Underground railroad faces
barriers By Andrei Lankov
Large rallies and demonstrations have been
a part of Seoul life for decades. Experienced
expatriate journalists even advise their younger
colleagues that if a rally has fewer than 50,000
participants, it is not worth reporting.
For a long time, especially large crowds
of protesters could be found in front of the US
Embassy. One should not be surprised by this:
Street politics in South Korea is dominated by the
left, and the left in the Republic of Korea has
long believed that the US is responsible for most
problems of the country's economy and society.
However, recently demonstrations have been
seen outside the Chinese Embassy. The reason for
this is China's plan to ramp up deportation of
refugees back to North Korea. The rallies are a
reminder of an important
problem that is likely to remain an issue for
years to come.
It therefore makes sense to
have a look at the refugees as a group, and the
many peculiarities of the North-to-South movement.
First, large-scale movement from North
Korea is a recent phenomenon. In 2001, merely
1,200 North Koreans resided in the South (the
population of South Korea was slightly below 50
million). This number included all former
residents of North Korea who had managed to flee
to the South since the end of the Korean War in
1953.
One should not be surprised by such
low numbers: Until the late 1990s, North Korea
remained a hyper-Stalinist society, and escape was
next to impossible to all but members of few
privileged groups (diplomats and students
overseas, soldiers from the front-line units,
sailors and fishermen). So until the early 1990s,
in the average year merely four of five North
Koreans fled to the South. In the early 1990s, the
numbers began to be counted in dozens, but the
real growth began around 2000 when the number of
arrivals came to be counted in hundreds and then
thousands.
By December 2011, there were
23,000 ex-Northerners residing in Seoul. In recent
few years, the average annual number of arriving
refugees has fluctuated around the 2,700-2,900
mark.
This dramatic increase has been
brought about by a number of interconnected
factors. First, one should mention the quiet but
quite dramatic disintegration of North Korea's
"National Stalinism". Nowadays the state is less
able (and, perhaps, less willing) to control its
subjects and therefore it has become much easier
to reach the poorly guarded Chinese border,
especially if you live in the northern part of the
country. Border controls have been intensified of
late and the number of border crossers has
therefore declined since 2008, but in the 1990s
and early 2000s, the border was in essence
unguarded.
Changes in China have played a
role as well. Before the 1990s, few North Koreans
would consider an escape to China an attractive
option - and even if they did, they still would
have hard time surviving there. Now the illegal
migrants can find (poorly paid) jobs and (bad)
accommodation with little difficulty.
In
the late 1990s when North Koreans fled famine at
home and moved to China in large numbers, there
might have been a quarter of a million refugees
hiding in China, but nowadays the numbers are much
smaller (even though old figures are often cited).
No reliable statistics are available, but
10,000-40,000 North Koreans are estimated to be
hiding in China, usually in the northeast where
there is a large - and often sympathetic -
ethnic-Korean minority.
Second, the
decision to leave the North is seldom motivated by
politics. North Korean refugees are often
described as "defectors", but this term is
misleading. I have been doing research involving
refugees for 10 years, and have met hundreds of
them; only a tiny fraction of them left because of
their political disagreements with the regime.
This constitutes the major difference
between North Korean refugees and those defectors
who left the Communist Bloc countries during the
Cold War. Defectors of that era tended to be well
educated, and politics played at least some role
in their decision to flee. North Korean refugees
are different.
Most refugees did not even
plan to go to South Korea in the first place - not
least because, being poor farmers or semi-skilled
workers, they had no clue about the actual
situation in the South. Most of them first moved
to China in search of better living conditions and
higher incomes.
In the late 1990s,
refugees fled starvation at home, but over the
past 10 years they have been attracted by the
money to be made in China - an unskilled worker in
the borderland provinces makes US$50-$75 a month,
plus free accommodation and as much rice as he or
she can eat. For North Koreans, whose formal
monthly salary seldom exceeds $2, this is an
exorbitant sum.
When in China, North
Korean refugees therefore take badly paid (by
Chinese standards, that is), dangerous and
unskilled jobs in construction, the timber
industry and the service sector. Some of them were
involved in smuggling while many women became a
kind of mail-order bride, having married those
farmers who would otherwise have little chance to
succeed at the competitive Chinese marriage
markets (divorcees, widowers with children, drug
abusers or just really poor people).
Nowadays, women constitute a majority of
the refugees - largely because it is much easier
for them to evade official surveillance in North
Korea, but also because in China they have less
trouble blending in.
The Chinese
government refuses to recognize North Koreans as
refugees and grant them protection under the
relevant international conventions. They are
instead seen as illegal economic migrants and if
caught they are likely to be sent back to North
Korea.
Once back in his or her homeland, a
refugee is investigated (which for men implies a
lot of beating). If found guilty of contacting
foreigners, South Koreans or Christian activists,
he or she might be sent to prison for years.
However, such treatment is an exception rather
than norm. Most stay in a prison camp for some
months (if unlucky, up to a year).
Until
recently, the Chinese authorities have not gone
out of their way to locate North Korean refugees.
Nonetheless, the police do investigate reports
about businesses that employ illegal North Koreans
and occasionally check the documents of
suspicious-looking pedestrians. Therefore the
chances of being apprehended and sent back are
quite real, albeit relatively low.
