This corpus-based study scrutinizes South Korean media’s portrayal of North Korean defectors (NKDs), especially women. Analyzing data from five leading newspapers (Chosun Ilbo, DongA Ilbo, JoongAng Ilbo, Hankyoreh, and Kyunghyang Sinmun) and Women News, this article explores power and gender dynamics in media language shaping NKD identities. Using corpus tools, statistical analysis of keywords, and collocations, the study integrates critical discourse analysis of narratives obtained through concordance search. Key findings reveal the significant underrepresentation and misrepresentation of NKD women, often stereotyping them only as victims of violence. The research advocates for a broader gender perspective in media coverage and diverse portrayals of NKD women and men as integral members of the community, emphasizing the need for gender-sensitive and inclusive language in South Korean media.

Utilizing data from South Korea’s National Health Insurance Database, which covers the entire population, this study investigates the health-seeking patterns of North Korean defectors in South Korea, focusing on mental health issues. We find that female North Korean defectors utilize mental healthcare services significantly more than male defectors and more than their matched counterparts among either South Korean natives or other immigrants. Regarding the long-term effects of residing in South Korea, indicators of both the prevalence and seriousness of mental health issues do not appear to decrease over time, for up to fifteen years after migration. We recommend more active medical support and intervention by the government to alleviate the difficulty of adjustment among female North Korean defectors that arises from mental health issues.

This study examines how the post-Cold War geopolitical context penetrated through the struggles and empowerment of North Korean female defector entrepreneurs in South Korea. Reconceptualizing the notion of intersectionality, the study focuses on a grey area of informality and the resilience of these women. Based on in-depth interviews and participant observations, the findings indicate that these women leveraged geopolitical limits to develop their entrepreneurial assets. Informality developed through their involvement in Jangmadang and cross-border mobilities via informal brokerage. Through human-trafficked marriages, they stayed in China, learning the Chinese language and working in South Korean companies. The disadvantages of the job market and gender roles motivated them to start their businesses. The research emphasizes the complex ways in which agency, mobility, and geopolitics intersect.

Why do so many North Korean women resort to leaving their children born in China and resettle alone in South Korea? What survival strategies have they employed? And what conditions contribute to them becoming transnational mothers? To answer, this article explores the status of North Korean border-crossers in China, the influence of the one-child policy and industrialization on North Koreans’ gendered migration, and China’s hukou household registration system. Drawing on ethnographic research, the article argues that the mothers’ migration and kinship are grounded in a search for security, repositioning themselves for greater control of their lives and futures. Practices of transnational mothering emerge as North Korean women resettle in South Korea and become long-distance mothers to their children who remain with their Chinese fathers.

This article examines the spatial and temporal changes of North Korean (NK) migration by analyzing the interactive process between NKs’ efforts to cross borders amidst changing geopolitical and economic circumstances and the activities at the domestic, local, state, and international levels to manage displacement from a gender perspective. In doing so, I argue that the border between North Korea and China became violent and that NK migrations became spatially gendered and class-stratified. The proportion of NK women entering South Korea remains high, primarily due to the secondary migration of those who have long resided in China in de facto marriage relationships with Chinese men. In contrast, among recent direct defectors, NK men constitute a significant proportion and they often play an active role in family migration.

This article examines and reviews the impact of China’s household registration system, hukou, as a legal and administrative basis of the legal and social personhood of North Korean refugee (NKR) women in China and their children born to Chinese fathers. It argues that China’s stringent nationality policy, along with the hukou system, left not only NKR women but also their intermarriage children with the precarious status of “nonexistence.” Recent hukou reform efforts are expected to lift legal obstacles for the children of intermarried couples to obtain hukou without penalty. This change, however, does not signal a fundamental shift toward inclusive policy. Rather, it demonstrates the Chinese government’s increased control over the bodies of these children for the purpose of mitigating the impact of demographic change.

This article serves as an introduction to this special issue, which focuses on the current situation of North Korean (NK) migration and the safety and resilience of NK migrants from a gender perspective. This introduction highlights the importance of this topic by examining debates about the influence of China as a transit space on gendered mobility and security, the geopolitical implications for the daily lives of NK migrants, and the agency of NK women. We anticipate that the provision of up-to-date data and the application of multidisciplinary analysis based on different research methodologies will deepen the understanding of the changing landscape of NK migration and the (in)securities experienced by these migrants, and contribute to the discovery of possible and critical ways to empower them.

During a 20-year civil war, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) has served as a bastion of international support, democratic values, and humanitarian assistance. Highlighting democratization, security, economic assistance, and human rights, we employed over 20 years of United Nations (UN) archives to examine the effectiveness of its mission mandates, and found that UNAMA had reduced child labor and judicial corruption while increasing civil society and facilitating international humanitarian aid. However, UNAMA failed to improve security or establish an inclusive government, particularly with respect to human rights violations. After the US military withdrawal in 2021, the future of UNAMA is contingent upon political negotiations with the Taliban. Only time will tell whether contributions of the mission will persist into the post-conflict era.

As the Indo-Naga peace process nears its finality, the longstanding competing territorial and identity claims between Nagas and Kukis in India’s northeastern state of Manipur remain unabated, with no earnest efforts to reconcile the two groups. The Kukis have a foreboding that the future Naga Peace Accord will be imposed on them as a fait accompli. Given the high stakes on both sides, New Delhi’s quest for durable peace in the region cannot afford to focus only on the Nagas—as though the concerns of the already beleaguered Kukis, or any other stakeholder, are dispensable at the altar of the Naga peace talks. Instead, New Delhi must display willingness, sensitivity, and finesse to consider how both groups’ legitimate concerns could be assuaged and reconciled.