Asia Times: PYONGYANG WATCH: Refugees: North Korea's Achilles' heel?


	March 7, 2001	atimes.com

The Koreas

PYONGYANG WATCH
Refugees: North Korea's Achilles' heel?
By Aidan Foster-Carter

Last week's Newsweek (cover dated March 5) carried a major feature which no one concerned with North Korea should miss. (If you can't find the print edition, check their website.) Over eight full pages, this was the fullest and best media account I've yet seen of North Korean refugees. This is an issue that has been shamefully neglected, not least because a lot of people - including all governments involved - wish it would go away. But it won't - or rather, they won't. If anything, this problem will escalate. If not attended to, it may become a major threat to hopes of peaceful change on the peninsula.

According to Newsweek's four-month investigation, as many as 300,000 North Koreans are now hiding out in China. Growing numbers don't stay there - at constant risk of being sent back to jail and torture - but find their way to Seoul by gruelling roundabout routes: walking across wintry Mongolian steppes, or the steamy jungles of Myanmar and Cambodia. They're helped by sympathetic locals and a network of missionaries (Buddhist and Christian) and others. They're hindered, disgracefully, by governments.

Thanks to Newsweek, four states will now find it harder to hide. Top of the roll of dishonor is of course North Korea itself: first for failing to feed its people and so forcing them to flee, and then criminalizing and brutalizing them for so doing. Many refugees have horrific tales of Kim Jong-il's gulag. European countries - including my own - which have rushed to recognize the DPRK, but say human rights is still high on their agenda, should collect these experiences and confront Pyongyang with chapter and verse.

China behaves almost as badly, hunting down and deporting these fugitives. Beijing lets North Korean thugs kidnap South Korean priests from Chinese territory, yet it bans UNHCR officials from the border areas (a breach of international law). Russia is laxer but no better. In 1999, Moscow ignored UNHCR and deported seven young refugees to China, which promptly repatriated them to an unknown fate.

And South Korea? Its constitution embraces all Northerners as Republic of Korea citizens - but its government does its darnedest to stop them getting there. Seoul even obstructs its own. In 1998, Southern TV showed an old POW, captive in the North for 45 years until he escaped to China, phoning the South Korean embassy in Beijing to ask for his country's help. They put the phone down on him. He made it eventually, to a hypocritical hero's welcome. But the numbers tell their own story. Guess how many of the 300,000 in China - Seoul pretends there are only 10,000, mind you - got into South Korea last year? Barely 300.

The raison d'etat behind all these governments acting tough is plain. No one, but no one, wants a full-scale North Korean refugee crisis. The fear is that any encouragement, such as establishing camps in China, would turn the flow into a torrent. China, fearful about its borders, has enough trouble in Tibet and Xinjiang without millions of hungry North Koreans crossing the Tumen river. South Korea, which in 48 years has taken a grand total of under 1,500 Northerners (and hardly helps even these few adjust), is woefully ill-prepared to handle the much larger numbers which several scenarios could generate.

Yet hanging tough and trampling on human rights is not just wrong; it isn't working. Refugee numbers are growing - and attitudes are hardening. Those who start hungry but loyal learn to hate a regime that tortures them for wanting to eat. Who can blame them? Yet some of their supporters have me worried. Newsweek quotes Sam Rho of the Seoul-based Commission to Help North Korean Refugees (CNKR) as actively hoping to create a mass exodus - so that "North Korea will be crushed like an Easter egg".

Bad idea, Sam. Very bad idea indeed. Grossly irresponsible, in fact. Why? By pure coincidence, I have a letter on this in that same issue of Newsweek. Briefly: While no one knows for sure what will happen in North Korea, we sure as hell know what should happen. The three main scenarios stand in a crystal clear order of desirability. A second Korean war - it nearly happened in 1994 - is far the worst. Collapse and absorption - the German outcome - is also fraught with huge risks and crippling costs.

Far preferable is the soft landing that Kim Dae-jung is trying for: coaxing Kim Jong-il to change. It's a terribly delicate balancing act and it may yet fail. Understandably, it sticks in the craw of many who abhor North Korea, above all those who have suffered at its hands. Yet even they have a responsibility to use their heads, not just their heart or gut reaction, and to think hard about tactics and consequences. Everyone wants to see an end to North Korea in its present form - but how? I used to think collapse was inevitable and desirable. In Cambridge in 1993, a then retired South Korean politician persuaded me that evolutionary change was a much better idea. His name was Kim Dae-jung. But I beg to differ when he now says it's premature to raise human rights issues with North Korea. On the contrary, Kim Jong-il must be pressed urgently to feed and treat his people better - because it's right, and because if he doesn't then he risks reaping the whirlwind. As Bob Marley knew, a hungry man is an angry man.

((c)2001 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

back to the top

©2001 Asia Times Online Co., Ltd.

Asia Times Online is designed and produced by Multimedia Asia Co., Ltd.