Most
refugees were low down in the hierarchy back in
the heyday of North Korea's National Stalinism and
they remain downtrodden now, even as the economy
is dominated by black-market activities. Having
moved to China, many discover that the real South
Korea is very different from the country that is
described by Pyongyang propaganda. They talk to
Chinese-Koreans, they watch South Korean programs
on Chinese TV and quickly learn that South Korea
is one of the most advanced and affluent societies
of East Asia. It seems only natural therefore that
many of them would come to prefer the South over
insecure and hard living in China.
That
said, it is easier to talk about moving from
northeastern China to South Korea than actually to
do so. South Korean missions in China seldom
provide Northern refugees any assistance. To
warrant the attention of South Korea's diplomats,
one has to be somebody like an air force colonel
or district party secretary. Lesser beings are
ignored - mainly because Seoul does not want to
deal with too many refugees, but also because
China would be unhappy about a large-scale exodus
of North Koreans through its territory. South
Korean diplomats do their best not to anger China,
and they ignore most refugees. And here we come to
another important - and often misunderstood -
third point about the refugees.
Escape
from North Korea has long been commercialized.
Since an individual escape is prohibitively
difficult and risky for the average refugee, she
can take chances only when assisted and escorted
by professional escape guides, known as brokers.
Currently there are some 40-50 people who are
active in this risky but profitable business. Most
of the brokers are South Koreans, but some of them
are Chinese, and successful ex-refugees are also
present in the profession.
To get to the
South, an aspiring refugee first has to leave
China somehow. For the average refugee, a poorly
educated middle-aged woman, this is a daunting
task indeed. One has to navigate the whole Chinese
mainland (usually with little or no command of
Mandarin) and then cross into one of the countries
where there is a supposedly friendly South Korean
embassy. By far the most popular destination is
Thailand, but some travel to Mongolia, Vietnam or
Laos. There the refugees enter the embassy and/or
surrender to the local authorities and wait for
their travel documents and tickets to Seoul.
In the past, some brokers were motivated
by religious or ideological convictions, but now
such idealism has disappeared almost completely.
Over the past decade or so, nearly all brokers
work for money, pure and simple.
And
prices have gone up recently, because of tightened
border security on the North Korean side and more
intense Chinese crackdowns. The price varies in
accordance with the service level provided.
The average "no-frills defection" used to
cost $2,500-$3,000; now brokers would charge few
hundred dollars extra. For this money, a broker
would escort a refugee from a borderland area of
China to a safe house, then travel with a group of
refugees across the country, arrange the border
crossing and, finally, ensure her or his safe
arrival to the gates of a South Korean embassy,
usually in Bangkok or Hanoi.
A "VIP
defection" would cost substantially more,
somewhere in the region of $10,000-$15,000. But
this would include a comfortable trip to Seoul on
a commercial jet, using a forged passport, and the
would-be refugee can be contacted within North
Korean territory (the price includes a safe trip
across the border).
In most cases this
Sino-Korean version of the "underground railroad"
works reasonably well, but sometimes things can
take an ugly turn. Some aspiring refugees have
died in the Mongolian desert or swamps in
Southeast Asia.
And of course a ride on
this underground railroad does not come cheaply.
Even a "moderate" fee of $3,000 is an exorbitant
sum for every North Korean who is not a corrupt
party official or a successful black-market
operator (and such people seldom defect). Even in
China, a refugee would probably never earn enough
to save that much - or, at best, it would take a
decade or so.
In most cases nowadays, we
see what can be described as "chain defections". A
North Korean gets herself to the South first. Once
there, using social-security payments and doing
some unskilled work, she saves enough money to pay
a broker to bring her spouse or child to the
South. Then the reunited family members work
together to get funds for the safe passage of the
rest of the family, so within a couple of years
the whole family has moved to Seoul. I know of one
family where this entire process took seven years
(there are four people in the family).
That said, though, this system has to a
very large degree been the result of China's
willingness to remain relatively lax and not crack
down on this cross-border trafficking too
frequently. The relaxed attitude of North Korea's
border guards is the other crucial ingredient,
since their willingness to accept bribes or turn a
blind eye out of sympathy is very important.
Alas, it seems of late the situation has
begun to deteriorate, as the recent crackdown on
refugees in China may indicate. After all,
refugees are indeed a grave security concern for
the North Korean regime, whose continued stability
serves China's strategic interests quite well.
Since 2008, the North Korean authorities
have concurrently stepped up border security.
Admittedly the border remains porous, but an
aspiring border crosser must now pay more than
ever before: A crossing might now cost the
equivalent of a few hundred dollars, not the
$20-$30 which was the rate in 2006.
So one
should not be too surprised if the number of
refugees starts either to decline or stagnate at
current levels. But it seems unlikely that the
North Korean government will be able to decrease
their number dramatically or stop people leaving
completely. The yawning gap in the living
standards and the level of individual freedoms
means that the South will remain attractive for a
significant - and, in all probability, growing -
number of North Koreans.
Dr Andrei
Lankov is a lecturer in the faculty of Asian
Studies, China and Korea Center, Australian
National University. He graduated from Leningrad
State University with a PhD in Far Eastern history
and China, with emphasis on Korea, and his thesis
focused on factionalism in the Yi Dynasty. He has
published books and articles on Korea and North
Asia. He is currently on leave, teaching at
Kookmin University, Seoul.
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