SEOUL — North Korea has ordered diplomats and workers overseas to send their children back to their communist homeland, sources and media reports here said.
In addition, North Korean diplomats have recently been limited to taking only one child on overseas assignments after some diplomats reportedly sought asylum, according to reports in major Korean dailies and the Yonhap news service.
In effect, children left behind in North Korea become "hostages" who can be leveraged to prevent key defections at a time when Pyongyang is seeking better ties with the United States.
The North's ruling Workers' Party issued a directive on Feb. 14 to overseas missions stipulating that diplomats and representatives should send back their children, except those between the ages of 11 and 13, to North Korea within a month, sources reported.
Under the measure, some 300 North Korean children in about 50 countries were to return home.
It is the first time North Korea has taken such a measure since the collapse of the Soviet bloc in the early 1990s. At that time North Korea ordered students abroad to return home.
The measure dusts off a decades-old regulation, which had been lifted since 2002, under which students and children were allowed to stay with their families to learn foreign languages and other skills.
"Diplomats and workers at trading companies are now allowed to keep only one child, who is old enough to attend either junior high or high school, but primary school children and college students are banned from staying overseas," a source said.
"It appears North Korea believes there is a greater chance of defection by the people overseas," the source said. The measure is also aimed at preventing the young generation from being influenced by Western culture, the source added.
More than 10,000 North Koreans, including diplomats and senior officials stationed overseas, have defected to South Korea since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, most of them in recent years. More than 100,000 North Koreans remain are hiding in China and other neighboring countries waiting for a chance to defect to South Korea after fleeing hunger and suppression in their communist homeland.
In another measure to prevent defections, North Korea has increased the penalties for those caught trying to escape, Human Rights Watch said in a report.
"In an ominous hardening of policy, North Korea appears to be punishing its citizens with longer sentences in abusive prisons if they are caught crossing the border to China or have been forcibly repatriated by Beijing." the report said.
