Archive for the ‘Emigration’ Category

The Ordinary Abductions

Thursday, February 22nd, 2007

Korea Times
Andrei Lankov
2/22/2007

North Korean spy agencies love kidnappings. Of course, their colleagues worldwide also would not mind abducting a person or two, but in most cases there are some urgent reasons for taking such drastic measures _ the victims are prominent opposition leaders, or wanted criminals who cannot be extradited through normal channels, or people who are unlucky to know something way too important. North Korean abductions are different: They are often surprisingly random and target people of no significance. The very randomness of most of their abductions once was often cited by sceptics who tried to refute these accusations as “Seoul-inspired falsities.’’ Indeed, why should the secret services of a Stalinist state spend so much time and money only to kidnap a Japanese noodle chef, or a tennis-loving teenager? Nonetheless, in 2002 Kim Jong-il himself confirmed that these seemingly meaningless abductions of ordinary Japanese citizens did take place.

Of course, North Koreans spies did not limit themselves to Japanese only. Quite a number of South Korean citizens have disappeared into the Northern maw as well: it is known that at least 486 South Koreans have been forcibly taken to the North and have never returned.

A vast majority of them are fishermen who were imprudent to come too close to the North Korean coast, but this figure also includes a number of known victims of covert operations. Currently they number 17, but there are few doubts that the actual number is much higher. If the abduction is planned and conducted well, its victim simply disappears and is eventually presumed dead.

A good example is the case of the five South Korean high school students who disappeared from the island beaches in 1977 and 1978. They all were believed dead for two decades, but in the late 1990s it was discovered that the youngsters were working in North Korea as instructors, teaching the basics of South Korean lifestyle to would-be undercover Northern operatives.

Eventually, one of those former students was even allowed to briefly meet his family at the Kumgang resort. Kim Yong-nam disappeared from a beach in North Cholla Province in 1978. Later he was identified as the husband of an abducted Japanese woman, so North Korean authorities grudgingly admitted that Kim Yong-nam was indeed in the North, and staged a meeting with his family. Unsurprisingly, during this meeting and press conference, he insisted that he was not kidnapped but saved from the sea by North Korean sailors. Far more surprisingly, he sort of admitted that his job was related to spying.

It is remarkable that the kidnappings of the South Korean teenagers roughly coincided with similar abductions in Japan. In both cases the abductors obviously targeted randomly selected teenagers who were unlucky enough to be on a lonely beach. Another commonality was that the abductees were later used to train espionage agents. Perhaps, teenagers were seen as ideal would-be instructors for the spies _ still susceptible to indoctrination but with enough knowledge of local realities to be useful.

In April, 1979, a young South Korean walked into the North Korean Embassy in Oslo, Norway. His name was Ko Sang-mun, and he was a schoolteacher back home. Why and how he came to arrive at that embassy is not clear. As was usually the case, the North Korean side insisted that Ko Sang-mu defected, while the South Koreans alleged that the young teacher was the a victim of a taxi driver’s mistake: He took the taxi to a “Korean embassy’’ and the driver delivered him to the embassy of the wrong Korea.

It is impossible to say now whether this highly publicised case was abduction, defection, or something in-between. However, in 1994 it became known that Ko Sang-mun was in a labour camp. A small propaganda war ensued. Ko was made to appear in a North Korean broadcast assuring everybody that he was free, happily married, and full of righteous hatred for the US imperialists and their Seoul puppets (most of his speech consisted of customary anti-American rhetoric). We do not know where he went after delivering this speech _ to an apartment in Pyongyang or to a dugout in a prison camp. Meanwhile, Ko’s widow in the South committed suicide, unable to cope with the stress of the situation.

There were also more “normal’’ instances of abductions. The North Koreans kidnapped people who possessed important intelligence. In 1971 Yu Sang-mun, a South Korean diplomat stationed in West Germany was kidnapped in West Berlin, together with his family _ wife and two children. Perhaps, the few other South Korean officials who went missing in Europe in the 1970s were also abducted by North Korean agents, but presently only Yu’s case is certain.

In the 1990s most abductions of this sort took place in China, and their victims were political activists, missionaries, and real or suspected South Korean spies. All these abductions occurred in the Chinese North-East, near the borders of North Korea.

The abduction of North Korean dissenters, or suspected would-be defectors, from Soviet territory has been quite routine for decades. Sometimes these abductions sparked a crisis in relations between Moscow and Pyongyang, but in most cases the Soviets simply turned a blind eye to such acts.

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Settling in

Saturday, February 10th, 2007

Korea Herald
2/10/2007

What was once a trickle of defectors from North Korea has now become a steady stream, forcing the South Korean government to reexamine how it handles settlers from its communist neighbor.

Gone are the days when defectors were given a hero’s welcome, used as propaganda to demonstrate the failure of the totalitarian communist system, and given large sums of money as a reward. These days, news of individual defectors hardly receives any attention, and without much fanfare their numbers have been growing rapidly. The number of defectors who arrived in the South totaled 148 in 1999. Last year, more than 2,000 North Koreans settled in the South. By the end of this month, the total number of North Korean settlers here is expected to reach 10,000.

To deal with the prospect of a surge in the number North Korean defectors in the future, as food shortages and poverty continues to ravage that country, the South Korean government has revamped its settlement policy. By cutting its one-time settlement aid from 10 million won to 6 million won and increasing job subsidies to a total of 15 million won spread over a three-year period, the government is hoping to encourage the settlers to seek gainful employment rather than relying on government support.

For the new settlers, life in the capitalist South is harsh. Many of those who risked their lives to escape hunger and poverty, live in a state of poverty even in the South. Three months of training at a settlement center is insufficient to equip these people for our highly competitive capitalist society.

