NORTH KOREA

The drama involving the seven-member North Korean family that sought refuge at the UNHCR office in Beijing came to a happy end when the government of China had authorized them to depart to Singarpore on 29 June en route to Seoul. However, it should be remembered that last January, another seven-member North Korean family could not have the same fate. Though interviewed by the UN officials and designated as political refugees, they were repatriated to North Korea by the Chinese authorities.

A recent survey by the US Committee for Refugees reports that at least 6000 North Korean defectors were deported forcibly to North Korea last year.

An estimate of 150,000 North Korean refugees perish at the Chinese border with little hope of survival. Due to political and diplomatic reasons, the refugee crisis has been ignored by the international community. The government of China does not permit the UN or other international groups to investigate conditions on the border, although China is party to treaties that should permit such investigation.
Ron Redmond, a UNHCR spokesman, has noted that the story of Gilsu family is just "the tip of the iceberg". This Press Service brings to your attention two articles analysing the obstacles the international community is confronted with in dealing with the North Korean refugee crisis.

Table of contents:

North Korean refugees betrayed by UNHCR - By Philippe Pons, Le Monde
Escape from a prison-state C Washington Post
Joint Declaration of International Society for Human
Right and the French Committeefor Help of the People of North Korea

11 JULY 2001

North Korean refugees betrayed by UNHCR

By Philippe Pons

Le Monde (03.07. 2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (11.07.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - We can only rejoice at the outcome of the drama involving a North Korean family that sought refuge at the UNHCR office in Beijing and that was allowed to leave China on Friday, June 29 and arrive in South Korea via a third country. However, for one saved family, how many others are abandoned by the UNHCR to the tragic fate dealt the tens of thousands of North Koreans who each year escape famine and repression in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

Despite Beijing's "gesture" of letting the family go, the North Korean refugee problem in China remains unsolved. This family saga has shed light on China's refusal to grant refugee status to these men, women and children who arrive on its territory starving while taking enormous risks.

For the Chinese, signatories to the UN Convention on the Status of Refugees but worried about vexing Pyongyang, these refugees are "illegal economic immigrants" who must be repatriated. Sent to the DPRK, these poor people are subjected to sanctions that are sometimes horrible. This time, China succumbed to pressure. Officially, it was out of concern for the health of some family members. In reality, it was done to avoid controversy that could have tarnished its image as a candidate for the 2008 Olympic Games.

By refusing to grant refugee status to North Korean defectors at the border, China paralyzes all official international efforts to come to their help. But the tragic fate of the North Korean refugees is not only due to Beijing: it is also a result of the UNHCR's refusal to address the problem and its efforts to avoid responsibility in order not to offend Beijing.

In the Chinese capital, the UNHCR takes care of Vietnamese refugees in the South of the country. In theory, the UNHCR's mission also covers those we modestly call "displaced North Korean persons."

The High Commissioner began a year ago to negotiate with the Chinese authorities regarding an international presence at the border to provide humanitarian support to the "hunger migrants" without officially granting them refugee status nor assuring their protection when they returned to North Korea. It seems that even this minimal demand was rejected by the Chinese and that the UNHCR has decided to toe the line drawn by Beijing.

The UNHCR admits to having limited access to the border area and it seems to be satisfied with this situation now. A UNHCR spokesperson in Geneva, Ron Redmond, hopes that the incident of the family that was able to leave China after laborious negotiations will have a favorable impact on their dialogue with the Chinese authorities. And if it does not have this effect, will the UNHCR continue to ignore the problem?

Humanitarian organizations, mostly South Korean, more or less clandestinely operating on the Chinese side of the border, estimate that 200,000 to 300,000 North Koreans each year cross the Yalu (West) or Tumen (East) rivers that separate North Korea from China. Several of them come to find food or earn some money in a region where a large Korean-Chinese minority lives and where the two languages are widely used, and return to the DPRK after paying a "tribute" to the border guards who take a large share of their food. The most unlucky have everything taken, are arrested and sent to labor camps. Those who do not wish to return to their country are taken care of by a network of humanitarian organizations.

Some (about a hundred thousand) live secretly at the border area. Others are sent a little farther inland (in the Shenyang region) and try to blend in with the masses. The women are often sold as wives to Chinese peasants. A minority tries, with the help of humanitarian organizations, to get to South Korea through a third country. In 2000, 321 North Koreans found asylum in the South and 140 since the beginning of this year. They first go through a long interrogation by the South Korean authorities and their identity is not made public to avoid retaliation against family members.

RIGHT TO LIFE

The Chinese authorities at the border region more or less turn a blind eye (in return for some "compensation") on these trips. From time to time, they will raid refuges - often on tips from North Korean agents who infiltrate refugee networks. These men also forcefully repatriate people: that is the case of children "kidnapped" from orphanages.

