When the majority of people that escaped North Korea were malnourished and destitute commoners from the northern provinces, it was easy to simply paint them all as “refugees,” rather than “defectors.” Armed with nothing but the clothes on their backs and hopes for a better future, the vast majority of them appeared to have escaped from a war zone when they first arrive in the civilized world. By and large, as far as the North Korean regime is concerned, with its own survival specifically in mind, these refugees have mostly been inconsequential.

However, the twelve waitresses who were the children of North Korean elites, high ranking military officers who escaped with North Korean intelligence and large sums of money, and their diplomats are not refugees, but, indeed, defectors.