North Korean Economy Watch

Yonhap
8/25/2007

North Korea has started building fences along its border with China in an apparent attempt to forestall defections of its hard-pressed citizens, local residents said Sunday.

The move comes amid growing international criticism of China which sends back home North Korean border trespassers under an agreement with Pyongyang.

Some human rights activists have been pressuring Beijing not to repatriate North Korean refugees, threatening to launch a campaign to boycott the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

About a month ago, North Korean workers were spotted erecting wire fences along a 10-kilometer area near a narrow tributary of the Yalu River, a major border-crossing point, local residents said.

China already built fences along its side of the border late last year.

“North Korea started building a dike early this year and building posts about a month ago,” one resident said.

An increasing number of North Koreans are fleeing their impoverished communist homeland, hoping to defect mostly to South Korea. Some of them travel as far as Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries via China for safe passage to South Korea.

More than 10,000 North Korean defectors have so far arrived in South Korea amid reports that up to 300,000 North Korean refugees are roaming in China on their way to South Korea and other countries away from their impoverished homeland.

Daily NK
Kim Young Jin
8/24/2007

An inside North Korean source relayed that along the North Korean-China border region, businesses connecting North Korean civilians with relatives in the U.S. and in Japan charging exorbitant usage fees are receiving the spotlight.

Choi Yong Nam (pseudonym, 37), residing in Moosan, North Hamkyung, in a phone conversation with DailyNK on the 23rd, revealed, “International cell phones calls are directly made from North Korea or there are cases where North Koreans are directly brought to China to call their relatives in foreign countries.”

Choi added, “In order to be connected to families or relatives in South Korea, at least 200,000 won in South Korean currency (around US$215) is needed. To communicate with families in the U.S. or in Japan, at least 400,000 to 500,000 won are used up.” He minimizes the essential element of risk, but denounced that the price is baselessly expensive.

Choi explained, “However, China or regular phone calls are not charged such fees. Separated families, cases of requesting huge amounts of remittance from relatives in the U.S., Japan, or in South Korea, or the process of relatives trying to bring the families in North Korea to foreign countries require a high fee.”

Such a costly fee seems to be due to the control of cell phone use in North Korea. In order to prevent information leaks to the outside, the North Korea’s authorities have stepped forward using equipments such as “cell phone detectors.”

Another source said, “Getting caught while using cell phones is rarely pacified on the spot as it used to be before. Inspection and punishment are severe, but one can escape through bribery even though there is a difference in the amount.”

After inspections, the violators are taken to the police station and have to go through basic investigations.

Regarding the content of investigations, he said, “They investigate the place of usage, past call history, whether or not the calls are related to foreign countries (South Korea, Japan, and the U.S.). Then, they investigate whether or not the person has a previous conviction.”

Kang Soon Young (speudonym, 44) who is visiting relatives in Yanji, China, said, “There are at least 100 North Korea-born people who are making a living doing various kinds of projects (work) along the border area in Yanji alone.”

The border area project refers to the remittances for money sent to South Korea or abroad or river-crossings, smuggling, phone connections and various projects that are becoming active in Chinese cities sharing the border with North Korea.

He relayed, “Nowadays, the border patrol has been toughened, so crossing the river without going through people who work in such border area projects is almost impossible.”

On one hand, Mr. Kang relayed, “There was a public execution along the Hoiryeong Riverfront on the 10th. The executed was a man in his 50s with the crime of aiding and abetting river-crossings (defecting) and was charged with smuggling.”

Asia Times
Andrei Lankov
8/16/2006

By Chinese standards, the city of Yanji is rather small, with a population of nearly 400,000. About a third of them are ethnic Koreans: Yanji is the capital of Yanbian autonomous prefecture in the northeastern province of Jilin.

From the first few minutes in Yanji it does not feel completely like China. The streets and shops have signs both in Korean and Chinese, the people (well, many of them) speak Korean among themselves, and restaurants advertise dog meat, a traditional Korean delicacy. But it also feels different from South and North Korea. Yanji is much too poor if compared with the South and much too rich if measured against meager North Korean standards.

