Koreans in China - North Koreans

North Koreans

China has a large number of North Korean refugees, estimated at anywhere between 20,000 and 400,000 as of 2006. Some North Korean refugees who are unable to obtain transport to South Korea instead marry chaoxianzu and settle down in China, blending into the community; however, they are still subject to deportation if discovered by the authorities.

As of 2011, there are an estimated four to five thousand North Koreans residing as legal resident aliens in China. An increasing number are applying for naturalisation as Chinese citizens; however, this requires a certificate of loss of North Korean nationality, which North Korean authorities have recently become more reluctant to issue. Major North Korean universities, such as the Kim Il-sung University and the Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies also send a few dozen exchange students to Peking University and other top-ranked Chinese universities each year.

In June 2012, the Los Angeles Times reported that Beijing and Pyongyang had signed an agreement to grant as many as 40,000 industrial trainee visas to North Koreans to permit them to work in China, and that the first batch of workers had already arrived earlier in the year in the city of Tumen in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture.