PYONGYANG
WATCH N Korean refugees the beginning of a
flood? By Aidan Foster-Carter
Some 460 North Korean refugees flew into Seoul's
Songnam military airport on two chartered Asiana flights
on Tuesday and Wednesday. They came from the same
officially unidentified Southeast Asian country. (Shall
we stop the pussy-footing, please? It's Vietnam, is it
not?)
This is an important moment. First of
all, the numbers. At a stroke, the Vietnam 460 take the
total of North Korean defectors, as they
are officially
called, reaching South Korea this year, which stood at
760 as of end-June, almost up to the 1,285 who arrived
in the whole of 2003.
For decades after the
Korean War, the number of North Koreans escaping to the
South was tiny, reflecting the near-impassability of the
heavily mined and fortified border, the ironically named
Demilitarized Zone. A rare soldier or two has made it
across the DMZ - in both directions, as we've been
reminded recently with the weird tale of Charles Robert
Jenkins: the 8th US Cavalry sergeant who disappeared
northward across the line in January 1965, and lived in
North Korea for the next 39 years until he and their two
daughters were reunited with his Japanese abductee wife
- you couldn't make this up, could you? - first in
Indonesia and now in Japan, where the US Army may yet be
stupid enough to charge him with desertion rather than
treat him as an intelligence gold mine. But all that is
another story.
Take me to the river So
if you want to leave North Korea - and who wouldn't? -
you have to head north, across the long river border
into China. Hitherto that hasn't been too hard, though
some reports say fences are now being built. The
west-flowing Yalu is difficult, but in the northeast the
Tumen River freezes in winter, while in summer some
sections are shallow and narrow enough to wade across.
Border guards can be eluded, or sometimes bribed.
No one knows quite how many North Koreans have
made that journey over the past decade, since the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea's (DPRK) chronic
malnutrition spiraled into outright famine. The
often-quoted figure of 300,000 is plausible, if this
means cumulative crossings. But the number actually
hiding out in China at any given time is probably much
lower, especially since Beijing has cracked down
viciously on these fugitives in recent years.
Surveys by aid organizations, working in the
border area under very difficult conditions, suggest
that most such refugees come from North Korea's
northeastern border province of North Hamgyong. That
figures, on two counts: the border is near, and
conditions are desperate. Formerly an industrial area,
too mountainous to grow much food, Hamgyong-pukdo has
seen its factories close and its people starve, in
unknown numbers. Andrew Natsios - author of the first
book on what he calls the Great North Korean Famine, and
currently head of the US Agency for International
Development (USAID) - accuses Kim Jong-il's regime of
"triage" in North Hamgyong: in effect cutting it off and
letting it starve.
So those who can, vote with
their feet. A majority seem to be women - and not all of
them leave voluntarily. There are many reports now of
North Korean women being sold into China, whether for
marriage, or to work in bars or worse. As always in such
trafficking, abuses are numerous because rights are
non-existent. This is a nasty, sordid business.
China persecutes the starving It's no
exaggeration to accuse all governments concerned - make
that unconcerned - of behaving appallingly. North Korea,
naturally, starves and mistreats its people, and then
has the gall to regard any who flee as traitors, and
punish them accordingly. If at first you leave simply
out of hunger or to find work, but then get caught in
China and sent back to be beaten up and jailed,
naturally you emerge with no great love for the Dear
Leader (Kim Jong-il) and flee again, this time
determined never to go back to such a hell-hole.
"Persecuting the starving" is the all-too-apt title of
an Amnesty International report on this bitter process.
This well-documented cycle gives the lie to
China's despicable refusal to treat any North Koreans
who are illicitly on its territory as refugees. The
party line from Beijing is that they're all economic
migrants. As such, under a border treaty with North
Korea, China can and does round them up and send them
back. Worse, it won't even let the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) - which has an office
in Beijing, but itself stands accused of failing to
press hard enough on this issue - visit the border areas
and see for itself. All this contravenes international
conventions to which China is a signatory.
So
what's a poor North Korean in China to do? Staying put,
you have to hide out. A few activist non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) - mostly South Korean, some
Japanese or American; often Christian or Buddhist - may
help you, but they too must be furtive, as they risk
arrest and deportation: one such, Kim Hee-tae, was
released this month after two years in a Chinese jail.
Because of the need to hide, your kids - many refugees
are children - can't go to school. It's no life at all,
by normal standards. But anything has to be better than
North Korea.
Seek asylum - but
where? Other than lie low, or return to North
Korea, there are two options. One is to seek asylum in a
foreign mission in China. Two years ago there was a rush
of embassy incursions in Beijing, aided by activists.