These North Koreans who cross into China surely are hunger migrants. But they are much more than this: the fate that awaits them in the DPRK should they be caught makes them a persecuted people and, for this reason, they have the right to refugee status. What they ask, through their escape, is the right to live, something they are denied by their country who lets them die from hunger or disease due to malnutrition: since 1985, the famine in the DPRK has left from 200,000 (official estimates) to 1 or 2 million people dead.

To be persecuted for his or her ideas, race or religion is enough to be granted refugee status. And to be persecuted because of hunger? An economic migrant can, in general, hope for the protection of his or her government. In the case of North Korea, it is the opposite: the "hunger migrants" are considered traitors and thus face sanctions ranging from years in labor camps with inhuman conditions to execution pure and simple. A little harsh for simple illegal "economic migrants," as Beijing likes to call them.

For China to display an attitude deserving of international condemnation and criticism is one thing. For the UNHCR to complacently adopt China's viewpoint and ignore for several years the problem of the "hunger refugees" is much worse.

Translated by Pascal Comeau (CNKR)

Escape from a prison-state

Washington Post (03.07.2001) / HRWF International Secretariat (11.07.2001) C Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - LAST WEEKEND seven members of a North Korean family managed to achieve what tens of thousands of other refugees from their country's brutal dictatorship have been unjustly denied: protection provided by the United Nations and asylum in South Korea. Like up to 300,000 other North Koreans, the family of Jung Tae-jun fled the state-imposed starvation, police brutality and labor camps of the north for China, where they hid for two years among the ethnic Korean population. Unlike all the rest, they managed to contact the Beijing office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which, after several days of standoff, overcame China's resistance to allowing their evacuation. This small victory for the UNHCR, which has done little to help one of the world's biggest communities of refugees, ought to raise a much larger question: Why should the thousands of other Korean refugees in China be denied similar assistance?

The first obstacle is the Chinese government, which has signed an international convention on protection of refugees but refuses to respect its terms. The Communist government, still friendly with the North Korean regime of Kim Jong Il, does not maintain tight security along its northeast border, so hundreds of thousands of desperate North Koreans can slip across. But it will not allow the UNHCR to operate in the area or screen the arrivals, instead ludicrously insisting that all are mere economic migrants not suffering from persecution by the world's strictest totalitarian government. As a result anywhere from 30,000 to 300,000 North Koreans live a precarious existence in northeast China; periodically Chinese authorities conduct roundups and deport the emigrants back across the border -- where they face prison camp or execution for the crime of fleeing. Some make desperate efforts to reach South Korea via Mongolia or Southeast Asia. But only a few hundred have made it in the past 10 years.

Earlier this year an extraordinary total of 11.8 million South Koreans signed a petition to the United Nations asking for better treatment for the refugees. But it's not clear their own government is entirely on board. South Korean officials have not pressed China to grant the refugees access to the UNHCR or freedom to travel to the South, instead preferring what they call "quiet diplomacy." The government of Kim Dae Jung may fear that China would react to serious pressure on the issue by sealing its border with North Korea, making the situation even worse.

But it may also be that some in South Korea and in the West fear success. If China were to allow more North Korean emigrants to be designated refugees and evacuated to the South, enormous numbers might head for the border. As all the parties well know, it was just such an outpouring of refugees that caused the collapse of East Germany's Communist regime in 1989. China no doubt prefers North Korea's dependent Communists to a united and democratic Korea. And though South Korea hopes for unification with the North some day, it fears a precipitous collapse of the Pyongyang regime that would swamp it with refugees.

Thanks to such concerns, North Korea's refugees have been hemmed into a miserable no-man's land, both diplomatically and literally. The bravery of the Jung Tae-jun family last week at last put their suffering on the international agenda. The United Nations and the Bush administration should act to keep it there -- by beginning a serious campaign to give the UNHCR access to the thousands of families left behind.

Joint Declaration of International Society for Human Right and the French Committee

for Help of the People of North Korea

By Pierre Rigoulot

FNN (04.07.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (11.07.2001) C Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - The government of People's Republic of China has authorized 7 members of North Korean refugees in the bureau of UNHCR in Beijing to depart to Singapore on 29 June, which could be the route to Seoul.

These family would be thankful to Baron Pierre de Coubertin. Because all were due to Beijing's effort to hold the Olympic Game in 2008. Chinese government had chosen the veil of humanitarianism.

International society for human right and the French committee to help the population of North Korea welcomed this decision and encouraged Chinese government to go forward in order to have international respect.

There remained many problems unsolved.

1) North Korea, basically still supported by China, will not change their political and economic line; meanwhile unhappy North Korean ceaselessly try to escape from their country.

2) The measure of tolerance by Chinese government is a temporary decision.

Unless Chinese authority give the status of refugee to North Korean escapees from Kim Jong-il's dictatorship, their fate, remaining uncertain will be threatened by the security police agents from Pyongyang and the group of traffickers of human beings.