Category: North Korean refugee

No trace of North Korean refugees held near Burma border

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Burmese government officials said they are unable to confirm reports that 64 North Korean refugees are being held by rebel groups near the border town of Tachilek in Shan State.

“The last we heard of North Koreans on their way to Thailand was four years earlier,” a security officer was quoted as saying. “They had mistaken the Burmese shore north of Tachilek for Thai territory and had embarked there. We told them to return to where they came from.”

A South Korean activist claimed recently that the refugees had been held for years and were subject to forced labor and prostitution.

[Irrawaddy]

An Orphan in North Korea

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Hyuk Kim lost his mother when he was 6, then his father when he was 11. After his father died, he lived with a group of six other orphan boys in North Hamgyong province, located at the northern most tip of North Korea.

“We started a fire together, but we still couldn’t sleep because it was so cold,” he said. “We just warmed ourselves with the fire at night and we mainly slept during the day when the sun was shining.

In the punishing winters, Hyuk and other orphans would break into sheds containing electric transformers near factories and markets to find a warm place to sleep.  “Many children accidentally end up touching the transformers while sleeping and die,” said Hyuk, who asked that his real name not be used for the safety of family members still in North Korea. As Hyuk dozed off each night curled next to a transformer, he would try to stay as still as possible — willing himself not to move in his sleep. “During the night, we needed to find food to eat. We sometimes stole food from others and gathered food from here and there.”

When something went missing in the neighborhood, the blame automatically fell on Hyuk and his friends, even when they had not been involved. The children would be taken to the police station and tied to chairs, he said. “The police would then automatically accuse us of stealing because they assume we would have stolen since we don’t have parents. They hit us, tie us up, and torture us. There was no one to defend us.”

Hyuk Kim fled North Korea in 2011, nearly a decade after becoming an orphan. Hyuk, now 21, attends Hangyeore Middle-High School in South Korea, where he sleeps in a bed inside a heated dormitory. The school serves three warm, buffet-style meals a day, and students can pile as much food as they’d like on their metal trays. The school, set up by the South Korean government, does not charge tuition.

Most North Koreans escape by crossing the river on the northern border to China. Some street children who flee to China become easy prey to traffickers, according to human rights activists. The girls are sold into the sex trade, or as wives for rural Chinese men. China sends back those escapees they catch, so defectors live in hiding — fearing they’ll be imprisoned and tortured back home.

 CNN

Interview with Kenneth Bae in North Korean prison

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The American citizen sentenced to 15 years in a North Korean labor camp, has appealed to the Korean authorities for forgiveness and asked the United States for help in securing his release in an exclusive interview from prison obtained Wednesday by CNN.

Pae Jun Ho, known as Kenneth Bae by U.S. authorities, was found guilty in an April 30 trial of “hostile acts to bring down its government” and planning anti-North Korea religious activities, according to the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

In the interview footage, his head was shaved and his face noticeably thinner than the previous photos of the Korean-American. Bae wore a blue prison garment streaked with sweat and dirt that bore the number 103. The interview is believed to be the first since Bae’s sentencing about two months ago.

Choson Sinbo, a pro-North Korean group based in Tokyo, was permitted to conduct the interview by North Korea. The edited footage, which runs less than eight minutes, was made available to CNN.

The timing of the Bae interview comes after North Korea proposed high-level talks with the United States last month. However, North Korea has stated before that Bae is not a “political bargaining chip” through KCNA.

“There is no greater priority for us than the welfare and safety of U.S. citizens abroad and we urge the DPRK authorities to grant Mr. Bae amnesty and immediate release,” said Brent Byers, spokesperson at the U.S. Embassy in South Korea. He added that the Swedish embassy in Pyongyang, which represents U.S. interests there, has met with Bae six times since his arrest.

In the interview, Bae sat in a room next to a door and a radiator. He calmly described his current prison life as eight hours of farm labor — which he had never done before — with a break in the middle of the day and lunch. He was also filmed clearing the fields, wearing black gloves and a hat as a guard stood watch nearby.

When asked if prison life was bearable, Bae replied, “Yes, people here are very considerate. But my health is not in the best condition, so there are some difficulties. But, everyone here is considerate and generous, and we have doctors here, so I’m getting regular check-ups.”

North Korean media has detailed the reasons why Bae was sentenced. Among the list of alleged crimes was 1) setting up bases in China for the “purpose of toppling the DPRK government,” 2) encouraging DPRK citizens to bring down its government and 3) conducting a “malignant smear campaign.” KCNA added that Bae had planned what it called a “Jericho operation” to bring down North Korea through religious activities. It suggested that Bae could have been sentenced to death, but avoided it through “candid confession of his crimes.”

