N Korean defectors struggle to send money home amid pandemic
(WorldNews South Korea)

For the first time in years, Choi Bok-hwa didn`t get her annual birthday call from her mother in North Korea Each January, Choi`s mother had climbed a mountain and used a broker`s smuggled Chinese cellphone to call South Korea to wish her happy birthday and arrange a badly needed money transfer. Choi, who hasn`t sent money or talked to her 75-year-old mother since May, believes the silence is linked to the pandemic, which led North Korea to shut its borders tighter than ever and impose some of the world`s toughest restrictions on movement. Other defectors in the South have also lost contact with their loved ones in North Korea amid the turmoil of COVID-19 — and the trouble is not just on the...