Minorities in North Korea

They include groups of repatriated Koreans, small religious communities, and migrants from neighboring China and Japan.

The historical Jaegaseung ethnic group of descendants of Jurchen people used to inhabit villages of their own, under lay monastic orders, until the 1960s.

While in the 1980s Chinese people living in North Korea enjoyed privileged access to trips abroad, today many of them have permanently moved to China.

The influx forced the North Korean government to construct refugee camps to house the immigrants.

During the 1960s and 1970s they maintained affluence from their Japanese stay, but their wealth was consumed by the North Korean famine of the 1990s.

Their communities remain tight, with marriages mostly from within the group, and separate from the rest of the North Korean society.

The Soviet Union had one of the largest Korean minorities abroad, but fewer than 10,000 of them have repatriated to North Korea, where they have been assimilated into the rest of the society.

In the 1980s Chinese people were uniquely privileged in North Korea by being allowed to freely make visits abroad.

[14] Fewer than 10,000 Russian-Korean people moved to North Korea, although the Soviet Union had one of the largest Korean minorities in the world.

The Russian-Koreans have mainly assimilated, and do not form a separate ethnic group in modern North Korea.

The Cultural Revolution and resulting persecution of Korean intellectuals caused them to flee to North Korea.

For instance, the Chondoist Chongu Party is allowed to exist so that the regime is able to claim it represents ideals of the 19th century Donghak Peasant Revolution.

[22] There are very few rights to the religious minority in North Korea because they usually don't know about these people as they are a very small group of the huge population.