Journal of the Korean Geographical Society ISSN:1225-6633(Print) 대한지리학회지

The number of North Korean defectors in South Korea has risen sharply after North Korea's extreme economic hardship in the 1990s, reaching 33,700 as of 2020. This study defines North Korean defectors as migrants and analyzes their migration practice by applying the mobility paradigm. Through snowball sampling and in-depth interviews with North Korean defectors who had spent a certain period of their lives in North Korea and South Korea, it analyzed the motives for defecting, mobility capabilities, and the process of choosing a settlement after entering South Korea. The major reasons for their defecting were the dissatisfaction with North Korean society, the recommendations from their relatives and acquaintances, and their career advancement. They had the different kinds of mobility capabilities such as overseas visit experience, inter-regional movement experience in North Korea, and imaginary movement through foreign information and utilizing them to practice the migration. Furthermore, there was a difference in activeness in selecting a settlement in Korea according to the size of the mobility capability. The existing literature about the migration of North Korean defectors tends to simply identify the characteristics in the migration path and make only circumstantial arguments by emphasizing the environmental factors for defection. Therefore, this study is meaningful in that it revealed that the mobility capabilities are accumulated and manifested before defecting and during moving into South Korea, and could ultimately influence the settlement in South Korea.