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North Koreans 'eat worse than pigs'
By Jeremy Kirk
YANJI, China - The slow, arduous exodus of North Koreans such as Ms Moon, 34,
who wants to go to South Korea, is posing
increasingly vexing diplomatic conundrums between South Korea and China, as
both nations grapple with North Korea's decay and the resulting, unwanted
fallout for Beijing and Seoul.
"Honestly, most families can't really eat well" in North Korea, said Ms Moon,
working a low-profile restaurant job in this dusty city with a large population
of ethnic Koreans, one hour into China from the North Korean border. "When I
came to China, I learned 
that people in North Korea eat worse than a pig in China." She asked that her
full name not be used.
The mix of political oppression and brutal economics in North Korea has left
defectors on the wrong side of the fence in the view of the Chinese government.
The issue has put South Korea and China at loggerheads, while defectors and
activists contend humanitarian concern has been abandoned.
While it has allowed large groups of defectors to go to South Korea through
third countries, Beijing sees them as illegal economic migrants subject to
repatriation. North Korean law mandates at least a two-year prison sentence for
those who leave and are returned.
South Korea received a record 1,890 defectors in 2004. North Koreans are
granted citizenship, but the South Korean government has recently made clear
its opposition to large-scale defections that have caused tension with China
and both of its Korean neighbors.
Starting this year, the South Korean government slashed settlement money given
to North Korean refugees by two-thirds, to around the equivalent of US$9,000.
Defectors have often used the money to finance the escape of relatives through
activist networks and refugee brokers.
"To speak once again of the defector issue, the government clearly opposes
organized defections," Unification Minister Chung Dong-young told the South
Korean media recently. "For the people in the North to live their lives in the
North with their families is necessary both for individuals and for
co-existence and co-prosperity.
"With this in mind, it is not desirable for anyone to organize defections,
intentionally bringing people out of North Korea," Chung said.
Refugees do make it to South Korea, although scenes of North Koreans being
welcomed with flowers and adulation aren't the standard.
A 24-year-old female defector now living in South Korea contends that escaping
from China was somewhat easier than dealing with confrontational South Korean
embassy officials and Seoul's National Intelligence Service (NIS). The woman
lived in China for several years prior to a failed escape attempt through
Myanmar.
Eventually, she left China, surrendering at the South Korean Embassy in Kuala
Lumpur in 2002, "We went in and sat down, and my wife just said, 'I'm a North
Korean. I want to defect,'" said her American husband, who was with her at the
time. "She apparently had been the first one there. They didn't know what to
do."
After several frustrating days, South Korean authorities allowed them to fly to
Seoul, the couple said. But when they arrived, NIS agents boarded the plane,
cursing and roughing them up, they told this correspondent. "They were just
totally anti-defector," said the American husband, who speaks fluent Korean.
"It's always been that way." Both husband and wife spoke on condition of
anonymity, fearing further harassment.
Challenging Roh's cozy political line with the North
South Korean opposition lawmakers have challenged the position of President Roh
Moo-hyun, accusing him and his administration of ignoring refugees' plights to
improve ties with North Korea. They have also focused attention on cases of
South Koreans believed to have been abducted by North Korean agents.
Last month, four Grand National Party representatives traveled to Yanji in
China to investigate the alleged abduction of a South Korean pastor by North
Korean agents. It's believed the Reverend Kim Dong-shik was stuffed into a taxi
in February 2000 and taken to Pyongyang after years of activist work helping
North Korean refugees escape. Seoul prosecutors have since charged a
Korean-Chinese man, Ryu Yeong-hwa, with kidnapping the clergyman on orders from
North Korea's State Safety and Security Agency.
When the lawmakers tried to hold a press conference at the Beijing Sheraton
Hotel, however, several Chinese men shut off the electricity to the room and
attempted to hussle them out, claiming they did not have proper permission to
hold a press conference. But the representatives - accustomed to occasional
physical tussles in their own National Assembly in Seoul - kept vigil for an
11-hour standoff.
"These four congressmen wanted to hold a press conference on so-called 'DPRK
defectors' or what we call 'illegal immigrants' at Great Wall Sheraton Hotel,"
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said shortly after the incident.
