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That was harrowing. There were a couple things I didn't understand: 1. What changed about China's surveillance systems or procedures to make them ~20x more ef

That was harrowing. There were a couple things I didn't understand: 1. What changed about China's surveillance systems or procedures to make them ~20x more effective at catching refugees in a couple years? 2. There's a bit about how North Korean refugees can apply for asylum in South Korea. I was under the impression (from Barbara Demick's book Nothing to Envy) that all North Koreans are more or less granted asylum by default. My recollection is that she put it even more strongly in her book: that SK in effect treated fleeing North Korean citizens as de facto citizens of South Korea, because they are meant to be one country. Is the asylum process mentioned here a rubber stamp, or did the process get more strict? Would a refugee from North Korea ever be refused asylum in South Korea?

BoxFour 3y ago
1. The article briefly discusses the impact of COVID, highlighting China's implementation of supplementary measures and limitations during this period. It is evident that having knowledge of individuals' travel destinations would undoubtedly assist in contact tracing efforts. However, as the article states it can also be used for malicious exploitation. 2. If your question is about why they go to Thailand instead of stopping in Laos: Thailand is reluctant to repatriate individuals back to North Korea, while Laos does not share the same reluctance. For the more general question: It is understandable that South Korea would scrutinize refugees to some extent to prevent the infiltration of espionage agents and similar threats.
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  >It is evident that having knowledge of individuals' travel destinations would undoubtedly assist in contact tracing efforts. Any evidence for that? Actually, any evidence that contact tracing has actually had any benefits wherever it has been tried? I'm sure it helps at very, very early stages of a pandemic, and even then depending on which virus we are trying to trace... But I'd like to see actual proof that it helps for pandemics like COVID. Otherwise it is such an easy way to implement mass surveillance, that requiring very very thorough proof that it actually helps is the bare minimum. This story is proof of that.
  - BoxFour 3y ago
    Are you asking for evidence that knowing everyone’s locations and travel itineraries would assist in contact tracing? Because I think that one is obvious. Otherwise, I’m not particularly interested in having a COVID conversation.
    - mardifoufs 3y ago
      It's not a conversation about COVID. It's one about contact tracing. And yes I think that evidence should always be required when talking about potential tools for such mass surveillance. "It makes sense" isn't really proof for anything, as the last pandemic has proven times and times again. For example here in Quebec, contact tracing apps and tracking location of everyone with covid has had pretty much no measurable effect. Even fundamental questions like "what is a contact" are hard to answer, so actual studies might be helpful for this conversation. And again, even tracing infectious contacts was much easier with mass tracking of every single citizens location, that still doesn't mean it is actually useful to stop a pandemic. It might be! Which is why I was asking for good evidence.
      - BoxFour 3y ago
        > that still doesn't mean it is actually useful to stop a pandemic You're arguing against ghosts. That is not what I said, or even implied. I wrote: > It is evident that having knowledge of individuals' travel destinations would undoubtedly assist in contact tracing efforts. Tracking movement is obviously helpful for contact tracing, because you can track the proximity of individuals to each other and warn those who were near a confirmed case. I wrote absolutely nothing on whether contact tracing is impactful, and I wrote nothing about whether you could accomplish the same result in a different way. The usefulness of contract tracing is not a conversation I wish to engage in.
        mardifoufs 3y ago
        Ok, how do you define a contact then? How can it be evident that tracking locations is obviously helpful for contact tracing without defining what it means to trace a contact? That's why evidence would be helpful here. How does knowing a location helps with determining a contact, especially for coarser tracking like know where someone is travelling. You keep repeating that it is obvious and again, saying that something is just... obvious is not enough when discussing dangerous, almost "dual use" methods like contact tracing using mass tracking.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  > It is understandable that South Korea would scrutinize refugees to some extent to prevent the infiltration of espionage agents and similar threats. That makes sense. It does seem to point to an obvious maligned behavior NK could engage in: send inept spies, let it seem like a problem, and suddenly SK will have to apply extra scrutiny to any refugees. Hopefully the extra scrutiny won’t bump anyone from the “defect” to “don’t defect” camp. I guess it must be a secondary concern, I mean defecting is already a huge decision.
CrampusDestrus 3y ago
If NK has a relatively recent and relatively good quality photo of you (national ID card) they can just share it with the CCP and run it through their massive CCTV surveillance network
kijin 3y ago
The South Korean constitution treats North Korea as an integral part of its territory, currently occupied by hostile forces. Therefore, anyone from North Korea is automatically, and in fact always has been, a citizen of South Korea. It's not just asylum, nor "de facto" citizenship. It's full citizenship, period. There's a mandatory program that every refugee must go through, not only to get them accustomed to South Korean culture but also to filter out spies and criminals. You will be under surveillance for a long time afterward. But even if you turn out to be a spy, you are still a citizen of South Korea and will be punished as such. The law simply does not recognize any such thing as "North Korean citizenship".
