Anchor: More than 800 North Korean defectors have entered South Korea between January and July this year. The figure is up 15-point-six percent on-year. Experts say more North Koreans already staying in foreign countries are choosing to come to the South for a better life instead of going back to their cash-strapped home country.
Our Kim In-kyung has more.
 
Report: Government tallies show that the number of North Korean defectors to South Korea is on the rise.

The Ministry of Unification said Tuesday that according to preliminary estimates, 815 defectors entered South Korea between January and July this year.

The figure is up 15-point-six percent from the same period last year.

In 2009, the number of defectors had grown to two-thousand-914, but it started to dwindle, reaching two-thousand-706 as Kim Jong-un took power at the end of 2011. The figure then slid to one-thousand-502 in 2012 and one-thousand-276 last year.
 
While declining to elaborate on the reasons, a key ministry official acknowledged that more North Koreans already staying in foreign countries entered the South this year.

Yoon Yeo-sang, the chief director of the North Korean Human Rights Archives in South Korea, attributed part of the increase to the higher number of overseas North Korean workers who choose to defect rather than go back home.

It has been known that overseas workers were required to remit a larger amount of funds to financially strapped North Korea following stronger sanctions imposed by the international community.
 
The North Korea expert also noted that a growing number of defectors are from upper middle class households. Many of them have some family members who already escaped to the South.
 
[Sound bite: Yoon Yeo-sang - chief director, North Korean Human Rights Archives (Korean)]
"The number of defectors who bring their family over to the South has increased. These people are not part of the lower class because they receive financial assistance from their families already in the South. Recently, half of the North Koreans who come to the South are such families. It has also become easier to get outside information inside the North so more of the middle class choose to come to the South."
 
Another government official said that although half of the defectors still list poverty as the reason for their defection, almost 20 percent say that they came to the South in search of better opportunities.
 
Some experts are predicting that the number of North Korean defectors living in the South is expected to surpass 30-thousand by October or November.
Kim In-kyung, KBS World Radio News.