"We have repeatedly stated our position on illegal immigrants. The Chinese
government and people have shown the greatest humanitarianism and made the
utmost efforts on this issue."
For China, the hotel incident was another unwanted bit of ugly publicity over
North Korean refugees. While at one time China was considered one of North
Korea's strongest allies, its growing economic ties with South Korea and the
United States makes the 
North Korean refugee issue a nasty foreign-policy thorn.
"China is trying to tread this very fine line between its past commitments and
its future expectations," said John Feffer, author of the book North Korea-South
Korea: US Politics and the Korean Peninsula and a visiting scholar at
Stanford University. "The refugee issue really pushes China."
China doesn't want masses of refugees showing up at its door if North Korea
collapses; at the same time, China may not be thrilled with the dynamics of the
Pyongyang regime, Feffer said.
Although China signed the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention that mandates
interviews and background checks of those claiming refugee status, China has
opted in many cases to send them back to North Korea. Human-rights and civic
groups estimate that between 200,000 and 300,000 North Koreans are living in
China.
The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said it is
hamstrung by the situation. "We can't force countries to comply," said Jennifer
Pagonis, deputy head of public information at UNHCR in a telephone interview
from its headquarters in Geneva. "We always rely on a country's goodwill."
In the 1990s UNHCR had access to the border area between China and North Korea,
but the Chinese government no longer allows it; only one UNHCR representative
continues to work in Beijing, Pagonis said.
"We are particularly concerned when these people are returned to North Korea
against their will," she said.
Increasingly, grassroots efforts by young Korean-Americans have lead to
protests in front of Chinese consulates and embassies in Seoul and Washington
to increase awareness to the plight of refugees. They have often featured
activists dressed in costumes modeled on Chinese police uniforms and leading
mock "refugees" - blindfolded and bound - for a colorful sidewalk visual.
Eileen Choi, 28, is a US representative of Seoul's branch of Liberation in
North Korea, a group that leads protests and education forums. She also teaches
English to North Korean defectors at a special school in Seoul. While students
at Korean universities are showing increasing interest in the refugee issue,
the general Korean public shows a frustrating indifference, Choi said. "The
strangers I come across ... they really don't want to talk about it," she said.
"There's really no interest at all."
A dangerous journey
On the Tumen River border with North Korea, the old ethnic Koreans who run
bamboo boats for tourists say the refugees are easy to spot: their clothing
style is very different, and they don't quite fit in with their Chinese
counterparts.
Most in this small city are openly sympathetic to those whom they consider
their very poor North Korean neighbors, who occasionally ford the shallow
waters of the Tumen River to hide in China. From there, it's only the start of
a dicey round of hide-and-seek from North Korean agents and Chinese police.
Activists have employed varying techniques to get refugees out of China,
including high-profile dashes using ladders to climb into embassy compounds in
Beijing, desert drives to the Mongolian border, and dodgy land routes through
Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.
"New routes are being looked for all the time," said Tim Peters, the founder of
Helping Hands Korea, a non-governmental organization that raises funds for
clandestine operations to move refugees out of China. "Old routes get
discovered and get shut down."
It's not cheap, and often money must be used to persuade border guards and
police to look the other way. Lower risks mean a higher price and vice versa.
Often, hard decisions must be made depending on the defector's profile and risk
of imminent capture, Peters said.
Peters said many South Koreans seem to look at defectors as costly in terms of
crime and social problems. But "if crimes against humanity are taking place in
North Korea, sorry, it's no longer a little local issue", Peters said.
If the international community is remembered as doing more for humans rights in
North Korea and helping refugees, "That's going to be a horrible scar on the
conscience of their [South Koreans'] grandchildren [for doing less]," Peters
said.
Jeremy Kirk is a freelance writer based in Seoul and specializing in
Northeast Asian issues. Joanne V Moon , a translator,
contributed to this report.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
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China's
worsening headache in N Korea (Jan
29, '05)
Kim
Jong-il and the 'A' word (Jan 21,
'05)
Perils
in the workers' paradise
(Jan 12, '05)
A
long, winding, dangerous road
(Jan 8, '05)
South
Korea slams the door (Jan 7, '05)
S
Korea's perilous historical revisionism
(Aug 3, '04)
N
Korean refugees, beginning of a flood?
(Jul 29, '04)
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