- jeremyjh 3y ago
  Who are the occupiers of North Korea if there are no North Koreans? edit: This was an honest question, I don't understand the reason for downvotes.
  - xoa 3y ago
    >Who are the occupiers of North Korea if there are no North Koreans? South Korean criminals I'd assume? It'd be like if some American militia suddenly seized some area of land and declared themselves a new independent country and began oppressing everyone already living there. The US wouldn't recognize that (and would move to stop them), but while of course the civilians there wouldn't lose citizenship, the militia wouldn't legally lose citizenship either. They'd just be criminals. Citizenship is a fairly big deal and it's not trivial to renounce it. In the US at least IIRC you literally cannot renounce citizenship domestically at all outside very rare exceptions, you must be abroad and do so at a consulate or embassy, and it's something considered not automatic and instant. Additionally one can be charged an exit tax depending on net worth and tax status. SK of course will have its own rules, but I'm just saying as a matter of law "everyone in that area of our country is citizens of our country being illegally coerced/controlled by other citizens of country, who are criminals" wouldn't be that strange. Although often countries facing such a de facto split work something out legally, there's no inherent reason countries can't refuse to legally recognize things indefinitely.
  - 3y ago
dirtyid 3y ago
> What changed about China's surveillance systems In the last few years, I don't think anything substantial. IMO new difficulty (post zero covid) was due to massive human trafficking crackdown after the "chained woman" uproar in PRC. Don't forget some of these people are "rescued" by human traffickers / organized crime that sold them to sex work in first place. There's also geopolitical layer of these defections being run by Durihana, South Korean NGOs (double whammy of foreign + religious), conducting operations on mainland soil without PRC assent - there's no reason to allow these operations in the first place.
Arch-TK 3y ago
I don't think the surveillance system got much more sophisticated but for anyone wondering what china's surveillance system was like before the pandemic, I stayed in China three times for a total of about a month and a half in the 6 months before the pandemic. When you get to the airport, you will likely notice the abundance of cameras, including paths which take you right under overhead cameras. Your photo will be taken at the airport border control and your visa will be stamped. You will get an entry card you must fill in before leaving china and present alongside your passport. This card details the hotel you will be staying at. If I recall correctly you also had to provide these details on the visa application form, as well as a recent photo. When riding in a car, cameras on all major roads will periodically take photos of the front of every car every few hundred meters, accompanied with a literal flash. Once you arrive at your hotel, you will be greeted with yet another camera, you will be required to check in your passport and have your photo taken. This system, I believe, is a government integrated system as between all the hotels I visited, they seemed to have a very similar computer with a similarly mounted camera. If you plan to travel between cities, you will need your passport to buy the ticket. Once on the bus to a different city, it's possible someone at some checkpoint will abruptly enter the bus with a hand-held camera to videotape everyone's faces. In large cities, especially the bigger ones, cameras are everywhere, there's cameras on top of cameras pointing at other cameras. Comedic cartoons of surveillance don't do it justice. When using the metro (underground) transportation systems you will again be passing through gates with overhead cameras pointed at your face. Presumably to match up the chip-coins (or whatever the particular metro system of the city you're in uses) with routes taken and map these to photos of your face. If you plan on taking a taxi, expect to have to use didi or something equivalent, didi doesn't take payments via bank cards, didi takes payments via wechat or alipay. To get wechat working as a foreigner in china, you must find Chinese people who will vouch for you to activate your account (let's hope you can chat up some people in a bar to help you with this feat). To get alipay working in china, you need a chinese bank account, unless you're extremely lucky and manage to get it working without one (I managed once out of my three trips). I'm pretty sure both alipay and wechat are tightly integrated into the chinese surveillance system. I'm pretty sure the information which gets collected would be useless if it also didn't get dumped in a centralised system and processed collectively, so I'm pretty sure there is some centralised system with complex processing.
noah_buddy 3y ago
Just read Nothing to Envy myself and one important point is that that work is from almost two decades ago at this point. With the advent of computerized surveillance, it is understandable that the difficulty has increased. A country such as China, it’s probably quite easy for the surveillance systems to loop in a human any time that an unknown face crops up. Paired with the pronounced physical and cultural differences between North Koreans and an other people in the world, it’s probably easy to guess when someone is attempting to escape from NK. Does anyone have book recommendations for modern insight into NK? I have been reading about the country much more in recent weeks.
cushychicken 3y ago
Re: point 1 - 1. Widespread surveillance camera emplacements, especially in large cities and over highways. 2. Widespread and explicit/implicit use of facial recognition software in conjunction with said camera systems.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago
Thank you, wide-eyed AI researchers. You are making the world a better place.

