Myanmar authorities have arrested 19 defectors from their ally North Korea and plan to charge them with illegally entering the country, a senior police official said on Saturday.Right. If I was gonna defect from North Korea, Burma would be the first place I'd think of going.
The group of mostly men were trying to make their way to South Korea via China and Southeast Asia, an increasingly popular route for North Koreans trying to escape chronic hunger and repression in their communist homeland. "They were arrested when they entered over the border in eastern Myanmar in early December," said the official, who did not want to be named as he was not authorised to speak to media. "As they were arrested in our territory, we are taking action against them under the immigration act," he told AFP. "Their main reason (for leaving) was to go to South Korea to meet with their relatives or family members there."