CCS Junior Fellow Jiwon Yun’s new article, “Isolated from Home, Trapped by Remittances: How Isolation Leads to Affective and Moral Pressures on North Korean Remittances,” (with Myung Ah Son) has been published in the International Migration Review, Winter 2025.
Abstract: What does it mean to remit to a country you would never return to? This article examines remittance practices of North Korean defectors in South Korea, who, despite being isolated from their country of origin, continue to remit. We conceptualize North Korean defectors as isolated migrants who have extremely low possibilities of visiting or returning home and face great difficulties when communicating with their family members. Inspired by scholarship that examines the social meaning of remittances for the migrants, we argue that the isolation from the country of origin has the effect of highlighting the affective and moral dimensions of remittances for the individual migrants. Through in-depth interviews with 24 defectors in South Korea, we illustrate how remittances serve as retainers of relationship, allowing defectors to maintain family ties. Remitting also helps to resolve the feeling of “sin” that comes with leaving their family in North Korea. These meanings evolve into affective and moral pressures for North Korean defectors, who respond by prioritizing short-term incomes for remittances over long-term investments to aid their resettlement in South Korea.