 defectors have stormed the Spanish embassy in Beijing and demanded asylum, threatening to commit suicide if they were sent back. China still doesn’t want to acknowledge defectors as refugees, but that position’s becoming harder to maintain as the situation becomes more visible. Pressure from South Korea and (one hopes) the US should help a lot.
I’ll be watching for soldiers defecting along the Chinese and Russian borders. The military is all that keeps Kim Jong Il’s regime in power. If they start going, it’s all over for the DPRK.
