NORTH KOREA

How defections can throw a spotlight on the plight of North Koreans fleeing across the border into China?

Live or Die: Tales of human tragedy from North Korean famine refugees in China

Shadows and Whispers: The Struggle of North Korean Refugees

The Australian Walkley Award for best international journalism and the grand prize of the SAIS-Novartis International Journalism Awards in 2001

13 June 2002

How defections can throw a spotlight on the plight of North Koreans fleeing across the border into China?

Chronology of events

January 2000 C Seven North Korean refugees (aged between 13 and 30) were forcibly returned to North Korea by China. In December 1999, the UNHCR recognised them as refugees under the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees. Although the UNHCR informed the Chinese and Russian governments about its decision to recognise them as Convention refugees, Russia forcibly returned them to China on 31 December 1999. China forcibly returned them to North Korea on 12 January 2000.

June 2001 C A family of seven North Koreans entered the Beijing office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees asking for a political refugee status. The year before, one member of the family had published a book in South Korea containing drawings of the familys flight to China from famine in North Korea. After negotiations with the UNHCR, the Chinese government agreed to let them leave the country on "humanitarian" grounds.

March 14, 2002 C The second major North Korean defection case in less than a year. 25 North Korean refugees (six families and two orphaned girls) have stormed the Embassy of Spain in Beijing. Less than 24 hours later, they left for Manila, Philippines, and then for South Korea.

April 2002 - Following the 25 North Koreans entering the Spanish Embassy in China seeking asylum, the Chinese government notified Seoul through the local Korean Embassy that it will conduct an extensive crackdown on religious and civil organisations active in China, which support North Korean defectors.

April 2002 - After the incident with the 25 North Korean asylum seekers at the Spanish Embassy, North Korea set up a camera near the North Korea-China border to crack down on defectors.

May 8, 2002 C Five defectors from North Korea were forced out from the Japanese Consulate in Shenyang, China, after they entered its premises. A videotape clearly showed that Chinese security officers tackled two women who had already passed through the consulate gates and dragged them back out, together with a small child. The scene captured on videotape sparked international condemnation as well as a diplomatic row between China and Japan. China relented to the pressure by releasing the family, allowing their migration to South Korea, via the Philippines, fifteen days after their capture.

May 9, 2002 C Three North Korean defectors got inside the U.S. Consulate in Shenyang.

May 10, 2002 C Two North Korean defectors entered the Canadian Embassy in Beijing. Few days later, they left for South Korea via Singapore.

May 23 & 24, 2002 C Three North Koreans took refuge in the South Korean consulate in Beijing seeking asylum.

May 28, 2002 C The Chinese Foreign Minister demanded the Korean Embassy to hand over the five defectors. This is the first such demand made by the Chinese authorities.

June 8, 2002 C Two North Korean men entered the Canadian Embassy seeking asylum.

June 9, 2002 C Three North Korean defectors, including an eight-month pregnant woman and a two-year-old baby, entered the South Korean Embassy in Beijing to seek asylum.

June 11, 2002 C Nine more North Korean defectors including a family of five entered the South Korean Consulate General in Beijing, bringing the total number seeking sanctuary there to 17. China and South Korea are discussing their fate.

June 11, 2002 C Four North Korean defectors arrived in the port city of Incheon in South Korea aboard a ferry from Dalian in northeastern China.

June 11, 2002 C Beijing has decided to demand all foreign missions in China to hand over North Korean defectors who seek asylum with them from now on.

June 11, 2002 C The U.S. House of representatives unanimously passed a resolution urging Beijing to halt forced repatriation of North Koreans fleeing famine and political repression, and "encourages the government of China to honour its obligations" under the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. A similar resolution is pending in the U.S. Senate.

Live or Die

Tles of human atragedy from North Korean famine refugees in China

In the mountains of northeast China, an hour's walk into the forests, a family once hid underneath the earth

ABCnews.com (10.06.2002) / HRWF International Secretariat (13.06.2002) C Website: www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - Three years ago, Kim Kan-Su and Kim Young-Hee lived here with their 5-year-old son, Young-shin, in a hole in the ground, hiding from police. Their crime, in the eyes of China and their homeland, North Korea, was simply that they left their famine-stricken country to look for food.

Their underground hideout was only a couple of miles from the North Korean border, but it was one of many "homes" they had in the mountains since they fled North Korea.