Plight of North Koreans persists amid posturing

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As last week’s abortive meeting between the two Koreas illustrated, the region’s foreign policy often seems to be at the mercy of Pyongyang’s irrational whims.

But while diplomats debate ad infinitum, many of North Korea’s 25 million people live a nightmare. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International estimate that up to 200,000 North Koreans, some of them children, are imprisoned in camps modeled after the Soviet gulags, where they are subjected to torture and forced labor. Millions waste away in hunger, without freedom of expression or religion. Arbitrary arrests and public executions maintain order by instilling fear. The U.N. Human Rights Council has condemned North Korea’s “systematic, widespread, and grave violations of human rights.”

Many North Koreans are jailed after failed attempts to cross the Chinese border. Because the demilitarized zone dividing the Koreas is heavily fortified, North Koreans can only escape northward. After the new government gave a shoot-on-sight order to curb illegal crossings, the number of defectors was almost halved, to 1,500 last year.

For those fortunate enough to make it to China, the journey has only begun. In violation of international agreements, China routinely repatriates North Korean refugees. So defectors face a 3,000-mile clandestine journey to Southeast Asia to gain refugee status and entry to South Korea, where they are naturalized and given government stipends. While around 25,000 have settled there, more than 30,000 North Korean refugees live illegally in China.

Humanitarian organizations such as Liberty in North Korea (LiNK) and Helping Hands Korea facilitate their journeys. The Rev. Tim Peters, a North Korea activist, has compared the network to the Underground Railroad that once helped African-American slaves from the South reach the North. While these organizations make up a small bandage for the hemorrhaging, more relief may be achievable through diplomacy.

[The Philadelphia Inquirer]

Scratch Laos off North Korean defector route?

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Over the years, Laos has been a vital safe haven for North Korean defectors, with its Communist government quietly helping thousands reach South Korea. But Laos reversed course with little explanation, recently detaining 9 defectors for traveling without documents, then handing them over to North Korean agents, who whisked them away on a series of commercial flights back to Pyongyang.

The cooperation between Laos and North Korea blindsided aid workers and South Korean officials, who say that North Korea, under leader Kim Jong Un, is taking new forms of recourse against those who escape its borders.

During Kim’s 18 months in power, the North has cut defections nearly in half, according to South Korean government data. North Korea has tightened security on its own borders and sent agents into China to pose as and expose escapees. But until now, escapees who made it to Southeast Asia had remained relatively free from danger.

The case in Laos has sparked fears that the North, as part of that strategy, is also pressuring Southeast Asian governments to return defectors, though “we still don’t know for sure,” said one South Korean government official, requesting anonymity to discuss details of the case.

Analysts say the North views defections as a double-edged threat: Once out, escapees can testify about the country’s gulags and poverty. They can also send back money and information to family members, planting the seeds for others to defect via a labyrinth of safe houses and small churches operated by aid workers and Christian missionaries.

South Korean officials say they have little clue about whether Laos and North Korea will continue to cooperate in stopping defections, or even why they cooperated in this instance.

Either way, the case has prompted new concern among activists for those who escape the North, who depend on the governments of Southeast Asian countries — typically Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam or Laos — to help them seek asylum and resettle in South Korea.

[Washington Post]

North Korean defector routes

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The Korean peninsula is divided by a nearly impassable demilitarized zone, a border strung with barbed wire, peppered with mines and patrolled on both sides by militaries. As a result, North Koreans who want to eventually reach South Korea, where they are granted citizenship, must take the long route.

North Korean border guardThey start by crossing one of two shallow rivers — the Yalu or Tumen — into China, either swimming across or walking over ice during winter. They try to avoid the watchtowers and North Korean guards who have occasional shoot-to-kill orders.

In China, they are far from safe. Beijing views North Koreans as “economic migrants,” not valid asylum seekers, and repatriates them to the North, where they are deemed traitors and subject to re-education camps, prison, torture, and sometimes execution.

NK refugee routesIf they make it to Southeast Asia, they have roughly a half-dozen options. Many defectors transit through Laos or Burma and head to Thailand, the nation most welcoming to defectors. (Its fines for illegal entry are minimal, and it allows defectors to meet with United Nations officials.)

Others pass through Vietnam in order to make it to Cambodia, which the UN describes as a “model” for protecting refugee rights.

[Washington Post]

Time for China to discipline their wayward child North Korea?

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In 2011, China accounted for an estimated 67.2% of North Korea’s exports and 61.6% of imports, according to the CIA World Factbook. So LA Times’ Beijing Bureau Chief Barbara Demick suggests, “There’s a lot more China could do that it has chosen not to.”

So why is China not using its economic leverage to rein in the nuclear threat and proliferator next door?  In a word — fear.