Some settlers are cheated out of their settlement awards and end up alcoholic and destitute. Most of the settlers are semi-skilled laborers, making it difficult for them to find permanent jobs. Difficulties in finding employment are exacerbated by prejudices harbored by South Koreans who perceive North Koreans as lazy and unmotivated.

According to a report by the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights which surveyed 1,336 settlers over the age of 13 who arrived between 1997 and 2004, more than 28 percent of the settlers are unemployed, significantly higher than the national average of 3.5 percent as of the end of last year. Of those who are employed, about 78 percent earn 1 million won or less a month.

To assist the North Korean settlers in seeking employment, the Unification Ministry and the Labor Ministry plans to jointly set up an individual job plan system. Employment subsidies, paid to businesses that hire North Koreans to cover 50 percent of their wage, will be extended to three years from the current two years.

However, government policies can only go so far in assisting North Korean settlers to make a life in the South. In a society that harbors regional prejudices even within its own borders, the discrimination suffered by North Koreans who speak with a different accent and who may still be regarded as an enemy must be enormous.

As much as the settlers need training to adjust to a new way of life here, South Koreans also need to receive sensitivity training on how to deal with the North Korean settlers. Understanding each other will go a long way toward helping the settlers become full, productive members of this society.

Government to raise subsidies for defectors here
Joong ang Daily
2/9/2007

South Korea will nearly double the amount of cash incentives that North Korean defectors receive after working here for one year, the Unification Ministry said yesterday.

Under the plan, the government will grant a total of 15 million won ($16,040) to defectors over a three-year period after they are registered on an employer’s payroll for one year. Previously, defectors received 9 million won over three years.

“The incentive is designed to increase support for North Korean defectors who are trying hard to adapt to South Korean society,” said Kim Joong-tae, chief of the social and cultural exchange bureau at the ministry.

Since 2005, Korea has reduced its cash payment to defectors to 10 million won from 28 million won per one-person household.

Under the new plan, which considers the rise in rental fees, the housing subsidy will be increased to 13 million won per one-person household from the current 10 million won, while the cash subsidy will be further cut to 6 million won, he said.

The total number of North Korean defectors to the South since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War will likely top the 10,000 mark sometime this year, according to government data.

When heavy floods hit North Korea in the mid-1990s, the annual number of North Korean defectors reached double digits. In 1999, the number swelled to a triple-digit level. In 2006, as many as 1,578 defectors arrived in the South, a rise from the previous record of 1,139 in 2002, according to the data.

About 9,700 North Koreans have been resettled in the South after finishing procedures and obtaining government identification, while some 300 are now receiving adaptive education at a state-run institute. More than 500 defectors are currently believed to be in the custody of South Korean embassies or consulates in Thailand, Mongolia and other countries.

In 2000, the leaders of the two Koreas held the first-ever summit since the end of the Korean War. The war ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty, meaning the two Koreas are still technically in a state of war.

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N. Korean Defectors to Get More Job Incentives

Thursday, February 8th, 2007

Korea Times
Lee Jin-woo
2/8/2007
 
The government has decided to slash the amount of cash provided to North Korean defectors who come to South Korea and to focus more on helping them find jobs here, the Ministry of Unification said Thursday.

According to the plan, the subsidy provided in cash for the settlement of North Korean defectors will be cut from the current 10 million won ($9,500) to 6 million won. The amount is based on a one-person family and varies according to the number of people in the family.

Those who have come to Seoul since Jan. 1 this year will be subject to the new regulations, the ministry said.

The ministry, which deals with inter-Korean affairs, said it would almost double incentives to encourage North Korean defectors to find workplaces in the South.

Regardless of their annual income, a North Korean employee will get up to 15 million won for three years.

Some 4.5 million won would be provided after the first year of labor, which will increase by 500,000 won per year up to 5.5 million won for the third year.

Previously, the labor incentive was 9 million won over three years.

The new measure will be effective retroactively to defectors who have arrived from the beginning Jan. 1 of last year.

Despite the cut, the total amount of subsidies will be slightly lower than now, as the ministry decided to provide 13 million won, up from 10 million, for each one-man family to help find housing in the South, the ministry said.

Those who are handicapped or suffer from a serious disease will get up to 15.4 million won, it said.

“North Koreans should no longer sit idle in South Korean society,’’ Kim Joong-tae, acting chief of the ministry’s social and cultural exchange bureau, told reporters. “The incentive is aimed at increasing support for North Korean defectors who are trying to adapt to South Korean society.’’

Life is getting more challenging for North Koreans arriving in the South. As the number has surged, the government subsidy for each defector has plummeted.

Many North Korean defectors have complained that the government’s decision lacks an understanding of the harsh reality that they face in Korean society.

“Officials are ignoring the fact that the majority of North Korean defectors who come here after years of hardship in China and other Southeast Asian countries are not able to work normally for a certain period of time,’’ Lee Hae-young, an official of an association of North Korean defectors in Seoul, told The Korea Times.

Lee said it takes about five years for defectors adjust to a completely different market society.

“I think only about three out of 10 defectors who arrive in the South are healthy enough to work,’’ Lee said.

The total number of North Korean defectors to the South since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War is presumed to have surpassed 10,000 early this year, according to the ministry.

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1 Out of 5 N. Korean Defectors Swindled

Tuesday, January 30th, 2007

Korea Times
Kim Rahn
1/30/2007

One-fifth of North Koreans who defected to South Korea have gotten swindled here, according to the Korean Institute of Criminal Justice Policy. The majority of the swindlers were other North Korean defectors.

The report released Tuesday was based on a survey of 214 defectors over 20 years old conducted between July and September.

According to the report, 50 of the 214 polled had been the victims of fraud, theft or burglary. The victims constituted 23.4 percent of the total. Only 4.3 percent of South Koreans report having been the victim of similar crimes.

Most of the defectors who reported the crimes were affected once, but one defector was the victim of eight crimes. The 50 who reported crimes were involved in 91 crimes. Of the 91, 46 involved fraud and 11 involved violence.

