Defection, Labor Exports and Border Control

Revised August 2 3PM. An earlier version of this post reported that the UN staff from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights would travel to Pyongyang; their office has subsequently denied this story. Thanks to Josh Stanton for alerting us. The Kim Jong Un regime currently faces difficult tradeoffs with respect to cross-border population movements that are indicative of wider dilemmas of social control. As other sources of revenue may or may not be drying up—depending on how you re

Source: Peterson Institute (PIIE)