The lucky ones who made it eventually got to Seoul; but
since then security around embassies has been tightened,
and a crackdown in the northeastern border area means
that in a sense this tactic has made life worse for the
far larger number who remain in China. (Activists hotly
argue the pros and cons, as may be imagined.)
A
few still succeed via this diplomatic route, such as a
group in June who got into a German school in Beijing.
But for most, the only option is to continue the
journey: to get out of China into another country, they
hope more welcoming, and thence onward to Seoul.
That means going either north or south: to
Mongolia, or Southeast Asia. Either journey is both
physically arduous and risky. On April 2 a 17-year-old
boy, Lee Chol-hun, who had spent half his life hiding in
China, was shot - in the back, by some accounts - and
killed by a Chinese border guard while trying to cross
into Mongolia. (Ah, the heroic People's Liberation Army,
bravely defending the motherland against all comers!)
Read more on http://www.northkoreanrefugees.com/boyshot.htm.
Even once over the border, the unforgiving Gobi
takes its toll. Yoo Chul-min was just 10 when he
perished on July 7, 2001, lost and exhausted in the
desert. For his tragic tale, with pictures of a
bright-eyed boy in a baseball cap, and of the wooden
cross that marks his lonely grave, see http://www.familycare.org/stories/yoochul.htm.
Underground railway The southerly
route, which more take, has its own perils. You have to
cross the length of China. Physically you blend in, but
just hope no one tries to talk to you and twigs that
you're a foreigner. Again this is costly and risky. An
"underground railway" of activist NGOs may help with
money and safe houses. But mostly you're on your own:
not in the arid Gobi, but trying to cross the thick
steaming jungles of Southeast Asia undetected. Thailand
is the preferred destination, but beggars can't be
choosers. So North Koreans turn up in Vietnam, Laos, or
even - God help them - Myanmar.
Even there, they
often have to continue an underground existence. No
doubt we'll get the full story on - and stories of - the
Vietnam 460 eventually, but probably they represent an
accumulation over several years. The South Korean
government that believes in quiet diplomacy on such
matters - too quiet by half, say critics, considering it
technically recognizes all North Koreans as Republic of
Korea (ROK) citizens - had no doubt been negotiating
delicately behind the scenes with Hanoi to bring them to
Seoul. There are even reports that Vietnam was
threatening to send them back - presumably to China,
which would then deport them to North Korea, as is
feared to have happened in several recent cases.
Vietnamese sensitivities Vietnam,
though nominally communist, is not especially friendly
with North Korea, but it has its own sensitivities on
the refugee front (remember boat people?). There's also
an ongoing issue with the Montagnard minority, who've
been fleeing to Cambodia to escape state persecution. In
the party paper Nhan Dan last Sunday, a Vietnamese
Foreign Ministry spokesman, Le Dung, accused UNHCR of
conducting "many wrong activities to lure
ethnic-minority people in the Central Highland to
illegally flee to Cambodia, and [it] even considered to
give these people political refugee status".
Not
to be outdone in the persecution stakes, on the same
date the Cambodian government arrested two reporters
(one Irish, Kevin Doyle of the Cambodia Daily) who were
trying to reach 17 Montagnard asylum-seekers - and
charged them with human trafficking. They were released
a day later, after "confessing". Radio Free Asia, one of
whose stringers was arrested, has more details.
Coming to America? The international
ramifications run wider yet. More than 1,000 Montagnards
won asylum in the United States after an earlier
crackdown in 2001. Some US human-rights activists would
like North Koreans to be similarly welcomed in the land
of the free. On July 21, the US House of Representatives
unanimously passed the North Korea Human Rights Act
(NKHRA) 2004. If this becomes law - which is far from
certain: it has yet to go to the Senate, and time is
short - this would mandate the US to foreground
human-right issues in all its dealings with North Korea.
One specific provision is to make it easier for North
Koreans to seek asylum in the US. Last year just nine
applied, of whom six were refused.
This too is
controversial. Most of the NKHRA's backers are on the
Republican right. (An even tougher separate North Korea
Freedom Act, currently before the Senate, avowedly seeks
regime change.) The bills' opponents - including South
Korea's ruling Uri Party, which is getting up a petition
on the subject - fear that raising all this will offend
Kim Jong-il's delicate sensibilities. Pyongyang might
then pull out of the six-party talks and various
dialogues and projects with South Korea, thus
jeopardizing what little progress has been achieved in
recent years.
