The number of North Korean defectors arriving here is rising again after a four-year decrease since leader Kim Jong-un took power and tightened controls.

From January thorough July this year some 815 North Koreans fled their country and arrived in the South, up around 15 percent from the same period last year, the Unification Ministry said Tuesday.

This suggests that international sanctions and the resulting economic straits in the repressive North are driving many away. More defectors now come from the elite, which for long thrived while ordinary North Koreans starved.

◆ Defying the Odds

From 2006 to 2011, some 2,000-plus people fled the North every year, but when Kim took power in 2012 numbers dropped to about 1,500.

Last year the number was down to 1,276. The regime boosted border patrols, forcibly relocated the families of defectors, and meted out tougher punishment for those who aided and abetted defections.

At the same time, the regime hatched plots to get defectors who had settled in South Korea to return, though few obliged. In some cases the regime took relatives hostage.

The regime paraded returning defectors before the media, tremulously reading out prepared statements, before they too were sent to prison camps or remote areas, according to an official here.