>From what I know, South to North traffic (ie people fleeing or seeking asylum) has been virtually non-existent in recent years, with a few exceptions. Several years ago, for example, a former senior general in the SK army who had figured prominently in the Korean War defected to the North. There are many visitors from the south, however, from trade unionists to scholars to businesspeople to racing car drivers. From the US, many Korean-Americans visit the DPRK on a regular basis to see family and just see the country they're from. One significant event was the trip last year by several US and Australian experts on wind power to a rural area south of Pyongyang, where they set up a wind power generating plant to supply electricity to nearby villages. According to the group that sponsored the visit (Nautilus International in Berkeley) they developed good working relations with the local NK officials and had excellent access to local people to discuss their electric power needs. Fr!
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om what I hear, NKoreans outside of Pyongyang are much more open to foreigners and very eager to talk to outsiders, compared to citizens of the capital city. The more we promote these kinds of exchanges, the better off NK will be, in my estimation. People to people, not bombs and bombastic rhetoric.
Tim Shorrock
Jim heartfield wrote:
>To put it bluntly, I don't see a rush of people migrating to North
>Korean from the US, but I do see people migrating from East Asia to the
>US. Can they be so deluded?
And then Doug Henwood wrote:
>Actually I was also kind of curious about the relative traffic of
refugees from South Korea to North vs. North to South. Any data?
Doug