The Korean migration began as a trickle in the 1880s, and by the early 1920s it had developed into a large flow. Some of those settlers fled the persecution of the Japanese colonial occupiers at home, but many more were attracted by lands easily available to migrant farmers in what then was known as Manchuria.

An overwhelming majority, some 80%, came from the areas that after 1945 became parts of North Korea. During the Chinese Civil War, most local Koreans sided with the communists, and this helped boost their standing after 1949. The local Koreans were officially recognized as a “minority group”, and in 1952 the entire area was made into an autonomous prefecture, with the Korean language co-official with Mandarin.

Yanbian is a large area, roughly half the size of South Korea, but its current population is merely 2.2 million. South Korea has 48 million people, so the density of population in Yanbian is remarkably low. Indeed, while traveling through the area one can drive for few kilometers without encountering any signs of human settlement - a picture that is unthinkable in most of South Korea or coastal China.

In 1945 about 1.7 million Koreans lived in China, overwhelmingly in its northeastern area. About 500,000 of those chose to move back to Korea in the late 1940s, but a million or so decided to stay. Nowadays, the Korean population has reached 2 million, of whom some 800,000 reside in Yanbian.

Economically, the area has not been very successful - perhaps because it is landlocked, so the import-oriented development strategy does not really work there. The breathtaking economic growth of the past two decades in the country as a whole has changed the looks of the local cities and towns, but Yanbian is still poor by contemporary Chinese standards. Sometimes in the villages around the city one can even see a derelict hut with a thatched roof - a sight that is almost impossible to see more prosperous areas of China. Still, changes are everywhere: the old gray buildings of the Mao Zedong era are being demolished and giving way to new, posh apartment complexes. Construction is everywhere, the number of hotels is astonishing, and good roads criss-cross the area, though motor traffic is still very thin.

Beijing’s policy toward ethnic Koreans has always been somewhat contradictory. On one hand, the Chinese central government follows the Leninist principles it learned from the Soviet Union. According to these principles, the ethnic minorities should be given manifold privileges, often at the expense of the majority group.

Indeed, this is frequently the case with the ethnic Koreans. But there were periods of unease and even open persecution, especially in the crazy decade of Mao’s Cultural Revolution beginning in 1966. A middle-aged ethnic-Korean businessman told me, “Back in the late 1960s, I seldom saw my parents. Because they were members of an ethnic minority, they had to go to ideological-struggle sessions every day and had to stay until very late.”

However, that period was an exception. The same person, who said he is not a fan of the current Chinese system, still admitted when asked about discrimination: “Discrimination? Well, almost none, to be frank. They appoint some Han Chinese officials to supervise the administration, but basically I don’t think Korean people here have problems with promotions or business because of their ethnicity. Sometimes being a minority even helps a bit - it’s easier to get to a university if you come from a minority group.”

It is clear that many Korean community cultural institutions rely on generous subsidies from the central government. The Chinese state sponsors a large network of the Korean-language schools, so until recently nearly all Korean children received secondary education in their ancestors’ tongue. If they wish, they can attend Yanbian University, where ethnic Koreans are given preferential treatment for the entrance exams.

The local television network broadcasts in Korean and the newsstands in the area sell a number of Korean-language periodicals. Some of these publications hardly need sponsorship, since they deal with the ever popular topics of sex, crime and violence, but many others, such as high-brow literary magazines or rather boring local dailies, would go out of business without their state subsidies.

A local law requires every street sign in the prefecture to be written in both Korean and Chinese, and it explicitly stipulates that Korean letters should not be smaller or placed below the Chinese characters. This even applies to advertisements.

The Korean heritage (or rather those parts of the heritage that are deemed politically safe) is much flaunted in the area because it is one of factors that make Yanji attractive to potential tourists. So Korean restaurants are everywhere and local advertisements frequently use images of beautiful girls clad in the Korean national dress or hanbok.

