If, as rumours suggest, the DPRK is in the habit of punishing the families of defectors, I can only hope he was an unattached man with no family.
At the very least, I’m sure someone in charge of the border patrol at the north side is going to get a stern talking to.
As to those family punishment rumours, I can imagine the DPRK might like people to believe them, even if they’re not true. It would go some way to discourage people from doing things like this.
as rumor suggests
From Wikipedia:
Numerous testimonies of North Korean defectorsconfirm the practice of kin punishment (연좌제, yeonjwaje literally “association system”) in North Korea, under which three to eight generations of a political offender’s family can be summarily imprisoned or executed.
When we say 연좌제(yeonjwaje), it usually goes with the word “삼족”, which means “three families(generations)”. It usually means your parents and their siblings(and their kids and all their grandkids), your siblings and their children, and obviously, you and your children.
Damn - so to get to 8 you’re essentially just breeding them to execute them(?)
I think it’s just 3-4 in each direction, so if so something bad and you’re old, it would affect your grandkids, and if you’re young it would affect your grandparents
And all direct cousins and nephews if I’m reading this right
