Category: North Korean refugee

North Korean defectors in America

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Defectors from North Korea automatically become South Korean citizens after a mandatory three-month transition that is part debriefing, part re-education. Refugees receive a few thousand dollars to start their new lives and learn skills most people take for granted: grocery shopping or using an ATM.

“South Korea has an enormous program to resettle North Koreans. It’s basically a yearlong program, but then it goes on beyond that in many ways where there are grants for education, for housing, and all kinds of things,” said Lindsay Lloyd , who currently leads the George W Bush Institute’s Freedom in North Korea project. “So the scale of their programs to bring these people into South Korea, compared to what happens here in the US, it’s just radically, radically different.”

“When refugees come to the United States … the US government only provides about six months’ worth of support for them,” Lloyd added. “It’s done through groups like Catholic charities and others that really just address the basics: find a place to live, get some basic healthcare, maybe some rudimentary English lessons, a first job, that kind of thing.”

The State Department has documented 192 North Koreans entering the US from 1 January 2002 to 1 January 2016. But this only includes refugees who have obtained green cards through the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004. Many North Koreans enter the US illegally and settle in Los Angeles, amid the large population of ethnic Koreans. Nearly 200 former North Koreans live in Los Angeles, advocacy groups say, but exact numbers are unknown.

In October 2014, the Bush Institute at the George W Bush Presidential Center published a qualitative survey, “US-Based North Korean Refugees.” It found that “even those on a path to citizenship lived almost entirely within Korean communities”, the survey reported. “However, nearly all also said they did not feel completely accepted or included, and often felt looked down upon or pitied.”

[The Guardian]

North Korean defectors develop post-unification reconstruction plans

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Some 30 North Korean defectors have rolled up their sleeves to create reconstruction plans for their hometowns and help residents improve their lives post-unification.

“While studying the reunification of East and West Germany, I thought there are certainly roles that we defectors could play in the reconstruction of North Korea,” said Kim Byeong-uk, the founder and president of Seoul-based think tank North Korea Development Institute and founder of the 185 Project. “I think South Korea can cut unification costs if it narrows the development divide with the North. If concrete, area-specific construction plans are in place, it will be easier for the South to reconstruct the North, and this, consequently, will reduce costs.”

One of the project’s current plans is for North Korea’s public markets. [By analyzing satellite imagery] “we’ve found 414 markets all across North Korea, which have become an integral part of the North Korean way of life,” Kim said. “As long as the North Koreans are allowed to make a living through the markets, they won’t care much about politics or nuclear weapons. But they won’t sit back if the North Korean authorities attempt to suppress market activities because these are their lifeline,” he said.

Kim said the thriving markets in the North indicate that a wind of change is blowing. He also noted that in the country’s relatively basic manufacturing industries, North Koreans import raw materials from China and send them to the cities or counties that have sufficient facilities and labor forces to process them into finished products.

“The markets are classrooms in which North Koreans learn the capitalistic way of life. The thriving markets indicate that, whether intentionally or not, North Koreans are preparing themselves for reunification,” Kim said.

[Korea Times]

North Korean diplomat and family flee Russia seeking political asylum

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A North Korean diplomat based in Russia has gone missing, and it is likely he is attempting political asylum with his family.

According to a Pulkovo Airport official in St. Petersburg, the diplomat left the country on a plane bound for Belarus on July 2, Ria Novosti reported.  The man was identified by Russian media as Kim Chol Song, a third secretary and trade representative of the North Korean mission in St. Petersburg. (Chinese state media, however, has said the man’s name is Kim Chol Sam.)

The diplomat, his wife and son boarded a Belavia Belarusian Airlines flight, purchasing the tickets three hours prior to boarding, according to the report.

Fontanka, an online Russian news site, quoted a local investigator who also said the North Korean envoy had left for Belarus to seek asylum in Europe.

[UPI]

Number of North Korean defectors arriving in the South rises 22%

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The number of North Korean defectors who left the reclusive state this year reached 749, marking a 22 percent increase on-year, the Unification Ministry said Thursday.