However, it would be a mistake to depict the Chinese policy in the area as an ideal to be emulated. The potential threat of irredentism has never been completely forgotten, and it is an open secret that radical Korean nationalists have dreamed about annexing this area since at least the early 1900s. They often say Yanbian is actually a “third Korea” (the other two being North and South), so it should be included into a Greater Korea that they believe will emerge one day.

Until recently such threats were not much pronounced, since the impoverished and grotesquely dictatorial North Korean regime could not inspire much longing for the lost homeland among the Chinese Koreans. Perhaps most local Koreans share the feelings of a middle-aged Korean with whom I had a long talk in the town of Tumen on the North Korean border. While pointing to the barren hills of North Korea, easily seen from a restaurant window, he said, “I am so lucky that my grandparents chose to get out of that place. I think we all would be dead had our grandfather stayed there. It is such an awful place. I do not understand how they manage to survive in North Korea.”

This seems to be the common feeling toward North Korea. There might be a lot of genuine sympathy, as demonstrated in the late 1990s at the height of North Korea’s great famine, when there was widespread grassroots support for the illegal migrants from that country. However, in most cases the North Korean regime is seen by local Koreans as an object of contempt and ridicule, and its unwillingness to emulate the Chinese example is often mentioned as the major reason for the disastrous situation of the country.

However, in 1992 China established formal diplomatic relations with prosperous South Korea, and soon the Yanbian area was flooded with South Korean business people, missionaries, students and tourists. These people were usually attracted by the opportunities to do business without dealing with a language barrier, but some of them began to preach the nationalist gospel as well. Their work was made much easier by the fact that South Korea came to be seen not as a land of destitution but one of prosperity and opportunity. South Korean nationalists love to stress that the lands of Yanbian once were part of the ancient Korean kingdom of Koguryo that lasted 700 years, from 57 BC to AD 668. Koguryo is presented by them - as well as many other Koreans outside of the area - as the most successful of the three ancient Korean kingdoms.
 
Therefore, Chinese authorities are on guard against this nationalist fervor and ensure that a Korean-language education does not mean an education in the spirit of Korean nationalism. At the Korean schools, children study exactly the same curriculum as their peers in the Chinese-language schools. Their textbooks are exact translations of the Chinese textbooks used at the same levels.

“We are a minority group of China, China is our country, so there is no need to study Korean history or literature,” one ethnic Korean told me. “When they teach national history at our schools, it means the history of China, and China only.”

As a result of this policy, the younger generations of Koreans are increasingly out of touch with their Korean heritage. Ko Kyong-su, a professor at Yanbian university, himself an ethnic Korean, remarked: “Nowadays, the Korean youngsters here do not learn about Ch’unhyang and Hong Kil-dong [characters from Korean classical novels] until they enter college, and only then if they chose to specialize in Korean studies.”

To what extent does this dualistic policy of support and restrictions work? This is a somewhat difficult question, but it seems that the overwhelming majority of the local Koreans indeed see themselves as “hyphenated Chinese”, not as proud overseas citizens of either Korean state. Their loyalties are, in most cases, firmly with Beijing.

Still, it is clear that the ongoing nationalist propaganda produces some response. A number of times my Korean conversation partners inquired whether I had seen the Koguryo remains, and once a woman in her early 30s, a fellow traveler on a train from Yanji to Shenyang, said nostalgically, “Two thousand years ago this used to be Korean land. We were so big then!”

This is not exactly a feeling that Chinese authorities would like to nurture, so it comes as no surprise that in official publications, Koguryo is mentioned as a “minority regime” that once existed as a part of multi-ethnic but unified Chinese nation. This nation, according to Beijing propagandists and court historians, existed since time immemorial.

In spite of all those problems and potential challenges, until recently Yanbian prefecture could be seen as a poster case for China’s “nationality politics”. Indeed, unlike the situation in Russia, Japan or the United States - three other major countries with sizable ethnic-Korean communities - the Korean-Chinese have remained fluent in their ancestors’ language, though they overwhelmingly belong to the third or even fourth generation of immigrants. They are also quite socially successful. If measured by such indicators as life-expectancy and infant-mortality rates, Koreans are the second-most-prosperous ethnic group in China. Their educational achievements are also well above average.

