This study investigates the extent to which the benefit levels of the North Korean Defector Settlement Support System (NKDSSS) have changed and differentially impacted the various groups of North Korean defectors (NKDs). It employs a historical approach to policy analysis and uses datasets compiled, summarized, and converted with the Consumer Price Index by the author. Findings suggest a portion of Unconditional Cash Transfers decreased through the first pro-work reform period (2005-2014) and Conditional Cash Transfers conditioned on job preparation decreased through the second pro-work reform period (2015-2019). The changes may generate a blind spot of poverty and enhance inequality among the NKDs. For the NKDSSS to accomplish its goals of promoting socio-economic integration of NKDs in South Korea and preparing for a peaceful Korean unification, supplemental policies are required.

With around 34,000 North Korean defectors having arrived in South Korea (as of June, 2021), perceptions toward them remain ambiguous and unbalanced. The dominant discourse about North Korean defectors centers on adaptation, and cultural difference is often identified as one of the most challenging obstacles. This article examines how a specific conceptualization of culture is utilized to alienate North Korean defectors, while securing the belief in a single ethnicity of all Koreans. As a result, North Korean defectors are rendered as cultural other in South Korean society. While cultural difference is often believed to be the basis of discrimination for North Korean defectors, this article argues that social prejudice and discrimination reproduce and reinforce the discourse about cultural difference of North Korean defectors.

The transnational ethnic networks developed by North Korean defectors are factors in the (de-)bordering of North Korea. Ethnographic fieldwork in two destinations—London and Los Angeles—demonstrates, first, that through their practices of financial and social remittances, the defectors have proved that North Korea’s border control is porous, and second, that the defectors have developed global and regional networks to challenge North Korean sovereignty. In the interaction between the defectors’ daily lives and the geopolitical environment, these geopolitical ethnic networks play important roles. This contribution to the debate on borders and defectors encourages us to shift our attention from nation-states’ laws and policies on border-crossers to the agency of the border-crossers themselves.

This article looks into how media representations of North Korean defectors reproduce the images of North Korean defectors, while paying particular attention to the contrasting voices of North Korean defectors which reflect self-presentation. The media-perpetuated image of North Korean defectors as displaced victims whose memories are mostly clustered around the oppressive regime fails to grasp the intersection of aspiration, determination, and agency of North Korean defectors. The self-presentation of North Korean defectors reveals that they are eager to be in charge of constructing and controlling their own images, which goes beyond hitherto nationalized, gendered, and ethnicized identities. Self-presentation, at the same time, is a product of strategic choices conditioned by social discourse and media representation.