Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has suggested returning the soldiers to North Korea in exchange for Ukrainian prisoners held by Russia.
Generational punishments keep those people from leaving, most likely. Their family members will be the ones to suffer from their choice to defect.
But since this is a warzone, I’d try to fake my death on the battlefield or capture. Though I suppose that probably ends with the same punishment too.
It’s possible but it also ignores the simple reality that humans are tribalist apes and North Korea is their home, North Koreans are their people and they’ve been told their whole lives that the rest of world is the cause of N. Korean poverty.
And the thing about that is that it’s kind of true thanks to a century of embargoes of a region that has always been dependant on mining and industry and thus trade. That they’re living in a neo-monarchy means nothing over Us and Them.
Right - even if it is not as dramatic as imprisonment in the camps in Hamgyeongbukdo, it could mean demotion and years of sustained investigation and perhaps social ostracism.
But I think one of the other motives here is that these guys are probably getting some wild hazard pay for going to the conflict zone, and their relative wealth within North Korea as elite soldier careerists is probably quite decent as is.
