North Korea Would Collapse if China Opened Refugee Exit Route to South Korea, Says Defector

An armed North Korean female soldier keeps watch behind a barbed wire fence on the banks of the Yalu River near Dandong in northeast China's Liaoning province on Nov. 25, 2010. FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images

China’s forcible return of North Korean refugees is critical to sustaining the North Korean regime, according a high-level North Korean defector.

If China allowed North Korean refugees safe passage to South Korea, a mass exodus of North Koreans would quickly bring the regime to its knees, according to Thae Yong-ho, a former deputy chief at the North Korean embassy in London.