July 3, 2001	atimes.com

The Koreas North Korean refugees: the plot thickens By Alexander Casella GENEVA - Officials at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva have expressed their satisfaction at the speedy resolution of the case of the family of seven North Koreans who sought refuge in its Beijing office last week, and who were allowed to leave China on Friday for the Philippines. They also underline the fact that while the UNHCR recognized the North Koreans as "refugees" according to the Geneva Convention, the Chinese authorities continued to view them as illegal immigrants and agreed to their departure purely on "humanitarian grounds". The refugees arrived in South Korea on Sunday after an overnight stay at Manila Airport. The Philippine government did not allow the North Korean defectors to go through immigration procedures for official entry but sent them straight to Seoul to avoid diplomatic complications. Whatever the semantics, though, for the seven concerned the ordeal is over. And for both the UNHCR and China, an incident that could have developed into an embarrassing impasse has been brought to a satisfactory conclusion by Beijing in record time and without either party having to renege on its principals. The family's departure from China obviously leaves unanswered the wider issue of North Koreans in the country. Since the late 1990s, following the decline of the North Korean economy, an increasing number of North Koreans - said to number between 200,000 to 300,000 - have entered China illegally. Many have sought employment. For Beijing, whose main concern is to avoid a resumption of hostilities in the Korean peninsula and which has to walk a fine line between the two Koreas, the issue is a delicate one. While China has a return agreement with North Korea enabling it to repatriate illegal immigrants, Beijing has essentially turned a blind eye to the issue, and Pyongyang has done likewise. It is for this reason that Beijing has not accepted any international involvement over North Koreans on its soil. Ultimately, it has been felt that this is a problem best left alone to avoid having to take drastic action. For instance, in late 1999 seven North Koreans entered Russia illegally from China. The Russians, who also have a return agreement with China, promptly sent them back to China, which in turn sent them packing to North Korea. While the UNHCR protested, it proved a lone voice. Confronted by a steady increase in the arrival rate of illegal immigrants from China, the last thing the Europeans wanted was a new wave of North Koreans transiting through China and Russia. Thus, ultimately, the unspoken consensus among governments was that China was handling a difficult situation well, and that in the prevailing regional political environment a change would serve no purpose other than to exacerbate existing tensions. While the Chinese did not consider the latest North Koreans as "refugees" and thus not under UNHCR auspices, the Beijing office of the UN body, which was set up in 1979 to assist some 270,000 refugees from Vietnam who had been accepted by China, has been able over the years to assist many individual refugees, with one provision; that it be done discreetly and not create political embarrassment. Thus, when the trade union Solidarity was banned in Poland in December 1981, a group of Solidarity activists who were at the time in China and would have risked arrest upon return to Poland were able to leave for Australia from Beijing with UNHCR assistance. The matter was handled pragmatically, and no legal principals were claimed, but the result spoke for itself. Discretion, though, was certainly not the hallmark of the quest for sanctuary in the UNHCR office in Beijing on the part of the the most recent North Korean family. Indeed, from the very start the operation appears to have been planned to obtain the maximum publicity and create the greatest possible embarrassment. The family left the port city of Dalien by train for Beijing, accompanied by a Japanese, Jiro Ishimary, who characterized himself as a "freelance journalist" and who escorted them all the way to the UNHCR office. When the UNHCR representative, who was not present when the group arrived, came to his office he found half of the Beijing press corps already waiting for him. Thus, the issue had been turned into a media blitz even before the UNHCR could determine whether those involved were legally refugees. It did later conclude they were indeed "refugees" in the sense they would have been in danger if repatriated. However, while on paper the risks of repatriation were real, in practice no evidence seems to have been presented to the effect that the family from Dalien would be in any more danger than the hundreds of thousands of other North Koreans currently in China. Likewise, the precise role of Ishimary, who clearly was more involved in making news than in reporting it, also raises questions. At the very time the North Korean family was closeted in the UNHCR office in Beijing, the issue of North Koreans in China grabbed international headlines from another source with the US magazine Newsweek running a full-page story on a young man who claimed he had been part of a group returned to North Korea in 1999. In March of this year he made another try, again through China, and succeeded in reaching Thailand. His story is a harrowing tale of arrest, torture and mistreatment that was obviously judged as credible by Newsweek. What is not so credible is the coincidence of the two events - the interview given to the magazine and the asylum quest in Beijing. It is clear the arrival of the family in Beijing was well planned. Hapless North Koreans do not hop on a train in Dalien and then head straight for the UNHCR offices as soon as they land in the capital. Nor are they generally "escorted" by a freelance journalist who ensures maximum media coverage. And, presumably, as happened in Thailand during the very same week, a refugee does not give an interview on the issue to a major American magazine. Clearly, somewhere, someone is trying to embarrass the Chinese at a time when they are at their most sensitive and vulnerable, that is, in the days preceding this month's vote by the International Olympic Committee on who will host the 2008 Summer Olympics, in which Beijing is one of the frontrunners. Presumably, the Chinese understood that what was at stake was their image rather then one North Korean family; hence the untypical speed with which they reacted. Which still leaves the issue of other North Koreans in China, with one caveat; when dealing with human beings, it is at times better to leave a problem unsolved that to improperly solve it. ((c)2001 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

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