BoxFour 3y ago

1. The article briefly discusses the impact of COVID, highlighting China's implementation of supplementary measures and limitations during this period. It is evident that having knowledge of individuals' travel destinations would undoubtedly assist in contact tracing efforts. However, as the article states it can also be used for malicious exploitation. 2. If your question is about why they go to Thailand instead of stopping in Laos: Thailand is reluctant to repatriate individuals back to North Korea, while Laos does not share the same reluctance. For the more general question: It is understandable that South Korea would scrutinize refugees to some extent to prevent the infiltration of espionage agents and similar threats.

mardifoufs 3y ago
>It is evident that having knowledge of individuals' travel destinations would undoubtedly assist in contact tracing efforts. Any evidence for that? Actually, any evidence that contact tracing has actually had any benefits wherever it has been tried? I'm sure it helps at very, very early stages of a pandemic, and even then depending on which virus we are trying to trace... But I'd like to see actual proof that it helps for pandemics like COVID. Otherwise it is such an easy way to implement mass surveillance, that requiring very very thorough proof that it actually helps is the bare minimum. This story is proof of that.
- BoxFour 3y ago
  Are you asking for evidence that knowing everyone’s locations and travel itineraries would assist in contact tracing? Because I think that one is obvious. Otherwise, I’m not particularly interested in having a COVID conversation.
  - mardifoufs 3y ago
    It's not a conversation about COVID. It's one about contact tracing. And yes I think that evidence should always be required when talking about potential tools for such mass surveillance. "It makes sense" isn't really proof for anything, as the last pandemic has proven times and times again. For example here in Quebec, contact tracing apps and tracking location of everyone with covid has had pretty much no measurable effect. Even fundamental questions like "what is a contact" are hard to answer, so actual studies might be helpful for this conversation. And again, even tracing infectious contacts was much easier with mass tracking of every single citizens location, that still doesn't mean it is actually useful to stop a pandemic. It might be! Which is why I was asking for good evidence.
    - BoxFour 3y ago
      > that still doesn't mean it is actually useful to stop a pandemic You're arguing against ghosts. That is not what I said, or even implied. I wrote: > It is evident that having knowledge of individuals' travel destinations would undoubtedly assist in contact tracing efforts. Tracking movement is obviously helpful for contact tracing, because you can track the proximity of individuals to each other and warn those who were near a confirmed case. I wrote absolutely nothing on whether contact tracing is impactful, and I wrote nothing about whether you could accomplish the same result in a different way. The usefulness of contract tracing is not a conversation I wish to engage in.
      - mardifoufs 3y ago
        Ok, how do you define a contact then? How can it be evident that tracking locations is obviously helpful for contact tracing without defining what it means to trace a contact? That's why evidence would be helpful here. How does knowing a location helps with determining a contact, especially for coarser tracking like know where someone is travelling. You keep repeating that it is obvious and again, saying that something is just... obvious is not enough when discussing dangerous, almost "dual use" methods like contact tracing using mass tracking.
bee_rider 3y ago
> It is understandable that South Korea would scrutinize refugees to some extent to prevent the infiltration of espionage agents and similar threats. That makes sense. It does seem to point to an obvious maligned behavior NK could engage in: send inept spies, let it seem like a problem, and suddenly SK will have to apply extra scrutiny to any refugees. Hopefully the extra scrutiny won’t bump anyone from the “defect” to “don’t defect” camp. I guess it must be a secondary concern, I mean defecting is already a huge decision.

CrampusDestrus 3y ago

If NK has a relatively recent and relatively good quality photo of you (national ID card) they can just share it with the CCP and run it through their massive CCTV surveillance network

kijin 3y ago

The South Korean constitution treats North Korea as an integral part of its territory, currently occupied by hostile forces. Therefore, anyone from North Korea is automatically, and in fact always has been, a citizen of South Korea. It's not just asylum, nor "de facto" citizenship. It's full citizenship, period. There's a mandatory program that every refugee must go through, not only to get them accustomed to South Korean culture but also to filter out spies and criminals. You will be under surveillance for a long time afterward. But even if you turn out to be a spy, you are still a citizen of South Korea and will be punished as such. The law simply does not recognize any such thing as "North Korean citizenship".

