In the US, I’ve heard that countries like the USSR and North Korea prevent citizens from leaving. Is this propaganda or do AES countries tend to prevent more people leaving than others?
In the US, I’ve heard that countries like the USSR and North Korea prevent citizens from leaving. Is this propaganda or do AES countries tend to prevent more people leaving than others?
Most of the time, I don’t think so. For the DPRK specifically thousands of people have permits to work and live outside of the country, while it’s the South that restricts people going north. The only actual example I can think of is in the GDR where they were dealing with the problem of people getting good free education and housing there but going to West Germany to get a higher paying job.
Haven’t heard of a DPRKorean who lives outside DPRK, I thought most of them were only allowed to work in Russia or the PRC, since that’s what liberal me was fed to regarding info about the DPRK at the time.
Also, to add with OP’s question, are DPRKoreans allowed to keep passports to themselves? Or only the government is allowed to have them (from which the DPRKoreans must return their passport back to the passport office once landing in DPRK)?
A lot of them go to South Korea, whereupon they are considered by the government there to be South Korean citizens, and then prohibited from going back to the North. So in a way there are technically no DPRK citizens in south Korea, because south Korea stops recognizing them as DPRK citizens once they cross the border. If you haven’t seen loyal citizens of Pyeongyang in Seoul I’d recommend it.
Idk all the details, but yeah, the work permits are mostly for China/Russia, but that’s probably because most countries sanction the DPRK more, and don’t want them there. I know there are people who’ve gone to China and then to somewhere like South Korea.
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but i thought chinese police send them back to the dprk if they spot them?
I would assume people without work permits and such documents would get sent back if caught by authorities, as that is generally a normal law in most countries. (Just my assumption; I’m not aware of the specific laws in China around this.)
The reduction in visa renewals for north Koreans working/residing in China is a result of (US-led) UN sanctions:
Article from 2017: “North Korean workers leave China because of UN sanctions.”
Although China went along with the 2017 round of sanctions, in 2022 China and Russia vetoed a new round of UN sanctions on DPRK and proposed lifting some of the earlier sanctions from 2017, as they felt the US had failed to engage in its end of peaceful diplomacy with DPRK and therefore the sanctions should be reduced and no further ones should be imposed.
It seems to me that China would be and is fine with DPRK citizens living and working in China, but is forced into a diplomatic balancing act as they try to maintain peace conditions while the imperialists are on their usual mission to split up and destroy their economic rivals by any methods they can achieve.
Maybe its not widely enforced, and only if they don’t have the proper documents. Since DPRK and China are allies, maybe China only sends them back if their hands are tied.
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