However, nowadays things are not that rosy - at least if judged from Korean nationalist perspectives. Beginning in the mid-1990s, the ethnic Korean population of Yanbian began to shrink, with its share dropping to 36.3% in 2000 (from 60.2% in 1953), and is still falling.

Local Korean schools are being closed for the lack of students, and Korean parents are increasingly unwilling to send their children to the ethnic schools. Until a decade ago, more or less every Korean family chose to educate their children at a Korean school, but this is not the case anymore. The number of children enrolled in Korean schools in 2000 was merely 45.2% of the 1996 level. In the 1990-2000 period, 4,200 Korean teachers, or some 53% of the total, left their jobs because of school closures. This does not mean Koreans are more poorly educated - on the contrary, the past two decades have witnessed a great education boom. But their education is increasingly conducted in Mandarin, not Korean.

Contrary to what many China-bashers want to believe, this process is not a result of some deliberate discrimination or the cunning policies of Beijing. No doubt some Chinese policy planners might feel a bit of relief when they see how a potentially “separatist” area is losing its explosive potential, but it seems they have done nothing to speed up such development. Rather, Koreans are becoming the victims of their own social success.

In the past, the aspirations of the average ethnic Korean was to graduate from a high school, settle down in his or her local village, and become a good farmer who could afford to have rice on the table for every meal. Now, success is increasingly associated with a university degree. However, the university education is in Mandarin, as are the entrance exams. Korean parents know that Chinese-language schooling gives their children better educational advantages.

This process is easy to see even without statistics. It is clear that a large proportion of younger people speak Korean, but it is also clear that many youngsters do not feel too comfortable when communicating in their parents’ tongue, and are happy to switch back to Mandarin at the first opportunity. It was instructive to see two Korean families who sat next to me on a train: the youngsters, in their 20s, spoke Korean to the parents but preferred Mandarin among themselves.

Another part of the crisis is the low fertility rate of the ethnic Koreans. The Koreans’ birth rate has always been lower than that of the Han Chinese, even though, as an ethnic minority, they are exempt from the “one-child policy”. In 2000, the average Korean woman in Yanbian had 1.01 births in her lifetime. This again reflects the higher education levels of the ethnic Koreans: better-educated groups tend to have less children.

Migration is also taking its toll. A large number of ethnic Koreans have moved away from their village communities. Some of them even went to South Korea - either for good, or just to make some money doing unskilled jobs. But for most of them the destinations of choice are the large Chinese cities, such as Shenyang or Beijing. While in the city, Korean settlers tend to maintain close relations with other Koreans, but they still live in a Chinese-language environment, and speak little Korean. The chances of marriage with a Han Chinese are high, and children from such marriages are usually monolingual - Mandarin.

So it seems that the days of the “Third Korea” are numbered. Even the infusion of South Korean money is not enough to reverse the unavoidable process of assimilation. Koreans are not subjected to forced Sinification; they are making a rational choice, even if it is one that Korean nationalists do not approve of. If things continue as such, in a few decades only hanbok-clad girls and the obligatory signs in Korean shops and restaurants will remind one of the Korean community that once thrived in Yanbian. But I hope it will always be a good place to feast on dog meat.

Korea Times
Andrei Lankov
6/24/2007

The recent refugee crisis in China attracted much attention to the situation around the border between the two countries. Indeed, in recent decades the porous border with China has provided the major exit opportunities for both would-be defectors to the South and refugees escaping the food shortages and poverty of the North.

Most Communist countries guarded their borders against both intruders who tried to get in, and against defectors who wanted to run away from the not-so-perfect Communist paradises. From this point of view, the border with China constitutes a serious challenge. It follows two rivers _ the Amnok and the Tuman (Chinese read the same characters as Yalu and Tumen). Both are shallow in the upper streams, and completely freeze every winter. Thus, a determined defector or smuggler can always find his or her way across the border. At least until the late 1950s _ despite of the persistent efforts of both Korean and Chinese security agencies _ smugglers systematically crossed into China and back.