jeremyjh 3y ago
Who are the occupiers of North Korea if there are no North Koreans? edit: This was an honest question, I don't understand the reason for downvotes.
- xoa 3y ago
  >Who are the occupiers of North Korea if there are no North Koreans? South Korean criminals I'd assume? It'd be like if some American militia suddenly seized some area of land and declared themselves a new independent country and began oppressing everyone already living there. The US wouldn't recognize that (and would move to stop them), but while of course the civilians there wouldn't lose citizenship, the militia wouldn't legally lose citizenship either. They'd just be criminals. Citizenship is a fairly big deal and it's not trivial to renounce it. In the US at least IIRC you literally cannot renounce citizenship domestically at all outside very rare exceptions, you must be abroad and do so at a consulate or embassy, and it's something considered not automatic and instant. Additionally one can be charged an exit tax depending on net worth and tax status. SK of course will have its own rules, but I'm just saying as a matter of law "everyone in that area of our country is citizens of our country being illegally coerced/controlled by other citizens of country, who are criminals" wouldn't be that strange. Although often countries facing such a de facto split work something out legally, there's no inherent reason countries can't refuse to legally recognize things indefinitely.
- 3y ago

dirtyid 3y ago

> What changed about China's surveillance systems In the last few years, I don't think anything substantial. IMO new difficulty (post zero covid) was due to massive human trafficking crackdown after the "chained woman" uproar in PRC. Don't forget some of these people are "rescued" by human traffickers / organized crime that sold them to sex work in first place. There's also geopolitical layer of these defections being run by Durihana, South Korean NGOs (double whammy of foreign + religious), conducting operations on mainland soil without PRC assent - there's no reason to allow these operations in the first place.

Arch-TK 3y ago

I don't think the surveillance system got much more sophisticated but for anyone wondering what china's surveillance system was like before the pandemic, I stayed in China three times for a total of about a month and a half in the 6 months before the pandemic. When you get to the airport, you will likely notice the abundance of cameras, including paths which take you right under overhead cameras. Your photo will be taken at the airport border control and your visa will be stamped. You will get an entry card you must fill in before leaving china and present alongside your passport. This card details the hotel you will be staying at. If I recall correctly you also had to provide these details on the visa application form, as well as a recent photo. When riding in a car, cameras on all major roads will periodically take photos of the front of every car every few hundred meters, accompanied with a literal flash. Once you arrive at your hotel, you will be greeted with yet another camera, you will be required to check in your passport and have your photo taken. This system, I believe, is a government integrated system as between all the hotels I visited, they seemed to have a very similar computer with a similarly mounted camera. If you plan to travel between cities, you will need your passport to buy the ticket. Once on the bus to a different city, it's possible someone at some checkpoint will abruptly enter the bus with a hand-held camera to videotape everyone's faces. In large cities, especially the bigger ones, cameras are everywhere, there's cameras on top of cameras pointing at other cameras. Comedic cartoons of surveillance don't do it justice. When using the metro (underground) transportation systems you will again be passing through gates with overhead cameras pointed at your face. Presumably to match up the chip-coins (or whatever the particular metro system of the city you're in uses) with routes taken and map these to photos of your face. If you plan on taking a taxi, expect to have to use didi or something equivalent, didi doesn't take payments via bank cards, didi takes payments via wechat or alipay. To get wechat working as a foreigner in china, you must find Chinese people who will vouch for you to activate your account (let's hope you can chat up some people in a bar to help you with this feat). To get alipay working in china, you need a chinese bank account, unless you're extremely lucky and manage to get it working without one (I managed once out of my three trips). I'm pretty sure both alipay and wechat are tightly integrated into the chinese surveillance system. I'm pretty sure the information which gets collected would be useless if it also didn't get dumped in a centralised system and processed collectively, so I'm pretty sure there is some centralised system with complex processing.

noah_buddy 3y ago

Just read Nothing to Envy myself and one important point is that that work is from almost two decades ago at this point. With the advent of computerized surveillance, it is understandable that the difficulty has increased. A country such as China, it’s probably quite easy for the surveillance systems to loop in a human any time that an unknown face crops up. Paired with the pronounced physical and cultural differences between North Koreans and an other people in the world, it’s probably easy to guess when someone is attempting to escape from NK. Does anyone have book recommendations for modern insight into NK? I have been reading about the country much more in recent weeks.

cushychicken 3y ago

Re: point 1 - 1. Widespread surveillance camera emplacements, especially in large cities and over highways. 2. Widespread and explicit/implicit use of facial recognition software in conjunction with said camera systems.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago

Thank you, wide-eyed AI researchers. You are making the world a better place.