The percentage of the victims who fell prey to fraud was 21.5 percent. About 0.5 percent of the South Korean population has reported fraud.

Among the 46 fraud victims, 28.6 percent lost money through a business or investment, 26.6 percent lent money to others and were not paid back and 19 percent gave money to someone who said they would bring the defectors’ family in the North to South Korea and didn’t do so.

Most of the victims of business-related fraud lost money after investing in multi-level marketing companies. Those who invited the victims to the join the businesses were mainly other North Korean defectors, according to the report.

Six of the eight cases related to bringing relatives here from the North were committed by North Korean defectors.

Those with more education were more subject to fraud. Some 42 percent of defectors with college degrees and 14.1 percent of high school graduates were swindled, but none of those who had elementary school education was a victim of fraud.

Most of the surveyed defectors did not trust people, with 63.9 percent saying they should be wary of others in South Korean society.

“The government has to prepare counseling centers and give more detailed law education to North Korean defectors when they leave Hanawon, a state-run settlement facility for defectors,” a researcher said.

N. Korean defectors shift attitude to adapt to capitalism
Yonhap
1/11/2007

For a growing number of North Korean defectors to South Korea, the stark reality of capitalism might offset their long-held dream of living in a free, affluent country.

In a capitalistic society like South Korea, a measure of freedom and independence can come only with ability to compete for decent jobs and willingness to adapt to new circumstances.

“They have a sheer illusion that if they arrive in South Korea, the people will treat them well. But they get disillusioned soon, and their lives get devastated if they don’t try hard to adapt themselves,” said Kim Seung-chul, a researcher at the Institute of North Korea Studies.

The total number of North Korean defectors will likely top 10,000 sometime this year, according to government officials.

So far, 9,265 North Koreans have settled down in the South after finishing all the procedures and obtaining social security numbers, while some 400 are receiving adaptive education at a state-run institute. More than 500 defectors are currently under the custody of South Korean embassies or consulates in Thailand, Mongolia and other countries.

“This year, a lot more North Koreans will likely escape and attempt to come to the South because the food situation is expected to worsen following the missile and nuclear device tests,” said a senior official at a Seoul-based aid group for the defectors on condition of anonymity.

Since heavy floods hit the North in the mid-1990s, the annual number of North Korean defectors reached double digits and in 1999 it swelled to a triple-digit level. In 2002, as many as 1,139 defectors arrived in the South, a sharp rise from 583 the previous year, government data showed.

“In the past, we provided direct help, or unilaterally protective aid, but the policy is shifting to an indirect one aimed at helping them stand on their own. The government will provide more job training and employment opportunities,” a Unification Ministry official said, asking to remain anonymous.

Since 2005, South Korea has introduced an incentive system for North Korean defectors on the basis of their performance in job training and the level of adaptation, aside from the money provided to help them settle in the South.

But the prevailing sentiment among the defectors is that they cannot survive in the South only with government subsidies or state-offered jobs.

“What matters is attitude. They should make efforts to understand the South Korean society and prepare themselves for competition,” said Kim Young-hee, 43, president of an aid group for North Korean defectors.

Park Cheol-yong, 32, who fled the North and arrived here in 2002, had difficulties adapting to the different work culture, but he decided to soldier on, believing that he would have a chance to get recognition after years of experience.

“The cultural differences are far greater than expected, but I tried hard to overcome the problem by adjusting to new circumstances,” said Park, who works at a stationery company.

Park, who is married with a three-year-old son, graded himself “mediocre” in the level of adaptation and expressed hope that life will get much better here as time goes by.

“Life will be much more difficult if I quit the job so easily because of the stress I get from work now. I will do my best to succeed,” said Park, who works for the sales of stationery in the morning and delivers stationery in the afternoon.

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Ticket out of DPRK $1,500

Monday, December 18th, 2006

Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal
Melanie Kirkpatrick
12/18/2006

This being The Wall Street Journal, we went straight to the bottom line. How much, we asked our visitor at a recent editorial board meeting, does it cost to free one North Korean refugee hiding in China?

The Rev. Phillip Buck pauses a moment before replying, apparently making the yuan-to-dollar conversions on the abacus in his mind. “If I do it myself,” he says, “the cost is $800 per person. If I hire a broker to do it, it’s $1,500.”

Pastor Buck is a rescuer. It’s a job title that applies to a courageous few–mostly Americans and South Koreans and predominantly Christians–who operate the underground railroad that ferries North Korean refugees out of China to South Korea, and now, thanks to 2004 legislation, to the U.S. Mr. Buck, an American from Seattle, says he has rescued more than 100 refugees and helped support another 1,000 who are still on the run. For this “crime”–China’s policy is to hunt down and repatriate North Koreans–he spent 15 months in a Chinese prison. He was released in August.

The plight of the tens of thousands of North Korean refugees in China is a humanitarian crisis that has received scant world attention. It won’t be on the agenda of the six-party talks, which are scheduled to restart today in Beijing. But the experience of Pastor Buck and other rescuers is worth noting as negotiators sit down with Kim Jong Il’s emissaries. North Korea won’t change, they believe, so long as Kim remains in power. Follow that logic, and regime change is the proper goal.

The refugees, Pastor Buck argues, are the key to regime change in North Korea and, by inference, the key to halting the North’s nuclear and missile programs. Help one man or woman escape, he says, and that person will get word to his family back home about the freedom that awaits them on the outside. Others will follow, and the regime will implode. This is what happened in 1989, when Hungary refused to turn back East Germans fleeing to the West, thereby hastening the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

Pastor Buck was born in North Korea in 1941 and fled with his brothers to the South during the Korean War. He emigrated to the U.S. in the ’80s, becoming a citizen in 1992. When famine hit North Korea in the late ’90s, and millions died, he raised relief funds in Korean churches in the U.S. “I helped send 150 tons of flour and rice to the North,” he says, “and 70 tons of fertilizer . . . This was a time when government rations had stopped and people were living off grass.”