In the 1950s it was not only smugglers who moved across the border. Some of that human traffic included a number of North Korean dignitaries who chose to run away to China instead of being purged. One of the most famous incidents of this kind took place in early September 1956. On August 31 of that year a group of prominent North Korean leaders openly challenged Kim Il-sung’s policy at the plenary meeting of the KWP Central Committee. They wanted to replace him with a more moderate leader, but their proposal was voted down and they were immediately put under house arrest. They appeared to be doomed, but their ingenuity helped them to find a way out (they were former underground activists, after all!). In the middle of the night the rebels managed to secretly leave the house and then drove away in a car provided by a sympathetic friend. They easily reached the border and then proceeded to China where they were eventually granted asylum. Their example was later followed by other dissenting officials.

There was a movement from China as well. At the end of the 1960s, when the “cultural revolution” was at its height, some ethnic Koreans from China fled to the DPRK which in those years was a more stable and prosperous society. Since the relations with China were quite bad in the late 1960s, these refugees were not extradited and stayed in the North.

The ethnic composition of the region is favourable for those who, for whatever reason, want to make a clandestine border crossing. There are two million ethnic Koreans in China, and most of them live close to the border. Many ethnic Koreans have relatives in North Korea, and a small number of them are even technically DPRK citizens _ the so-called chogyo (in 1997 the number of chogyo was estimated at 6,000 or some 0.3 percent of the Korean population in the region).

On the other hand, in the DPRK there are a small number of ethnic Chinese or huaqiao. The ethnic Chinese from the DPRK and ethnic Koreans from the People’s Republic were allowed to visit their relatives throughout the 1970s and 1980s, when the governments of both countries tried to minimize the foreign contacts of their citizens. Their status was unique _ and widely used for commercial purposes. This trade, however, seldom if ever required illegal border crossings. In most cases, the traders arrived with proper visitor’s visas and large sacks of merchandise.

Generally speaking, the border with China was never protected well, especially when compared with the DMZ, arguably the world’s most heavily protected border. This was deemed unnecessary. The North Korean authorities believed that the runaways would be, in all probability, apprehended by the Chinese police and then extradited back to the North. Of course, occasionally the Chinese might have made a political decision about granting asylum to a disgruntled cadre, but it was too unusual a circumstance to warrant an expensive upgrade of the border protection system. In essence, the Chinese police served as a better deterrent to those with defection in mind than North Korean guards.

And there was not much incentive to run away _ at least for commoners. North-East China was one of the poorest parts of the PRC, and until the late 1980s North Koreans enjoyed much higher standards of living than their brethren across the border.

Things changed dramatically in the early 1990s. From that time, the movement across the border _ both legal and illegal _ began to increase until it developed into a full-scale refugee crisis soon after 1995.

Daily NK
Kwon Jeong Hyun
5/31/2007

In order to block the outflow of information, North Korean authorities have been conducting investigations and enforcing control over people who lead lifestyles that are better off than the average person.

An inside source living in the bodrder city of North Hamkyung informed on the 30th, “Since the end of April, special inspection groups began investigation to block the flow of out-sources.”

The source said, “An order was made to search people who recently visited family in China or illegal defectors who affiliated with South Korean or U.S. intelligence services are selling North Korea’s national information to foreigners for money.”

It appears that this order was made as North Korean authorities believe that citizens living along the border regions are receiving economic aid from defectors in South Korea or foreign organizations in return for information.

At a lecture last November that targeted border garrison, North Korean authorities stated, “Selling information is an act indifferent to selling the nation.”

One educational material criticized, “Being engrossed in making money is rooting out the secrets of authorities, the nation and military” and commented, “Recently, the enemy have been going to use extreme ways and measures to purchase the secrets of our authorities, nation and military with dirty money.”

The source said, “These inspection groups have offices in the People’s committee of each city and are in the process of inspecting the whole household” and relayed, “Every household will be inspected. Families with luxury daily goods and living standards exceeding their monthly income are being targeted for investigation.”

