One trend, though, is clear. The number of North Koreans seeking asylum in South Korea has increased nearly every year since 1995. Forty-one arrived in 1995. By 2009, the number had jumped to nearly three thousand. More defectors turned up in the South between 2005 and 2011 than had fled North Korea over the entire period since the end of the Korean War in 1953. By 2012, there were about twenty-four thousand defectors in South Korea.
