New data show that a growing number of middle-class North Koreans are escaping from North Korea. 

The Unification Ministry revealed on Sunday that a recent survey of North Korean defectors staying at the state-run support center Hanawon showed nearly 56 percent of respondents said their income level in the North had been above average. The figure is a surge from 19 percent reported in 2001.
 
The number of the respondents who said that they had belonged to the middle or upper-middle class in the North jumped from 23-point-five percent in 2001 to 66-point-eight percent.
 
The survey also found that fewer North Koreans chose to defect due to poverty and other economic reasons.
 
In surveys conducted before 2001, nearly 70 percent of North Korean escapees cited unbearable poverty and hunger as major reasons for their defection. However, since 2014, the figure has dropped to the ten percent level.