With barbed wire fences stretching for hundreds of miles, numerous guard posts, and the close monitoring of cross-border phone calls, the number of North Koreans who are deciding to defect to the South has been decreasing steadily since 2011.
Since Kim Jong Un rose to power in Pyongyang three and a half years ago, the danger and the costs that are connected to defection attempts have increased significantly. Defections are usually carried out using brokers, who are usually Chinese citizens who are ethnically Korean, according to Reuters.
Due to the increased risks involved in a defection, most brokers are now charging $8,000 per person for their services, which is twice the asking price a few years ago. The amount is out of reach for most North Koreans, according to Malay Mail Online.
Han Dong-ho, a research fellow at the government-run Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, and who has interviewed numerous defectors, has stated that the increase in the price and risks of defection are discouraging a lot of people from leaving the country.
"Intelligence has stepped up monitoring (of phone calls) on border passages, dampening brokers' activities," he said.
"The more dangerous, the more expensive. Many connections with brokers, which North Koreans call 'lines', have been lost," he added.
Sokeel Park of Liberty in North Korea (LiNK), an organization which works with defectors, agrees with this assumption.
"Since Kim Jong Un came in, there have been times where local brokers have refused to go to certain areas on the Chinese side because of the increased security risk," he said.
Together with the tighter restrictions on defections, the North Korean regime has also eased limitations on economic activity, according to Reuters. This has resulted in a slight improvement in the livelihoods of many North Koreans.
Such improvements, regardless of how slight they may be, are perceived to provide North Koreans who are seeking to defect even less reason to escape.
