By Andrei Lankov

According to South Korean statistics, 1.6 million foreigners reside in South Korea (almost 3 percent of the country's total population). But what about South Korea's northern neighbor? How many foreigners reside permanently in North Korea?

We are not talking here about foreign embassy staff or international relief agency staff. They are a relatively small group that, together with their families, number less than 1,000. Additionally, this group is composed of individuals who usually only spend a few months or few years inside the country before leaving. They also seldom speak Korean and are almost always kept isolated from North Korean society at large.

Currently, there is only one group of permanent foreign residents in North Korea. This is the hwagyo, Chinese residents of North Korea; citizens of China whose ancestors moved to Korea in the early 20th century. Once upon a time, there was a significant number of hwagyo, but of late their numbers have dwindled to 5,000 or so.

Unlike other foreigners, hwagyo live lives not all that different from the lives of the average North Korean. They usually work in regular North Korean factories and companies. They live in the same kinds of houses as North Koreans. Nowadays, however, hwagyo tend to be rich because their ability to travel to China more or less freely has provided them with many lucrative business opportunities.

The North Korean government looks upon the hwagyo with a great deal of suspicion, but it is understood that these people are protected by the mighty neighbor and are therefore best left alone.

Hwagyo is by far the most important group of foreign residents in Pyongyang, but it is not the only one. While the North Korean government has always been quite suspicious of foreign residents within North Korea's borders, there was a time when some foreigners were grudgingly tolerated within the country.

At the time of liberation in 1945, North Korea was a home to a significant number of Japanese settlers. Nearly all of them were forcefully expelled from the country. Nonetheless, a few dozen Japanese who married Korean nationals were allowed to stay. Technically, they were not categorized as foreigners because they were given North Korean citizenship (so far as the author is aware, they were all women).

At the same time, Soviet Koreans began to arrive in the North in 1945. These people were Soviet citizens of Korean extraction sent to Pyongyang to act as both advisors and supervisors of the emerging North Korean government (providing it with expertise while also making sure that it did not stray from Soviet prescriptions). If we include their family members, there were nearly 1,000 Soviet Koreans who were living in Pyongyang in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Their legal standing at the time was rather ambiguous. Most of them kept their Soviet citizenship, but often failed to renew their passports at the time. This did not really matter until 1957 when the Soviet and North Korean governments agreed that they would no longer allow dual-citizenship ― thus forcing the Soviet Koreans to make a fateful choice.

Nearly all of these people were subsequently purged as relations between Moscow and Pyongyang deteriorated in the late 1950s. Many ended up in concentration camps, while others were fortunate to flee to the Soviet Union. Only a handful survived unscathed, but the ones that did were no longer Soviet citizens.

Another group of foreign nationals was the foreign wives of North Korean students dispatched overseas for studies in the 1950s. These men sometimes married women from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. In the 1960s however, the North Korean government decided that such women were potentially dangerous and so their North Korean husbands were ordered to divorce their foreign wives (who were expelled from the country). No letter exchanges between the separated couples were allowed subsequently. There were a few dozen such women, and by the late 1960s they had all gone.

Another small group of foreign residents included political refugees. These were usually political radicals from Asian and African countries (as well as their family members). Such people had come to North Korea seeking asylum. We have no statistics on this group, but it is likely to be very small: in the region of a few dozen. Recently, a former member of this small community, Monica Njuema, the daughter of an overthrown African dictator, published a memoir about her experiences in Pyongyang.

Nonetheless, in spite of all exceptions, it would be but a minor exaggeration to say that North Korea has no foreign permanent residents. Frankly, for North Korea's leaders this is good news, since this is exactly what they want for their country.

Professor Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. You can reach him at anlankov@yahoo.com.