In the US, I’ve heard that countries like the USSR and North Korea prevent citizens from leaving. Is this propaganda or do AES countries tend to prevent more people leaving than others?
Well, in the GDR, 20% of the population had immigrated to the west before the government started more strictly regulating emigration. Restricting who could leave was kind of a necessity at that point.
The GDR started allowing more travel to the west in the 1970s. You could visit if you were aged over 50 or had relatives in the west, and other people could also visit but they had to wait much longer and get an approval from the Stasi (most requests were approved). By 1988, millions of people legally visited West Germany each year and over 99.9% returned to the GDR.
Most of the time, I don’t think so. For the DPRK specifically thousands of people have permits to work and live outside of the country, while it’s the South that restricts people going north. The only actual example I can think of is in the GDR where they were dealing with the problem of people getting good free education and housing there but going to West Germany to get a higher paying job.
Haven’t heard of a DPRKorean who lives outside DPRK, I thought most of them were only allowed to work in Russia or the PRC, since that’s what liberal me was fed to regarding info about the DPRK at the time.
Also, to add with OP’s question, are DPRKoreans allowed to keep passports to themselves? Or only the government is allowed to have them (from which the DPRKoreans must return their passport back to the passport office once landing in DPRK)?
A lot of them go to South Korea, whereupon they are considered by the government there to be South Korean citizens, and then prohibited from going back to the North. So in a way there are technically no DPRK citizens in south Korea, because south Korea stops recognizing them as DPRK citizens once they cross the border. If you haven’t seen loyal citizens of Pyeongyang in Seoul I’d recommend it.
Idk all the details, but yeah, the work permits are mostly for China/Russia, but that’s probably because most countries sanction the DPRK more, and don’t want them there. I know there are people who’ve gone to China and then to somewhere like South Korea.
A lot of those who “go to South Korea” from China are trafficked there through different means and for different purposes but nonetheless, a large amount of people from the DPRK in South Korea did not consent to go there.