Engage and press I beg
to differ. Western European countries, which have
recognized North Korea en masse since 2000, see no
contradiction in seeking engagement with Pyongyang while
actively pursuing human-rights concerns. Thus it was
European Union states that this year and last submitted
resolutions condemning North Korean human-rights abuses
to the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR; not to be
confused with UNHCR). South Korea abstained on this;
last year it absented itself from the vote. But the
resolutions passed, and a special rapporteur has been
appointed to probe and press on these matters, to
Pyongyang's fury.
How can that not be right?
Read any of the websites that give you chapter and verse
on the terrible sufferings of North Korean refugees -
too many to list: just Google! - and if your blood
doesn't boil, may I suggest you take your heart in for a
service. This of all areas is one where, frankly, I find
it hardest to keep the cool detachment of an "expert".
In that capacity, I've written no fewer than five
reports on North Korea refugee issues in recent years
for UNHCR (two are still on their website). But as a
human being, I find the hypocrisy and silence of all the
governments concerned nauseating.
Lee Chol-hun
and Yoo Chol-min, and thousands more, are dead. They
deserved better. They had a right to live - and to lead
a proper life, not the living hell of a subject of Kim
Jong-il or a fugitive in China. So I'm glad for the
Vietnam 460: May there be many more. Any decent human
being or government should do everything in their power
to help them gain sanctuary and a chance to live a human
life: the kind you, dear reader, and I take for granted
as our birthright as human beings and free people.
Moment of truth For South Koreans,
though, this is an awkward moment of truth. The ROK
government is not only slow to help - it has even
sometimes initially turned away its own citizens: old
prisoners of war illegally held for half a century in
North Korea - but also grudging in its provision for the
few that do make it to Seoul. Its Hanawon facility,
which trains North Koreans for what in some ways is life
on another planet, has a capacity of only 400. So the
Vietnam 460 have had to be housed at a commandeered
training center elsewhere.
Even so, defectors
find it tough to adjust to South Korean
turbo-capitalism. They face prejudice, and about half
are unemployed. Yet if the South can't even integrate
the mere few thousands it has so far, how on earth would
it cope if it faced a Germany scenario - and suddenly
had to take on all 22 million of its impoverished
Northern brethren?
That, of course, is the
nightmare Seoul seeks to avoid at all costs. Fair
enough, in my view, to try a gradualist approach with
Pyongyang and hope for a soft landing. If it can be
brought off, this would indeed be less risky, and much
less costly, than if Kim Jong-il's regime were to
collapse on a sudden. Maybe, at long last, the Dear
Leader will see reason.
Prepare for the
worst Yet a preference for evolution over
revolution is no excuse either for not preparing for a
less desirable outcome - which sheer prudence requires,
so as not to be overwhelmed if collapse comes - or for
not fighting for the human rights of all North Koreans
here and now, be they refugees or still enjoying the
doubtful mercies of the Dear Leader's rule.
Pyongyang can bleat about being persecuted all
it wants, like the late British comedian Kenneth
Williams: "Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for
me." Not so. On human rights, as on nuclear weapons and
a host of other concerns, all that the world asks - and
is entitled to ask, and must go on asking - of the DPRK
is to behave in a civilized way, like a modern
21st-century state: to treat its people properly and
live up to international norms, standards and treaties,
many of which it has in fact signed, and so is legally
bound by.
As for South Koreans, they had better
brace themselves. Why would, or should, their Northern
cousins not seek a better life than Kim Jong-il has ever
vouchsafed them? South Koreans in the past fought hard
for their own human rights against their own dictators,
rightly scorning pleas to desist on grounds of national
security or economic development. How can they now
hesitate to help, let alone deny the same rights to
democracy and a decent life to their Northern brethren,
without arrant selfishness and rank hypocrisy?
Come to that: how will the cherished goal of
Korean reunification really be achieved? By letting a
few befuddled lefty activists cavort with cynical DPRK
apparatchiks in Incheon to celebrate paid-for summits,
as we saw last month? Or by South Koreans taking to
their bosom the tired, huddled masses who are Kim
Jong-il's victims, to give them the rights to a life
hitherto denied to them? In a word: reunification with
and for whom, exactly?
So, welcome the Vietnam
460. May many follow them. And will the last North
Korean to leave please turn out the lights? No need: Kim
Jong-il's power cuts have already rendered it a land of
darkness, in every sense. Let there be light, and life.
No more weasel excuses.
Aidan
Foster-Carter is honorary senior research fellow in
sociology and modern Korea, Leeds University, England.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
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are officially
called, reaching South Korea this year, which stood at
760 as of end-June, almost up to the 1,285 who arrived
in the whole of 2003. 