This is the first significant rise in the number of the defectors since North Korean leader Kim Jong-un took helm at the end of 2011, the ministry added.  The number had declined in recent years, from 2,706 in 2011 to 1,502 in 2012, 1,514 in 2013, 1,397 in 2014 and 1,276 last year.

The ministry said at the current rate, the number of the defectors is expected to reach 1,500 by the end of this year.

The South Korean government has said that the recent rise in the number of defectors is attributable to the strong sanctions slapped on the reclusive regime upon its fourth nuclear and long-range missile tests earlier this year.

They pointed to the increasing defections by North Korean workers sent overseas. A total of 13 workers from a North Korean restaurant in China entered the South on April 7, and another group of three North Korean restaurant workers in China defected and arrived in Seoul last month.

The ministry added that the total number of North Korean defectors settled in the South was on track to exceed 30,000 by October. The number currently stands at 29,543 as of the end of June.

[Korea Herald]

North Korean defectors’ detention unlawful, say human rights lawyers

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The ongoing tussle between the two Koreas over 12 waitresses from North Korea who defected to the South spilled into a courtroom in Seoul on Tuesday, where human rights lawyers accused the authorities in the South of unlawfully detaining them.

The 12 women, together with their male manager, flew to Seoul, the South Korean capital, in April after leaving a North Korean government-run restaurant in the Chinese city of Ningbo. South Korea welcomed the women and described them as having defected of their own free will after growing fed up with their totalitarian government.

Colleagues and family members of the 12 North Korean waitresses who defected were presented to the news media in Pyongyang

North Korea immediately accused the South’s spy agency, the National Intelligence Service, of kidnapping the women. It has since arranged for their parents to give interviews with the Western news media, during which they have demanded that South Korea allow them to meet with their daughters to learn their true intentions. The South has dismissed the demands as propaganda.

The inter-Korean standoff took an unexpected turn recently, when a South Korean human rights group, Lawyers for a Democratic Society, asked a court in Seoul to release the women from a tightly guarded government facility south of the city where they have been kept since their arrival, so they could speak for themselves. The group accused the National Intelligence Service of blocking the women’s access to legal services and their right to speak freely.

The South Korean government has denied the lawyers access to the women, saying that the defectors do not want their services. It has also said that if the women appeared in court and testified that they abandoned North Korea of their own accord, that would prompt the North to persecute their relatives in retaliation.

By law, the National Intelligence Service can keep North Koreans who flee to the South at a secluded facility outside Seoul for as long as six months for debriefing and to ferret out spies.

[New York Times]

Programs to help North Korean defectors shed stigma

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Ken Eom, who was a soldier in the People’s Army, defected from the North Korea in 2010. He eventually arrived in Seoul after seeking asylum at the South Korean Embassy in Thailand.

But his problems were far from over. “Prejudice is most difficult to cope with. In South Korea news, there’s a stereotype of North Korea associated with violence or communist totalitarianism,” Eom said, describing how the media affects local perceptions of his birthplace.

Other problems persist because defectors new to the South lack knowledge of the basic workings of a capitalist society and struggle with English, which has been adapted to the South Korean vernacular. These and other setbacks result in a loss of confidence among defectors who become resigned to feelings of inferiority and try to hide their identity, Eom said.

But the former North Korean soldier said he resolved problems by stepping out of the fear zone and seeking help with everyday issues. “When I began telling people I’m from North Korea and opening up, people around me became a source of help,” Eom said.

A new program allows participants to speak out about North Korea and overcome the stigma of their identity. It’s not easy, though, for North Koreans to speak out after living under an authoritarian regime, that avoidance of the limelight continues in South Korea, where defectors don’t feel motivated to attract attention.

[UPI]

More North Korean workers defect from China

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Several North Korean women reportedly defected from their work site in the Chinese city of Dandong – a month after a group of waitresses fled a state-run restaurant in central China.