Chinese police are paid a bounty to capture refugees like them and return them to North Korea. The Kims lived with the knowledge that if they were sent back, they would be labeled as traitors and possibly face execution.

"Though we don't have a house, living like this in hiding, at least we eat rice, which is rarely available in North Korea, even for well-off families. We just hope we don't get caught," Young-Hee, the mother, told Korean-American filmmaker Kim Jung-eun at the time.

"Everything else is fine, except for the fear and distress," said Kan-Su, the father.

Millions die in obscurity

The Kims are only a fraction of the North Korean citizens whose lives have been ravaged by the famine that has besieged their homeland since the mid-1990s.

The famine is estimated to have killed some 2 million of the nation's 24 million people since 1995, and led to as many as 300,000 heading for China to live illegally.

Some say the famine is largely the fault of the North Korean government, which maintains a million-man army to defend one of the most heavily armed areas in the world the DMZ, or demilitarized zone separating it and South Korea.

Others counter that the North Korean economy is crumbling and the government cannot purchase anything because of its poor credit rating. Natural disasters, like a drought in 1997, also contributed to hardships.

Because the country is so reclusive, granting access only to a handful of visitors, international media coverage of the famine has been limited.

But last month, five North Korean refugees, including a 2-year-old girl, got some attention for their plight when they sought asylum by entering the Japanese consulate in Shenyang in northeastern China. Chinese guards dragged them out, but after an international outcry, they were allowed to proceed on to South Korea.

Dark fates

In other parts of China, an underground network of private individuals, ethnic Korean families and local churches run a support network for North Koreans looking for food to take back to their starving families.

Among the supplies they hide in a church are flour, corn, rice, medicine, soap and sugar. They could face fines and prison if they're caught giving this aid to North Koreans. When asked by local authorities about the supplies, they usually say it's all for poor locals.

For those who make it to China, the struggle is far from over. On the shores of the Tuman River, which is all that separates China and North Korea at one stretch of China, other trials await, including human traffickers and the prying eyes of neighbors and police.

"I knew seven women who were sold and brought to the area where I worked for a year. I knew one of them from back home. I wish I could give them a better situation where they could make their own living and be free. North Korean women are sold everywhere," one woman told the filmmaker.

But risking these fates is better than facing the ones some North Koreans say they left behind.

"Some people made sausages with human flesh and also blood pudding, then sold them. They were caught and executed," said one North Korean.

"One boy was still a minor, 16 years old. They faked his age so they could execute him. He was very small because he was malnourished. We all saw the execution. It made me cry. I know it was a terrible crime, but imagine how hungry they must have been to do such a thing."

Sacrifices continue

In the forest, surrounded by caution and living in fear, the Kims tried to keep some sense of a normal family life for their young son. Kan-Su taught his son about animals, and showed him how to set traps, to catch rabbits and birds. He used some of the game to trade for rice and vegetables at a local village.

Kan-Su worked at a tobacco farm an hours' walk from his hideout. His labor there was illegal and he received no pay, but he was compensated with a small amount of rice, which he brought back to his family every three days or so.

The family still bore the scars of their situation though. Malnourishment from the famine of North Korea stunted Young-shin's growth, and his parents mourned for their broken family.

When the Kim family first came to China, they had three children and Young-Hee was pregnant with a fourth. But they could not feed or educate them properly, hiding in the forest, and one by one, they had to give their children away.

The baby boy who was born in the hideout was first given to a childless Chinese family. Later, the Kims reluctantly handed their two girls to an orphanage. They considered it the girls' only chance of ever receiving an minimum standard of decent nutrition and education.

Soon, the Kims realized they could not provide enough for Young-shin either. So three years ago, the Kims gave away the last of their children.

Shadows and Whispers: The Struggle of North Korean Refugees

The documentary won the Australian Walkley Award for best international journalism and the grand prize of the SAIS-Novartis International Journalism Awards in 2001

Journalists Jung-eun Kim (a SAIS alumnus) and Peter Charley collaborated on this award-winning look at North Korean refugees who escape the famine endemic to their homeland by crossing into Northeast China. Once across the border, they are illegal immigrants in China who cannot return to North Korea safely. The film focuses on one family's struggle with their precariously undefined status, and the choices they make to survive. Secretly videotaped over a period of 12 months, the film offers an intimate look at an issue largely unreported in the mainstream media.