But on visits to the North, he soon realized that the government was stealing the food intended for starving citizens. “I changed my mind” about the efficacy of aid, he says, and in 1998 he joined the effort to help people escape. “If you see someone who is drowning in the river, wouldn’t you reach out and help that person?” he asks. “That’s what was in my heart.”

Pastor Buck is nothing if not determined. In 2002, while in a Southeast Asian country with a group of refugees he had guided there, his apartment in Yanji city, in northeast China, was raided. Nineteen refugees were captured and a copy of his passport was confiscated. With his identity now compromised, Mr. Buck returned to the U.S. and underwent legal proceedings to change his name. John Yoon, the name he was born with, was dead; Phillip Buck was born.

The new Pastor Buck returned to China, where, on May 25, 2005, he was arrested and eventually convicted of the crime of helping illegal immigrants. Thanks to the intervention of the U.S. government, he was deported before he could be sentenced.

Another American, Steve Kim, was not so lucky. Mr. Kim, a furniture importer from Huntington, N.Y., has been in prison in China since September 2003, sentenced to five years for smuggling aliens. Mr. Kim, who, like Mr. Buck, is of Korean ancestry and is a Christian, became aware of the plight of the refugees during business trips to China. He funded two safe houses and paid for refugees’ passage on the underground railroad. Beijing refuses to grant him parole, saying foreigners are not eligible. His wife and three children will pass their fourth Christmas without him.

Mr. Buck, meanwhile, will celebrate Christmas at home in Seattle, along with four refugees, now settled in South Korea, whom he has invited to spend the holiday with him and his family. These refugees–two men and two women–have harrowing personal tales of starvation, death and repression in the North and desperate lives on the run in China.

One young man, who asks that his name not be used for fear of retribution on family members still at home, spent time in the North Korean gulag, after being captured in China and repatriated. He was tortured, he says–rolling up his trousers at a recent press conference in Washington, D.C. to display the scars on his legs.

One morning at roll call, he recounts, one of his cellmates, a man who had been badly beaten during the night, was too sick to get out of bed. The guards ordered the prisoners to carry the injured man into the woods and bury him. “I keep thinking, maybe he would still be alive if we hadn’t buried him,” the escapee says. The name of the dead man was Kim Young Jin. The name of the prison is Chong Jin. Says the man who escaped: “I am very glad to be here, and tell the people in America how life in North Korea really is.”

Pastor Buck spent last Christmas in jail. “My cellmates were criminals,” he says, “12 in all, murderers and rapists.” His diary entry for Dec. 24, 2005, notes that he distributed the chocolates his children had sent him as Christmas gifts to his cellmates. And this year? “I am so excited that I can celebrate this Christmas with lots of joy,” his diary entry for last Thursday reads.

His final words are for the refugees. “I pray, let the Christmas spirit be with those North Korean refugees still in China. Let them be safe too.”

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Defectors to Exceed 10,000

Tuesday, November 14th, 2006

Preparations Needed for Their Explosive Increase
Korea Times
11/14/2006

The number of defectors from North Korea is expected to exceed 10,000 shortly, according to the concerned authorities. As of the end of September, the total number of defectors here stood at 9,140. However, considering some 700 defectors are waiting to make an entrance at Korean consulates in Thailand, Mongolia and China, it is only a matter of time to see their number exceed 10,000. Because of this, people have no choice but to ask the government if it is really prepared to absorb them into our society.

Their re-settlement here seems to be neither easy nor smooth. A recent report states the number of those having problems due to their failure to settle here is increasing. It may be true for the government that their arrival in growing numbers is not always welcome. At the height of inter-Korean confrontation in the 1960s through 1980s, defectors were received here with a hero’s welcome, and were guaranteed a large amount of money and other fringe benefits on re-settlement.

But, the situation changed in the 1990s when the number of arrivals began to rise. With the growing mood of inter-Korean reconciliation, the political significance of their arrival has come to be greatly devalued. Their status has been undeniably demoted to mere refugees, who escaped the Stalinist state in search of better lives. The number of defectors, which stood at about 600 in 1989, has increased by more than 15 times to about 10,000 over the last 17 years.

According to concerned authorities, more than 1,000 people from the North have made their way here every year since 2002. Their arrival is no longer considered news by the media here. The defectors are known to have much difficulty in assimilating themselves to the capitalistic way of living. The amount of money given to help them settle here has dwindled greatly compared to that in the past.

It is almost impossible for them to find decent jobs to support themselves, especially when unemployment is rising. Due to the utter difficulty of living here, a growing number of defectors are found to have committed crimes. The number of crimes committed by them due to the difficulties of living stood at 54 in 2001, but increased to 89 in 2002, 90 in 2003 and 93 in 2004.

There are even those, though small in number, who leave South Korea due to the economic difficulties they have experienced. What worries people is that political or military upheaval in the North could cause tens or hundreds of thousands of southbound refugees. The government is asked to seriously think what it can do about the matter before the situation drifts beyond the point of no return.

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Perilous Journeys:

Thursday, October 26th, 2006

The Plight of North Koreans in China and Beyond
International Crisis Group

10/26/2006
PDF Here: Perilous Journeys.pdf

Executive Summary

Scores of thousands of North Koreans have been risking their lives to escape their country’s hardships in search of a better life, contributing to a humanitarian challenge that is playing out almost invisibly as the world focuses on North Korea’s nuclear program. Only a little over 9,000 have made it to safety, mostly in South Korea but also in Japan, Europe and the U.S. Many more live in hiding from crackdowns and forcible repatriations by China and neighbouring countries, vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. If repatriated to the North, they face harsh punishment, possibly execution. China and South Korea have held back, even during the Security Council debate over post-test sanctions, from applying as much pressure as they might to persuade Pyongyang to reverse its dangerous nuclear policy, in part because they fear that the steady stream of North Koreans flowing into China and beyond would become a torrent if the North’s economy were to collapse under the weight of tough measures. While there is marginally more hope Beijing will change its ways than Pyongyang, concerned governments can and must do far more to improve the situation of the border crossers.

