The cumulative total of North Korean defections to South Korea is expected to pass ten thousand this month.

A Unification Ministry official in Seoul said Thursday that the estimate is based on the 99-hundred tallied as of Monday and the current average of 30 to 40 defections per week.

The total will likely pass ten thousand as early as next weekend and almost certainly within this month.

North Korean defections to the South totaled a little over 600 before the 1990s. A thousand defected in 2002 alone and two thousand last year.