“The groups are inspecting each home for information regarding their workplace, monthly income and living expenditure by help of chairpersons of each People’s unit” said the source and explained, “Suspicious persons are taken away to the secret groups for further cross-examination.”

As a result, families are running around moving their electrical appliances and household items to other homes temporarily. The source informed, “What’s worse, even law officers (including inspectors, National Security Agents, Safety Agents) are frantically hiding their electric rice cookers, gastops and color TV’s.”

“Since 2004 unto now, these groups have also been searching for missing persons, people without secure residences and the unemployed” added the source.

Daily NK
Choi Myung Chul
4/19/2007

I defected at a young age and arrived in South Korea in 2004, where I was admitted into third of year of middle school. In North Korea, I had been attending school and was in second year high school.

At first, I found it difficult assimilating into a South Korean school. Social interests were different and the fact that 9 out of 10 South Korean children enjoyed going to an internet café and playing games was intriguing on its own. Though I find computer games challenging and fun today, back then it was hard enough trying to figure out a computer, let along mastering a game.

There are no opportunities to see computers in North Korea. That’s because no one owns a computer. Comparatively, North Korea is like South Korea in the 1970’s. I played outside with top spins, paper-flipping, slides and soccer. I also caught fish as our family lived in Hoiryeong nearby the Tumen River, though catching fish was not only a game but our means of survival.

At that time, the greatest obstacle to our play was hunger. When you run around and play, you need food to regain your energy. There were even times we had no strength to sit up and play. Rather we lay, slumped. During those times, we sat around day-dreaming. We would play truth or dare and pretend to smoke with cigarette butts we had secretly collected and talked nonsense while lamenting over our lives.

Satisfying hunger through the generosity of an affluent friend

We often had fights with kids from other schools. There was one incident where a child even got his head seriously hurt, but back then your friends were all you had. Even as we lay lifeless, I felt secure because of my friends.

Though I was starving, I even got to watch TV, that is during the short times our village was supplied energy. Though the majority of us were poor, one of my friends had a TV in his home, as his mother had done well at the markets. Even though only one station was broadcasting, the North Korea program, it was still very fun. I remember seeing one movie, “Order 027” which was about the People’s Army invading the Blue House (South Korea’s presidential building). The action wasn’t too bad, even interesting to a point.

Once in a blue moon, a friend would come into some money and then we would go to the markets to buy snacks. We bought bread made of corn powder and tofu rice. Even though the serving was small, my friend always shared his food with me.

Actually, all our friends did this. It was a time where we were all starving, yet we were willing to share our food, even half a corn cob.

Then one day, my mother left and I starving of hunger, left for China. On my way to Dalian in search for relatives, I was caught and forcefully repatriated back to North Korea. So I went looking for my best friend Hakjoo. Hakjoo and I had grown up together and had experienced so many things including severe hunger.

Offer to escape but offer denied

I informed Hakjoo of my plans and tried to persuade him to come. He replied, “Nevertheless, my homeland is here. If I died, I am going to die here. I cannot go with you.” We got into a huge argument and he said I had been brainwashed by capitalism.

Ever since we were little, we studied that Chosun (North Korea) was a socialist paradise and learned of Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Song’s revolutionary history. Even at that time, many of us were ignorant of the outside world. My friend’s loyalty to the great leader stood firm and he denied leaving our motherland.

By the time I had seen and heard of China, my devotion to Kim Jong Il had disappeared. I tried to convince Hakjoo that China was rich in food and much more abundant than North Korea but, failed to persuade him. I remember him saying, “Still. How can I desert our leader and our motherland?”

Hakjoo did not agree with my dreams but he still wished me health and safety. He also promised me that he would not report me to the authorities and said, “Don’t worry. But you must go in safety. Do not get caught and be safe.”

North Korea is a society where each person regulates one another. It is a society where trust is nonexistent. However, I trusted that friend and because I believed that he would not report me, I was able to safely defect the country.

As I left, I said to me friend, “I will return without fail… I’ll see you then.”