Even without a strong response to the 9 October 2006 nuclear test that targets the North’s economy, the internal situation could soon get much worse. The perfect storm may be brewing for a return to famine in the North. Last year, Pyongyang reintroduced the same public distribution system for food that collapsed in the 1990s and rejected international humanitarian assistance, demanding instead unmonitored development help. Funding for remaining aid programs is difficult to secure, and summer floods have damaged crops and infrastructure.

Hunger and the lack of economic opportunity, rather than political oppression, are the most important factors in shaping a North Korean’s decision to leave “the worker’s paradise”. A lack of information, the fear of being caught by Chinese or North Korean security agents and financial limitations are more significant barriers than any actual wall or tight security at the border. China compensates for the virtual absence of border guards with a relentless search for North Koreans in hiding. In

October 2006, Chinese authorities began to build a fence along the frontier and conduct neighbourhood sweeps to find and arrest the border crossers. Despite these formidable obstacles, the willingness among North Koreans to risk their lives to escape is growing stronger, and arrivals in the South are likely to hit a record this year. The most important pull factor shaping the decision to leave is the presence of family members in China and, increasingly, South Korea. The nearly 9,000 defectors in the South are able to send cash and information to help their loved ones escape. To a lesser but significant extent, information is beginning to spread in the North through smuggled South Korean videos, American and South Korean radio broadcasts, and word of mouth – all exposing North Koreans to new ideas and aspirations.

Most North Koreans do not arrive in China with the intention of seeking official asylum, but because Beijing is making it ever more difficult for them to stay, a growing number are forced to travel thousands of kilometres and undertake dangerous border crossings in search of refuge in Mongolia or South East Asia. The mass arrests of 175 asylum seekers in Bangkok in August 2006 and a further 86 on 24 October provide vivid examples of host country hospitality being stretched to the limits.

The vast majority of North Koreans who have made it to safety resettle in South Korea. In most instances, this is a choice motivated by language, culture and the promise of being reunited with family members. In a growing number of cases, the overly burdensome procedures for being granted asylum anywhere else is the deciding factor. With the exception of Germany, the governments that have pressed most vigorously for improving North Korean human rights, namely the U.S., the European Union member states and Japan, have taken in only a handful of asylum seekers.

A loose network of makeshift shelters focused on humanitarian aid has evolved into a politically-charged but fragile underground railroad on which some North Koreans can buy safe passage to Seoul in a matter of days, while others suffer years of violence and exploitation. If they are to minimise the exploitation of the most vulnerable and enhance the much-needed aid this network delivers, concerned governments must commit to a sustainable solution.

None of the policies proposed in this report would create unmanageable burdens for any government. Unless North Korea’s economy collapses completely, the numbers of its citizens crossing international borders will continue to be restricted by many factors, not least Pyongyang’s tight controls on internal movement and the financial cost of securing an escape route. However, it is time to back up strong words and resolutions about the plight of North Koreans with actions, both because humanity demands it and because if the international community cannot quickly get a handle on this situation, it will find it harder to forge an operational consensus on the nuclear issue.

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With Cash, Defectors Find North Korea’s Cracks

Thursday, October 19th, 2006

New York Times:
10/19/2006
Norimitsu Onishi
Su-hyun Lee

Last March, Lee Chun-hak, a 19-year-old North Korean, went to the Chinese border to meet with a North Korean money trafficker. Using the trafficker’s Chinese cellphone, Mr. Lee talked to his mother, who had defected to South Korea in 2003. She told him she was going to get him out.

Mr. Lee missed his mother and his sister and brother, and he had a persistent, if half-formed, desire. “I wanted to go to a country that is more developed,” he said, “even more developed than South Korea.”

In June, a young North Korean man appeared suddenly at his home with a message: “Mother is looking for you.” The man then took him by bicycle and foot to the border and handed him over to a North Korean soldier. At the soldier’s direction, Mr. Lee was ordered to leave his identification card and his Kim Il-sung badge, which is worn by all North Koreans to honor the nation’s founder.

The soldier then escorted Mr. Lee across the Tumen River, where on the other side two Chinese men in plainclothes handed the soldier his bribe. Mr. Lee was free to go.

The increasing ease with which people are able to buy their way out of North Korea suggests that, beneath the images of goose-stepping soldiers in Pyongyang, the capital, the government’s still considerable ability to control its citizens is diminishing, according to North Korean defectors, brokers, South Korean Christian missionaries and other experts on the subject. Defectors with relatives outside the country are tapping into a sophisticated, underground network of human smugglers operating inside North and South Korea, China and Southeast Asia.

Learning anything about such a secretive and unpredictable country as North Korea, which isolated itself further by carrying out a nuclear test on Oct. 9, is difficult. Scraps of information provided by defectors often prove unreliable, influenced as they can be by the organizations that shelter and support them while also championing political or religious causes.

But snapshots of life inside the North, and a picture of this smuggling network, emerged from interviews with 20 North Koreans in Bangkok, as well as with brokers, Christian missionaries, government officials and people working in private organizations, in both Thailand and South Korea. The North Koreans in Bangkok were interviewed independently and had all recently arrived in Thailand.

Pieced together, the accounts provide glimpses of a government that, while still a repressive police state, is progressively losing the paramount role it used to enjoy in society, before it found itself incapable of feeding its own people in the famine of the 1990’s. The power of ideology appears to be waning in this nation of about 22.7 million as people have been left to scrounge for themselves, and as information has begun to seep in from the outside world.