Kim Seong-min, a defector in South Korea who heads Free North Korea Radio, said seven or eight North Korean women escaped their place of work on Saturday.

In response, North Korea’s state security department dispatched agents to China to track down the women, with the cooperation of Chinese security, Kim said.

Kim told Yonhap the women were all in their 20s, and they were working at a Chinese-owned company, although he did not specify whether the site was a factory or another establishment.

[UPI]

South Korea continues questioning North Korean defectors

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South Korea’s intelligence agency will continue to hold 13 North Koreans at the heart of a bitter dispute between the rival countries. South Korea says they defected of their own free will, while the North claims they were abducted.

Intelligence officers want longer to question the group of 12 waitresses and a manager at a North Korea-run restaurant in China, who arrived in Seoul in April. The move came ahead of a South Korean court’s decision to delay a request for a hearing by a group of lawyers. The lawyers want to question the group about whether they defected freely, after the intelligence agency refused to present them in court.

The National Intelligence Service has held the group since they arrived in South Korea on April 7 at a facility it runs on the southern outskirts of Seoul. More than 1,000 people from North Korea stay at the facility each year in the initial stages of defection. For up to 180 days, they are screened and questioned on their lives in the North.

The agency’s decision to extend the women’s stay means they will not be moved to a resettlement complex where defectors spend 12 weeks learning about life in the South.

[The Guardian]

Dispute boils over Seoul court hearing on North Korean defectors

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About two months after fleeing their oppressive homeland, 12 former workers of a North Korean restaurant in China face a legal debate over the legitimacy of their stay in South Korea under Seoul’s protection.

The Seoul Central District Court opened a hearing to review a request by the Lawyers for a Democratic Society, better known as Minbyun, to determine whether the 12 had defected on their own free will and thus whether the government’s current holding of them is lawful.

The Unification Ministry’s unprecedented announcement of the defection, made just days ahead of the April 13 general election, stoked rumors that the National Intelligence Service had orchestrated the escape with a political intention.

Controversy is simmering as the court issued a summons to the 12 defectors, fueling concerns over their safety and that of their family members left behind in the North.

In another development, the NIS has decided to have the group remain in their current residence instead of sending them to Hanawon resettlement center, citing the special nature of their situation including Pyongyang’s ongoing propaganda offensive against them.

[The Korea Herald]

Details on latest North Korean defectors to have made it to Seoul

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The North Korean propaganda website Uriminzokkiri on Tuesday alleged that three North Korean women who fled from China to South Korea were “abducted” by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service. The website also published the photos, identities and passport numbers of two South Koreans and a Korean-Chinese man it accuses of “luring and abducting” the women at the orders of the South Korean “National Intelligence Service” (NIS).

But Yoon Jae-hong, one of the men in the photos who helps North Korean defectors in China, denied the claims. “They were anything but kidnapped,” he told the Chosun Ilbo. “They were the ones who asked us to rescue them.The NIS has nothing to do with this.”

According to Yoon, two of the women worked in a restaurant in Shanghai for two years until late 2015. They were senior employees and had their own cell phones and were allowed to leave the restaurant freely. They became friends with two South Korean businessmen in Shanghai and exchanged phone numbers.

But the restaurant closed down late last year due to financial difficulties and the women were moved to another restaurant in Weinan, Shaanxi Province. From there they continued to exchange text messages with the two South Koreans in Shanghai.

Hearing of the defections of 13 North Korean women from another restaurant strengthened the resolve of the two women in Weinan to also [defect]. They contacted the two South Korean men to ask for their help in getting to South Korea. One of the South Koreans contacted Kim Yong-hwa of the North Korea Refugees Human Rights Association in Seoul to ask for help. Kim arranged for Yoon to help them.

“Originally, three restaurant workers intended to defect, but one changed her mind at the last minute,” Yoon said. “On April 15, they left the restaurant and got in a taxi to a prearranged spot, and from there they traveled for two days by bus to Yunnan Province.”

The women crossed the border into Laos and traveled to Thailand to board a flight to Seoul.

[Chosun Ilbo]