North Korea is seeing a steep drop in the number of people escaping the country, according to a report by thestar.com.my published on Monday. The Malaysian outlet describes the defection trend as being in "freefall," citing the phrase "currently impossible" to characterize the situation.
The report offers no detailed figures or named sources, and thestar.com.my does not set out the specific reasons behind the decline in its headline or summary. What is clear from the outlet's framing is that the movement of North Koreans leaving the country has slowed dramatically compared with earlier periods.
Defections from North Korea have long been treated as a measure of conditions inside one of the world's most closed states. The thestar.com.my report points to a sharp contraction in that outflow, though it does not attribute the change to a single cause or provide a breakdown by year or region.
The headline's use of "currently impossible" suggests that would-be defectors now face conditions that make escape extremely difficult, but thestar.com.my does not elaborate on what those conditions are in the material available.
What to watch next: whether thestar.com.my or other outlets publish fuller data on defection numbers, and whether governments or human rights groups respond to the reported decline.