There’s fear of a North Korean collapse that would lead to instability and a refugee crisis along its 1,400 kilometer (880 mile) border with North Korea. And then there’s the far greater fear of an all-out conflict that would redraw the geopolitical map.

And there’s something else holding Beijing back — the historic and symbolic relationship with Pyongyang that is hard to give up.

“The Chinese Communist Party thinks of North Korea as this small state that is in its own image,” says Demick. “The structure of the North Korean government is very similar to the Chinese government and, in a way, it’s the pure Communist state. It’s just really hard psychologically to dump North Korea.”

“They treat North Korea a bit like a wayward child,” adds Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt, the North Asian head of the International Crisis Group. ” You want to be the one to punish your child, but you’re not going to turn them over to police.”

But for many people in China, enough is enough.

“Their rhetoric is increasing the number of Chinese who feel very, very disgusted by their behavior, their psyche and their regime,” says Zhu Feng, professor of International Relations at Peking University. “China’s government is seriously under fire because I think the majority of Chinese really, really feel that North Korea’s bad behavior will inevitably endanger China.”

CNN

On North Korean defectors apprehended in Laos – Part 1

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Early last month, nine young North Korean defectors, guided by a South Korean pastor and his wife, thought they were on the last leg of a long escape.

Already, they’d traveled some 2,500 miles, sneaking from the northern tip of North Korea into China, then — in the most dangerous part of their journey — across much of eastern China. Next, they’d headed into Laos.

The group’s goal was to make it through Laos undetected until arriving at the South Korean embassy in Vientiane. For several days, the escapees traveled across Laos by bus, disguised as a school group, wearing backpacks and matching T-shirts, according to video and photos released after the group’s detention.

Over the years, Laos has been a vital safe haven for North Korean defectors, with its Communist government quietly helping thousands reach South Korea. But Laos reversed course with little explanation, recently detaining 9 defectors for traveling without documents, then handing them over to North Korean agents, who whisked them away on a series of commercial flights back to Pyongyang.

Nearly all the defectors were orphans, between 15 and 23 years old, who’d crossed into China, starving and sickly. Some had parasite infections and had been eating out of trash cans in the North. continued …

On North Korean defectors apprehended in Laos – Part 2

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Human rights activists say that perhaps no group of escapees has ever made it farther from the North only to be dragged back.

Some non-governmental organizations put part of the blame on the South Korean government, saying its officials underestimated the willingness of Laos and North Korea to work together and failed to meet with the group during the 18 days between its detention and the hand-off to the North. South Korea says it was notified by the pastor on the day the group was first detained, but that Laos never granted its diplomats a meeting with the escapees.

Laos, in a statement released by its foreign ministry, said it returned the nine to the North after its investigation found that they were victims of “human trafficking.” But activists, including some who worked with the nine escapees or know the pastor, strongly dispute that claim, and have drawn up their own personal theories to explain Laos’s behavior. They say the handoff could be the result of a diplomatic favor or a bribe.

Laos has been the preferred route of nearly half of the 25,000 defectors who’ve successfully fled impoverished and authoritarian North Korea, and its critical role on that escape route highlights the convoluted path defectors take from one Korea to the other.

[Washington Post]

UN fears for young North Korean defectors sent home

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Nine young North Korean defectors are at the center of a diplomatic storm. A war of words has broken out over the young refugees – all thought to be orphans – who the UN believes were sent back to their authoritarian homeland by China last week.

The UN said it was concerned about the return of the children to North Korea, where they could face severe punishment for having fled. Meanwhile, Beijing warned the UN against making “irresponsible remarks” about the young defectors.

The defectors, ranging in age from 15 to 22, were turned over by Laotian authorities to North Korean security agents, who flew them via China back to North Korea on May 28.

The refugees likely face harsh imprisonment in political gulags, torture, or execution. North Korea deems escaping from the country to be a political “crime of treason against the nation.” Under North Korean law, the minimum punishment is five years of hard labor.

It is unusual for Laos to have turned over the refugees so quickly to North Korea, as it is that Pyongyang sent nine security agents to escort them back to North Korea. South Korean officials commented that Laos had previously allowed refugees expressing a desire to travel to South Korea to do so after a few weeks’ hiatus.

North Korea may be seeking to disrupt the underground railroad by intimidating other defectors from attempting to escape. Up to 90 percent of North Korean refugees pass through Laos.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans are estimated to be hiding in northeast China, seeking to travel to South Korea via Mongolia or southeast Asian nations such as Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos.

Human rights activists argue that in allowing the transit of the North Koreans across China, Beijing “violates its commitments as a state party to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, its 1967 Protocol, and the 1984 Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment.” However, China denied knowledge of the refugees’ plight since they had been given valid travel documents by North Korean embassy officials in Laos.

Source: The Foundry