The effects of money and corruption appear to have grown sharply in recent years, as market liberalization has allowed ordinary people to run small businesses and has enabled people with connections to prosper in the booming trade with China.

In a country whose borders were sealed until a decade ago, defectors once risked not only their own lives but those of the family members they left behind, who were often thrown into harsh prison camps as retribution. Today, state security is no longer the main obstacle to fleeing, according to defectors, North Korean brokers, South Korean Christian missionaries and other experts. Now, it is cash.

“Money now trumps ideology for an increasing number of North Koreans, and that has allowed this underground railroad to flourish,” said Peter M. Beck, the Northeast Asia project director in Seoul, South Korea, of the International Crisis Group, which has extensively researched the subject in several Asian countries and is publishing a report. “The biggest barrier to leaving North Korea is just money. If you have enough money, you can get out quite easily. It speaks to the marketization of North Korea, especially since economic reforms were implemented in 2002. Anything can be bought in the North now.”

“The state’s control is weakening at the periphery,” Mr. Beck said, explaining that most refugees came out of the North’s rural areas but few from around Pyongyang, where the state’s grip remained strong.

During the North’s great famine in the mid- to late 1990’s, a tide of 100,000 to 300,000 North Koreans is believed to have simply washed into China, and tens of thousands are still believed to be living there illegally, according to human rights organizations. These days, the number of refugees is believed to be much smaller, though there are few reliable figures.

According to the South Korean government, of the 8,740 North Koreans who are known to have fled to the South since the end of the Korean War in 1953, nearly 7,000 arrived in the last four years alone.

But the cost of getting out is significant, according to experts, defectors, brokers and missionaries. There are bribes for the soldiers stationed at the heavily guarded border, a regular cut to their supervisors, money handed to a chain of officials. And that is just on the North Korean side.

At the high end, $10,400 will buy a package deal to get someone out of North Korea and, armed with a fake South Korean passport, on a plane or boat to South Korea within days, according to brokers and a 40-year-old North Korean woman now in South Korea who recently extracted her 14-year-old son. But most North Koreans in South Korea pay on average about $3,000 to get relatives out through China and then Southeast Asia or Mongolia.

Some exits are short-term. One 37-year-old North Korean in Seoul, an employee at a large auto parts maker, said he went to China in April to meet a friend, a journalist in North Korea whom he had not seen in 10 years. For a few hundred dollars, smugglers took the journalist to Yanji, a bustling Chinese town on the border with North Korea, where the two spent the weekend drinking and catching up, the man said in an interview in Seoul.

Like many interviewed for this article, he asked that his name be withheld, for fear of reprisals against friends and relatives still in North Korea. He carried stacks of a South Korean newspaper, The Chosun Ilbo, for the journalist, who had no interest in reading the political stories. Instead, he devoured the business pages, though he puzzled over words like “online,” and marveled at how far the South had outpaced the North economically.

At the end of the weekend, the defector returned to Seoul and his journalist friend to North Korea.

“Doing this would have been unimaginable a few years ago,” he said. “This kind of corruption didn’t exist back then. Now, everything revolves around money.”

Escaping a Shaky Economy

After the end of the cold war, North Korea’s economy collapsed and its leaders adopted a strategy of trying to secure its energy and other essentials by threatening to become a nuclear power. They have adhered to this strategy even as they put into effect economic reforms in 2002, adopting market prices, allowing citizens to run small businesses and joining with South Korea in economic projects.

Though still shaky, the North’s economy has improved thanks to trade with China and South Korea. It grew by 2.2 percent in 2004, the sixth consecutive year of expansion, according to the Bank of Korea, South Korea’s central bank. Defectors and brokers said North Koreans were fleeing their country to rejoin relatives in the South or to look for economic opportunities — not because they were starving, as they were in the 1990’s. The threat of political persecution remains, of course.

In Seoul, Do Sung-hak, 39, a North Korean who came to the South in 2002, said his older brother was sent to prison three years ago after someone reported the brother’s private comments that North Korea was not opening its economy fast enough.

A few months after his release early this year, the brother fled the North with Mr. Do’s help. He is now in Thailand.

Mr. Do, who works as a security guard, said he had arranged to get about 20 people out of the North, using ethnic Korean-Chinese contacts he had made while living for six years in northeast China.

After receiving a request, Mr. Do said he would call a Korean-Chinese intermediary, who would then call a North Korean with a Chinese cellphone that works inside North Korea near the border. The North Korean or a partner would then travel to the relative’s hometown — the price of the service varying according to the distance — and take that person back to the border, where he or she would then talk to the relative in South Korea on a cellphone and make arrangements.

“It doesn’t matter if the person lives in the middle of the country — of course, it takes longer, maybe 10 days,” Mr. Do said. “It’s only a question of money.”

North Koreans living in the South also send money to their relatives back home through the same method, with the brokers taking at least a 20 percent fee, brokers and North Korean defectors said.

A 49-year-old broker in Seoul — nine of whose clients have arrived in Thailand recently — said she operated the same way, adding that those involved in the business in North Korea were Communist Party members.

“You can do that kind of work — being able to travel freely inside North Korea — only if you’re a party member,” said the woman, who added that she earned $2,500 to $3,000 a month.

The demand for this smuggling service has risen along with the increasing number of North Koreans living in South Korea. The North Koreans in the South pay to get their relatives out by working to pay for the fees, borrowing money or using resettlement money awarded to them by South Korea.

One River, Many Hardships

The case of Lee Chun-hak, the 19-year-old who fled the North on June 28, is a typical one. For the past two months, he has been in the Immigration Detention Center in Bangkok, where his mother, Kim Myung-shim, 46, visited him from Seoul the other day.

Mrs. Kim fled to South Korea in 2003, remarried and began working to arrange the defection of Mr. Lee and her two other children, who lived with her former husband in a province bordering China.

