North Korea Athletes Unlikely To Defect During Winter Olympics 2018, Ex-Defector Says

About 500 North Koreans — including athletes, officials, performers, reporters and cheerleaders — are part of the Winter Olympics 2018 delegation, visiting Pyeongchang, South Korea. But none of them are likely to plan on staying back in the southern half of the Korean peninsula, a former defector said.

Han Seo-hee, who defected to South Korea in 2006, after being a part of the North Korean cheerleading troupe under the rule of former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, said it was unlikely that any of the North Korean athletes will try to defect to their neighboring country this year.

“I wouldn't have even considered it." Han told CNN. "It will be the same for the cheerleading squad this time. They have family back home, they know if they defect, their family will be terrified and punished."

Han said that every member of the delegation — regardless of their role — will be on high alert and trained to report anything out of the ordinary to their superiors out of fear of getting reprimanded.

"A North Korean group sent abroad is always composed of three parties,” Han said. “Party members, security members and administrative members. This time will be the same. Not only the leaders but also the rest of the performers will be punished for not reporting suspicious signs of a defector."

North Korean athletes will be surrounded by support staff, minders and informants, watching their every move while they are in South Korea for the Olympics.

A former North Korean policeman — who defected to South Korea — said there is a good chance even the athletes’ bathroom breaks will be monitored by informants who will be tasked with surveilling them 24/7.

The North Korean athletes will face intense scrutiny in the public eye, as the media report every little detail pertaining to the Winter Olympics this year.

This means that if any of them were to end up successfully defecting, it would be a huge embarrassment for North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un’s regime which already let over 31,000 of their citizens cross over to neighboring countries in the past decade.

If any of the North Korean athletes were to defect and the news went public, it would also strike up geopolitical tensions with South Korea, just as relations were thawing between Pyongyang and Seoul.

In order to boost unity between the two halves of the Korean Peninsula, which has been torn apart through war for decades, both North and South Korea marched under a single Korean flag in the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics. The two Koreas also formed a joint ice hockey team to compete in the games.

This does not mean that North Korean athletes have not used the Olympic Games as an opportunity to defect into South Korea before. In 1997, a women's ice hockey player defected and a judo athlete defected while at a competition in Spain in 1999.