That was ’98. I found my way to my relatives home in Dlian, worked as a farmer in China for 3 years and then at a restaurant for 3 years.

At first, I planned to live in China. I had no intention of coming to Korea as I felt it would then be harder for me to return to North Korea. However, I could not continue to live hidden as an illegal immigrant and in the end, I followed the footsteps of another friend in 2004.

Whenever I face a hard time I think, ‘If I came with Hakjoo, it wouldn’t have been so hard,’ If we had defected together, the hardships in China and the loneliness would not have been so bad.

No matter how difficult the task, that friend always pulled through. However, he is not here now and so all the decisions have to be made by me. It’s tough because there is not one person I can fully trust and be dependent on.

But I am going to live well. Every day, I have just enough to scrape by and though it’s not easy, I am attending university. When I return to North Korea one day, there are many things for me to do. My dream is to construct a company there and rebuild a North Korea that has fallen to devastation.

And above all, I study because I made a promise to my friend. When I return to my hometown, my aim is to meet my friend standing tall and proud.

Joong Ang Daily
4/17/2007

Nearly seven out of every 10 North Korean defectors in South Korea are unemployed, while those with jobs earn less than half the minimum wage set by the government, a survey by a Seoul National University professor revealed yesterday.

According to a survey of 451 North Korean defectors conducted between August and September last year, 306 or over 67 percent were unemployed, while those with jobs earned an average hourly wage of only 1,560 won ($1.68).

The minimum wage set by the government is 3,480 won an hour.

The study, done by Park Sang-in, a professor of public administration studies, also showed over 60 percent of North Korean defectors find jobs through private job-consulting firms or their acquaintances, and only 16.2 percent, or 73 respondents, said they found work through government employment offices.

“[A large number of] North Korean defectors appeared to be losing interest in finding jobs due to repeated failure to find employment,” said the professor.

Over 10,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. Each defector receives 6 million won upon arrival here in government resettlement support, and an additional 13 million won is available to each family for housing.

In addition, each defector can receive up to 15 million won over a period of three years if he or she is employed or going through job training during the period.

[NKeconWatch: Exit the government, enter the mafia?]

Daily NK
Han Young Jin
4/10/2007

South Korean court recently ruled to nullify any contract between defectors and brokers. Brokers help North Korean defectors to sneak into South Korea and get paid in return.

On Sunday, Seoul Metropolitan West District Court ruled against plaintiff, a broker, who sued former defector, a forty-five year old female A. In a ruling, the court stated “H (the broker) exploited A’s inexperience and hastiness to profit exorbitant amount.”

H made a complaint against A to pay five million won (roughly 5,400 US dollars), the amount A made a contract to do so in China for helping her to defect to Seoul.

Such controversy between brokers and defectors have been ongoing problem for a long time. And many have argued the contracts between defectors in China and brokers to be illegal.

The court ruling is based on South Korean civil code article number 104, in which ‘any legal activity lack of fairness due to one’s inexperience or hastiness is nullified.’ However, as the district court ruled, is brokerage of defection really an ‘act of exploiting defectors to profit exorbitant amount?’

There are many different types of brokers; somebody who profit from helping defectors, and others who receive minimal amount of compensation, barely enough to take defectors to Seoul, with somewhat humanitarian intention.

The decision by court on Sunday, however, might cause all those “contracts” between brokers and defectors invalid, which would definitely reduce the number of brokers and extent of their rescuing activity.

As of now, most of defectors who entered South Korea are helped by those brokers. Defectors, who lack information and legal status, often find it extremely hard to find safe area or a route via a third country to South Korea. Until they are in safe area or Seoul, brokers provide them protection and ways to escape.

South Korean government no longer offers protection for defectors at first hand for various reasons. Whatever the reasons may be, North Korean defectors are willing to pay a certain amount of money, which most of them do not have, in exchange of their freedom to go to Seoul. So defectors sign a contract with brokers to promise to take some of the government subsidy for settlement to reimburse.