The three children were set to leave in late 2005. But before crossing the Tumen River into China, Mr. Lee balked — he did not want to leave his father and grandmother. His older sister and younger brother went ahead and, thanks to the $5,200 paid to brokers, were smuggled into Mongolia and arrived in South Korea last February.

Mr. Lee returned to his everyday life, going to school and, like many others, earning a little money by working at a nearby gold mine. People farmed corn and beans in the area where the surrounding mountains have been stripped bare for firewood.

The economy had improved in recent years, as the authorities allowed people to moonlight at places like the gold mine and to start small businesses. Local residents ate regularly, Mr. Lee said, though the portions were small. Still, he saw perhaps only two or three cars a day, and most people walked or rode bicycles.

After a few months, his sister in Seoul persuaded him to leave. Mr. Lee was now an adult and would find it hard to keep living with his father, who had remarried, Mrs. Kim said.

So on June 27, after his sister had made arrangements with a broker, the North Korean man picked Mr. Lee up in his hometown and took him by bicycle to a spot near the border, where he spent the night, he said. The next afternoon, they rode the bicycle and then walked to the Tumen River. Mr. Lee waded across, accompanied by the soldier.

“As long as you pay the soldiers, you can cross,” Mrs. Kim said, adding that she had paid $3,600 to the brokers for her son’s escape — $1,000 for the North Korea leg and $2,600 for China.

He found his way through China and Laos to Thailand where, following the advice of the brokers, he gave himself up to the authorities. Thailand does not repatriate North Korean refugees, incarcerating them instead while their cases are processed through the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Bangkok. The process takes about three to four months, after which the North Koreans are sent to South Korea, though the United States recently accepted nine North Korea refugees.

Having learned that news in Bangkok, Mr. Lee said he no longer wanted to go to South Korea. “I want to go to the United States to study and become a scientist.”

Doubts About an Ideology

Many of the North Koreans interviewed in Thailand said they wanted to go to the United States, even though they were reared in a country that has demonized America for decades. In school in the North, one defector said, she had had been taught that Americans were “inhuman, promiscuous and dictatorial.”

“Even today, I still sometimes refer to the United States as ‘Imperialist America,’ ” she said, laughing.

But as a fourth grader, the woman said, she began to have doubts about that image of America, after she happened upon a photograph in a magazine. As she recalled, it showed a tightrope walker balanced on a wire between high-rise buildings in Washington. The implicit message was that the United States was such an inhumane country that it forced people to perform such jobs, she said.

“But what I remembered about that photo was the tall buildings,” she said. “There was also a beautiful park and clean, wide streets. It was fascinating. There was nothing like that where I grew up.”

North Korea still unleashes daily attacks against the United States through its official media, but the desire of many of the defectors interviewed to go to the United States suggests that the power of ideology is waning.

“After spending a few months in China, they change their minds about the United States,” said a South Korean missionary who regularly visits the North Koreans at the detention center. “In China, they have access to so much information. They look at Web sites and exchange instant messages with people in South Korea.”

Lee Chan, 36, who fled North Korea one year ago and entered Thailand in June, agreed that anti-American ideology was not as strong as it was in the past.

“People’s perceptions of the United States have changed inside North Korea,” he said. “I’ll give you one example. If you’re caught watching an American movie, the authorities will just swear at you — nothing else.”

In Bangkok, where South Korean Christian missionaries care for the defectors while trying to convert them, Lee Chun-hak’s mother, Mrs. Kim, was worried that her son had become too friendly with Mr. Lee, the defector who had emerged as a leader of the detainees. She was angry that her son had started smoking under Mr. Lee’s influence.

“Please look after Chun-hak,” the mother said to Mr. Lee, adding that her son had birthmarks on his head and face that foretold a great future. “That’s why I’m sending him to America.”

“Please guide my son,” she said, “even though he’s doing well alone.”

Mr. Lee, showing her a pack of Marlboros, said, “He’s doing well — he doesn’t smoke expensive cigarettes like I do.”

“Stop smoking!” the mother said.

A missionary began praying for Lee Chun-hak.

“Pray to God to send you to America,” the mother exhorted her son.
 

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China builds wall to keep out illegal immigrants

Monday, October 16th, 2006

From the Associated Press:
China erects barbed wire fence along border with North Korea
10/16/2006
Alexa Olesen
Jae-soon Chang

China has been building a massive barbed wire and concrete fence along parts of its border with North Korea in the most visible sign of Beijing’s strained ties with its once-cozy communist neighbor.
 
Scores of soldiers have descended on farmland near the border-marking Yalu River to erect concrete barriers 2.5 to 4 meters (8 to 15 feet) tall and string barbed wire between them, farmers and visitors to the area said.
 
Last week, they reached Hushan, a collection of villages 20 kilometers (12 miles) inland from the border port of Dandong.
 
“About 100 People’s Liberation Army soldiers in camouflage started building the fence four days ago and finished it yesterday,” said a farmer, who only gave his surname, Ai. “I assume it was built to prevent smuggling and illegal crossing.”
 
Though the fence-building appears to have picked up in the days following North Korea’s claimed nuclear test last week, experts said the project was approved in 2003. Experts and a local Hushan official, who requested anonymity because of the project’s sensitivity, said the military was in charge of the building.
 
A Defense Ministry spokesman, Ye Xing, declined comment, saying he was not authorized to release information on border security.
 
The fence marks a noticeable change in China’s approach to its North Korean neighbor. In the decades following their shared fight against U.S.-led U.N. forces in the Korean War, China left their border lightly guarded, deploying most of its forces in the northeast toward its enemy, the Soviet Union.
 
But the border became a security concern for Beijing in the past decade, as North Korea’s economy collapsed and social order crumbled in some places. Tens of thousands of refugees began trickling across the border into northeast China, fording the Yalu and Tumen rivers or walking across the ice in winter.
 
