The U.S. hasn’t been able to stop North Korea’s nuclear program, so bravo to South Korean President Park Geun-hye for her ground-breaking speech Saturday urging the people of the North to make the often dangerous journey to freedom. "We will keep the road open for you to find hope and live a new life," she said. "Please come to the bosom of freedom in the South." This may be a better path to regime change in Pyongyang than empty condemnations or unenforced sanctions.

South Korea has until recently tended to pay lip service to the right of North Koreans – enshrined in its constitution – to resettle in the South. Seoul arranged transport when defectors made it through China to third countries but did little to encourage mass defections.

Pyongyang has been able to control the flow of defectors for its own benefit. During some periods of economic hardship, it used the outflow as a safety valve. At other times, the regime tightened border controls.

The number of defectors peaked in 2009 at 2,914, but then third-generation dictator Kim Jong Un strengthened surveillance over the border. The number has begun to grow again, totaling 894 in the first eight months of this year.

The regime’s elite are also defecting in larger numbers, which suggests internal dissent is growing. Last year a senior colonel in the North’s spy agency crossed over, and in August the North’s deputy ambassador to the U.K., Thae Yong-ho, resurfaced in Seoul. The overall proportion of defectors identifying as middle class has grown to 55.9 percent, up from 19 percent in 2001.

Can President Park turn this trickle into a flood? One key will be a program to get the welcome message past the North’s censorship. In February, the South announced it would drop leaflets on the North for the first time in a decade. It can also help human-rights groups with launches of balloons carrying information about life in the South and how to escape.

The biggest challenge will be convincing Beijing to stop violating international conventions that forbid sending refugees back to their country of origin without considering their asylum claims. Seoul has avoided confrontation on this issue to secure China’s support in containing the North’s nuclear program. But as Beijing’s refusal to support further sanctions after the North’s nuclear test last month shows, it wants to ensure the survival of the Kim regime no matter how egregious its behavior.

Ms. Park deserves credit for ending the last vestiges of the "Sunshine Policy," the appeasement of Pyongyang begun under President Kim Dae-jung in 1998. Earlier this year, she closed the Kaesong Industrial Zone that had supplied the regime with $100 million a year that it used to fund weapons programs.

But the real key to ending Kim Jong Un’s rule is liberating the North’s people. A stream of defectors would weaken the regime economically and help send more information about the outside world back home. Let North Koreans vote with their feet for an end to tyranny.

– The Wall Street Journal

Oct. 3

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