Ladies first: China opens to
Korean refugees By Sunny Lee
BEIJING - There are some signs that China
is easing up on its policy on North Korean
refugees who have escaped from the starving
Stalinist country. China reportedly issues
temporary-resident permits to some North Korean
refugees.
"It is my understanding that
China issues identification cards to some female
North Korean refugees who are married to Chinese
men," a South Korean government official said,
quoted by the
country's Yonhap News Agency.
The official said China appears to be
moving away from its punitive policy of
repatriating refugees back to North Korea.
China does not officially recognize North
Korean escapees as political refugees. It
classifies them as illegal economic migrants and
uses that as its legal rationale to send them back
to North Korea, where they would most likely to
face severe torture or even the death penalty.
The beneficiaries of the temporary IDs are
female North Korean refugees who are married to
Chinese men, who have children with those men, and
who have lived in China for a prolonged period
without causing any problem drawing the
authorities' attention.
The South Korean
official said some villages in China have set up
rules stipulating the criteria for issuing such
identification cards, adding: "Given the Chinese
political structure, without the implicit nod or
direction from Beijing, this rule wouldn't have
been in place."
China has apparently been
carrying out such measures since as early as 2004
in a very low-key manner. It has been less
forthcoming in accommodating the demands from the
international community for better humanitarian
treatment of North Korean refugees for fear that
doing so might anger its often irascible neighbor,
with which it has a repatriation treaty.
The identification cards issued to North
Korean refugees are temporary residential permits
or cards that show they are Chinese citizens, said
a South Korean expert on North Korean human-rights
conditions. He said they are issued only in
certain villages and under a limited scope. He
didn't specify how many villages participate in
the program or where these villages are.
But most are reportedly in China's inner
and western regions, rather than the northeast
near the North Korean border where the Korean
refugee population is concentrated.
The
economically underdeveloped rural villages in
inner China suffer from a lack of women. Many men
in these villages, mostly farmers, need to seek
brides elsewhere. China is a gender-unbalanced
country, partly attributable to its one-child
policy that has pushed families to prefer a boy.
The situation is even worse in rural areas where
many youths leave for cities to find jobs. Experts
speculate whether the introduction of the North
Korean female refugees is part of China's effort
to stabilize these rural villages.
The
South Korean human-rights observer said it remains
to be seen whether such "pilot program" will be
expanded to other regions. He believes that the
practice is carried out in "consultation" with the
central government.
Beijing has been
facing mounting international criticism from
human-rights watchers for its severe policy on
North Korean refugees and has seen it as a
potential embarrassment as it hosts next year's
Summer Olympic Games.
It is not
immediately clear whether Beijing's easing up on
North Korean refugees comes against such a
background or whether there will be any more
measures to accommodate refugees. South Korean
government data show that in 2006 the number of
North Korean refugees who arrived in the South was
2,019. Among them, women accounted for 1,533, or
76%.
Some observers believe that the
reason there are more female North Koreans willing
to flee their country is the relatively less
severe punishment that women expect to receive if
caught and repatriated than men. Also considered
is the fact that women find it easier to get jobs
in China than men, who are more likely to be under
suspicion from the Chinese authorities.
Ben Sanders of the US Committee for
Refugees and Immigrants confirmed in a recent
interview with Radio Free Asia that some local
governments in China allow female North Korean
refugees who are married to Chinese men to obtain
an ID. He believes that China must have given some
thought on how such a practice can be introduced
within its own legal framework. "It's hard to say
whether such a practice is completely legitimate
or illegitimate. It's in between."
Last
year, China sent about 1,800 refuges back to North
Korea, which was a sharp reduction from about
5,000 it had repatriated in 2005.
There is
no authoritative estimation about how many North
Korean refugees are in China, given the caution
and the secret manner in which they behave there.
Sanders believes there were about 30,000 North
Korean refugees in China last year. However, some
non-governmental organizations estimate the number
could go as high as 300,000.
Sunny
Lee is a writer/journalist based in Beijing,
where he has lived for five years. A native of
South Korea, Lee is a graduate of Harvard
University and Beijing Foreign Studies
University.
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