North Korea offering sweeteners to lure defectors home

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is taking a new approach to defectors who have fled his impoverished and repressive state, promising they will not be harmed if they come home and even offering cash rewards, according to some members of the exile community.

For some who return from South Korea there’s even the chance of a stage-managed performance on state television, although what happens to them after their prime time appearances is not known in a state where 200,000 people are imprisoned in gulags and punishment extends to three generations of a family.

One woman last year apologised at a televised press conference in Pyongyang for betraying her motherland and thanked Kim for bringing her under his “profound loving care”, while another dubbed South Korea a “shitty world with no love”.