For the first time since Kim Jong-un assumed power in 2011, the number of North Korean defectors reaching the South has sharply increased.

The Unification Ministry said Wednesday one-thousand-268 North Koreans came to South Korea in the January-November period. That's an increase of nearly 17 percent from the same period last year. The total number for the entire year is expected to reach 14-hundred.

The annual number of defectors peaked in 2009 at nearly three thousand, but later decreased reportedly due to strengthened border control and harsher punishment.

To date, just over 30-thousand North Korean defectors have come to the South.