Professor Kim Woo-jun at the Institute of East and West Studies in Seoul said China built wire fences on major defection routes along the Tumen River in a project that began in 2003, and since September this year, China has been building wire fences along the Yalu River.
 
“The move is mainly aimed at North Korean defectors,” Kim said. “As the U.N. sanctions are enforced … the number of defectors are likely to increase as the regime can’t take care of its people … I think the wire fence work will likely go on to control this.”
 
But he said he also believes that Beijing wants to firmly mark its border with the North along the two rivers.
 
Kim said China and the North drew their border in a secret treaty. That treaty wasn’t reported to the United Nations and therefore does not apply to a third country, like South Korea. China is concerned that South Korea may claim a different border after absorbing or unifying with the North.
 
Reporters who visited the border area in the past week saw about 500 meters (1,640 feet) of newly erected barbed wire fence north of Dandong, mainly along river banks and occasionally broken up by mountain areas or military guard posts.
 
A duck farmer in Hushan, who would only give his surname Han, said that soldiers began putting up the fence near his farm last Monday afternoon — the same day that North Korea claims to have carried out an underground nuclear test.

 

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China should accept more DPRK immigrants

Sunday, October 15th, 2006

From the Wall Street Journal:
Let Them Go: China should open its border to North Korean refugees
10/15/2006
Melanie Kilbatrick

If China is to assume what it considers to be its rightful place as a great power, now is the moment. The world is looking to Beijing as the only government with a measure of influence over its lunatic nuclear ward in the Hermit Kingdom. The question is, will it use it?

China says it favors “punitive” actions on Pyongyang for its apparent nuclear test last week, and there’s talk–so far desultory–of sanctions. But no one is speaking publicly about Beijing’s biggest source of influence: the 900-mile border it shares with North Korea. Opening the frontier to refugees would put pressure on Kim Jong Il to give up his nukes or watch his regime implode. As Mark Palmer, U.S. ambassador to Hungary in 1989, has noted, the East German refugees who passed through that country en route to West Germany sped the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The plight of North Korean refugees hiding in northeastern China is a humanitarian crisis that has received scant global notice. No one knows how many are in hiding or how many Beijing has deported back to North Korea in violation of its obligations under the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. China refuses to let the United Nations or other countries help the North Koreans.

Now, three official Chinese government documents–obtained privately and smuggled out of the country–show that the humanitarian crisis may be more dire than widely believed and the burden on China heavier. Two of the documents are from the Public Security Bureau–one from the Border Police and the other from a police station along the border. The third is from the Finance Bureau of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin Province, home to many ethnic Koreans.

The documents were obtained by a U.S.-South Korean group that helps North Korean refugees navigate the underground railroad to safety out of China. The group prefers to remain anonymous for fear that its work could be endangered. They have been vouched for to me by two other sources, one on Capitol Hill and another at an international human-rights organization.

The Border Police document, dated Jan. 10, 2005, begins blandly enough: “From the start of illegal border crossings in 1983,” it says, “the number of illegal immigrants from North Korea that have stayed in China has increased every year.” It adds, “Public Security and Armed Police departments have strengthened preventative and deportation efforts.”

The numbers it reports are newsworthy–and staggering: “To date, almost 400,000 North Korean illegal immigrants have entered China and large numbers continue to cross the border illegally.” And, “As of the end of December 2004, 133,009 North Korean illegal immigrants have been deported.” While Chinese authorities obviously know how many refugees they have deported, by definition they can’t know how many are in hiding. The estimate of 400,000 is sure to be low.

The Yanbian Finance Bureau document, dated Oct. 19, 2004, provides further evidence of the extent of the crisis. It is a letter to provincial authorities requesting more money to help with deportation efforts. “According to statistics from the Public Security, border police and civil administration, more than 93,000 refugees are still living in Yanbian Prefecture.” The letter goes on to say that although the Border Police Bureau has established “six new refugee-deportation and detention centers,” it does not have sufficient funds to do the job. Yanbian requests 30 million yuan ($3.8 million) a year “to solve this financial problem.”

It’s the third document, though, that puts this “financial problem” in human terms. It’s a report, dated Oct. 7, 2003, from a police station in Badaogou Precinct, near Baishan City, in Zhangbai Korean Autonomous County, also in Jilin Province.

“At 7 a.m. on Oct. 3, 2003,” Case Report No. 055 begins, “a report was received from the public of several corpses floating in the Yalu River. Officers from the Precinct immediately responded and organized personnel and by 10 a.m. 53 corpses had been recovered.

“At 5 a.m. on Oct. 4 an additional three corpses were recovered for a total of 56 corpses. There were 36 males and 20 females, including seven children (five male and two female). After examination of the personal effects it was determined that the dead were citizens of the DPRK [North Korea]. Autopsies confirmed that all 56 had been shot to death. It is estimated that the dead were shot by Korean border guards while attempting to cross into China.”

While Pyongyang bears ultimate responsibility for the abuse of its citizens, China is complicit. Its policy of tracking down and repatriating refugees amounts to a death sentence for many returnees. It’s a crime to leave the workers’ paradise, and North Koreans who are caught and deported are shipped off to internment camps or worse.

If Beijing wants to send a message to Pyongyang about its nuclear program, it could announce that, effective immediately, it is taking several steps: It will stop deporting North Koreans, allow the United Nations to set up refugee camps, and permit the resettlement of refugees in third countries, from which they could go to South Korea, whose constitution codifies its moral responsibility to accept its Northern cousins, or to other countries willing to take them in. The U.S., which so far has accepted a mere eight North Koreans, could step up to the plate here.

The Border Police document notes that since the early 1980s there have been six instances of mass migrations that have coincided with North Korea’s famines. Now, winter is coming, and there are already reports of food shortages. Allowing the world to help the North Korean refugees in China would help Beijing deal with a problem that is likely to get worse.

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