According to the article, “Kim Is Squeezed as North Koreans in Japan Switch Citizenship,” about 1,200 North Korean citizens living in Japan change their citizenship to South Korea each year, and the rate is increasing:

Kim Jong Il no longer supports the government of North Korea.

Kim is a 66-year-old businessman who owns a shoe factory in Kobe, Japan. In 1997, he resolved to switch his citizenship to South Korea from North Korea after deciding that “I could no longer support a government that allowed children to starve to death.”

[. . .]

For the last four decades, Japan’s North Korean residents have sent billions of yen in money and goods back home to their relatives and the Pyongyang regime. As more and more of them switch their allegiance to South Korea, they are choking off the flow of resources to an isolated and impoverished country already coping with trade sanctions.

While there is no way of knowing exactly how much they have sent, Katsumi Sato, director of the Modern Korea Institute in Tokyo, estimated that in the early 1990s, the annual total was some 60 billion yen ($600 million) in money and supplies.

“The cash and goods sent from Japan in the late 1980s were bigger than their national budget,” Sato said. “It was North Korea’s lifeline.”

[. . .]

One wave of North Koreans switched allegiance in the mid- 1990s after visiting their relatives and witnessing their suffering as a result of the famines that killed as many as 3 million people. Hundreds more switched when North Korea’s Workers Party secretary Hwang Jang Yop defected to South Korea in February 1997 and openly criticized Kim’s regime.

The shift reflects demographic as well as political forces. Older North Koreans are dying; some younger ones are becoming naturalized Japanese citizens. Other younger residents have fewer direct ties with their North Korean relatives and find other ways to spend their money.

One 27-year-old computer programmer dreamed of a honeymoon in Italy, then he hit a snag: He needed a fistful of time- consuming approvals and permits to travel. So he became a South Korean and heads to Italy this summer. He asked that his name not be used because he still has some loyalty to North Korea and feels uncomfortable about the switch.

[. . .]

One sign of North Korea’s woes: Last week, the Tokyo District Court ordered the Chosensoren to pay 62.7 billion yen to cover unpaid debt or face the seizure of its headquarters in lieu of payment.

In the past, the Chosensoren might have collected money from North Korean residents in such a situation. That’s now much more difficult, not only because of the North Korean business failures, but also because many residents criticize the organization for serving as a watchdog or even a branch office of the government in Pyongyang.

[. . .]

In the past, most of this cargo would travel on the North Korean vessel Mangyonbong, which docked on Japan’s northwestern coast. The ship also carried 90 percent of the parts for North Korean missiles, according to testimony in 2003 before a U.S. Senate subcommittee by a North Korean engineer who defected.

After North Korea test-fired several missiles over the Sea of Japan in July 2006, Japan banned the Mangyonbong from its ports. It banned all other North Korean ships after the underground nuclear test last October, as part of its economic sanctions.

The flow of North Koreans changing citizenship shows no sign of abating. In Tokyo alone, residents have been switching at a rate of roughly 100 a month since 2006, according to statistics from the South Korean consulate in Tokyo. In February 2007, the latest month available, 120 switched.

For Bae Soo Hong, the 46-year-old president of a construction company near Osaka, it was Kim Jong Il — the ruler, not the businessman — who made him decide to change.

When Kim acknowledged during a 2002 meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi that North Korea had abducted Japanese citizens, “I knew it was time,” Bae said. He became a South Korean citizen this month. (emphasis added)

Hat tip to Japan Probe.