An Inchon-based broker J said in an interview “Brokers are taking high risks because there’s no collateral but a piece of signed contract.” According to J it costs two million won to get a defector out of China safely. The cost includes food, transportation from northeast China to a country in Southeast Asia and bribe.

Since defectors do not have any money beforehand, brokers usually borrow money from bank with high interest. Thus, total cost could rise up to three million won to even five million.

Another broker K called the price “completely market price.” “This is not a risk-free business. If court nullify contract between defector and broker, there will be no more brokers, the only ones that defectors could ask for help.”

A broker from Busan, Y, told his experience. Y also went to court with a “contract” on his hand. In this case, the judge decided to let defectors pay at least some of the money.

Even defectors view the cash for entering Seoul as fair and legitimate.
Another K, a defector, said “I didn’t think even ten million won was too much to go to South Korea when I was in China. If there was no broker, I could’ve never escaped to South Korea.”

The district court’s decision might make in sense on the code. However, given harsh condition of defectors in China and South Korean government’s indifference toward them, brokers are necessary in rescue of wandering defectors.

Korea Times
4/9/2007

A Laotian government official has demanded that a Japanese nongovernmental organization seeking the release of three North Korean teenagers from a Laotian prison pay $1,000 in cash per detainee, Kyodo News reported Sunday.

The Japanese news agency quoted Hiroshi Kato, chairman of the Life Funds for North Korean Refugees, as saying that the Tokyo-based group has rejected the idea of paying, but it is concerned Laos could accede to Pyongyang’s demands and extradite the three youths to North Korea.

According to Kato, the three detainees are a 17-year-old girl, a 14-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy, all from North Hamgyong Province in northeastern North Korea.

They smuggled themselves into China in the early 2000s after suffering food shortages, the death of their parents and other hardships in their homeland. Now they hope to find exile in the United States.

The children were caught by Laotian border security officials in November as they were crossing the Mekong River in an attempt to go to Thailand via Laos, said Kato, who met them in a prison in Vientiane.

They were given a three-month prison term for illegal entry into Laos. Although the three months have passed, they are still being detained, Kyodo quoted Kato as saying.

Kato’s group contacted the Laotian government to become guarantors for the youths and was told by a government official they could be handed over to the Japanese group for $1,000 each.

The NGO decided to reject the request, fearing it would set a bad example in seeking the protection of North Korean refugees in Laos.

But the group is concerned that a North Korean consul, which visited the prison Friday, will demand that Vientiane deport the three to North Korea.

Korea Times
4/6/2007

The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday overturned a Los Angeles court’s decision and ruled North Korean refugees who previously settled in South Korea are not eligible for asylum in the United States, according to the Yonhap News Agency.

Under the ruling, two such refugees were ordered to return to South Korea. The decision is also likely to affect other similar appeals filed by the former North Koreans.

A decision made Wednesday by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), a department agency, said the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004 “does not apply to North Koreans who have availed themselves of the right to citizenship in South Korea.’’

The two people who have requested asylum in the U.S. are thus “precluded from establishing eligibility for asylum as to North Korea on the basis of their firm resettlement in South Korea,’’ Yonhap quoted the BIA as saying.

The two, one male and one female, crossed into the U.S. two years ago from the Mexican border. They filed an appeal when they were ordered to leave.

Yonhap, South Korea’s semi-official news service, said the BIA decision overturns earlier actions by the Los Angeles Immigration Court which granted asylum to a number of North Korean defectors who had legally been living in South Korea before seeking resettlement in the U.S.

The North Korean Human Rights Act states that the U.S. should facilitate the acceptance of refugees from the communist country, but there are varying interpretations on whether it applies to those who received asylum in South Korea.

The State Department had expressed alarm at the earlier decision by the L.A. immigration court, arguing that the act only applies to those who did not obtain legal status in another country.

The BIA said that in reaching the decision, it has “considered that each respondent has significant ties with South Korea, i.e. citizenship and children who live there.’’

“We also note that while living in South Korea, the respondents were employed, moved freely around the country, made public speeches, raised a family, and easily arranged travel to Mexico,’’ it said.