NORTH KOREA

The Plight of North Korean Refugees:

China deported over 3,000 North Korean defectors last year
Terror faces starving who flee to ChinaZ
North Korea's border cities see bleak future

4 October 2001

China deported over 3,000 North Korean defectors

last year

Korea Times (21.09.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (04.10.2001) C Website: www.hrwf.net/ Email: info@hrwf.net - China is estimated to have repatriated 3,000 to 4,000 North Korean defectors to their home country last year, Chinese sources said on 20 September.

The sources said the number of North Korean defectors currently staying in China reaches as high as 30,000.

The number is based on direct interviews with the defectors, contact with Korean residents in China and neutral international relief organizations helping defectors, the sources said.

The sources continued, ``The number of North Korean defectors has decreased recently due to the comparatively better food condition in the North since last year.''

North Korean defectors are now tending to go to Mongolia as China has been rushing to deport them.

Terror faces starving who flee to China

By David Rennie

Telegraph Network (01.09.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (04.10.2001) C Website: www.hrwf.net/ Email: info@hrwf.net - David Rennie reports from Yanbian Autonomous Korean Prefecture on a brutal campaign against North Korean refugees who try to escape a regime in the grips of famine.

The border between China and North Korea does not look an evil place. There are no watchtowers, fences or dogs, no visible troops. You could be in Scotland.

Woodsmoke, and the smell of trees, hang in the air over the narrow border river, the Tumen, as it flows past green hills to the Sea of Japan.

But this is a place of fear. This summer, China has launched its fiercest campaign in years against North Koreans who have fled to northeastern China in search of food, work or freedom.

In a safe house near the border with North Korea, three teenage refugees emerged from a darkened balcony, assured that the coast was clear. Like all North Korean children, they looked far too young for their age - their development stunted by malnutrition.

Their protectors - local Christians - were as frightened as they were, jumping up to the windows of the small room whenever a car slowed outside.

This summer, thousands of North Koreans, many of them children, have been sent back across the border to labour camps, while those suspected of contact with foreigners, or Christians, face jail or even execution.

China most wants to find long-term illegal residents like "Matthew", 19 who was 14 when he decided to run away to China.

He has heard nothing from his sisters or parents since he defected, but knows they will have suffered. He said: "If the authorities find out someone has gone, their whole family will be punished."

His parents were terrified, but he insisted: "There is no food in North Korea and I wanted to see the outside world." For two years he planned his escape, gazing across at China's lush fields and busy factories.

One recent winter, at one in the morning, Matthew made his escape, led by another teenager who had been to China before. It was a bitter, moonlit night. He had cloth shoes and no gloves. "I could see my breath. My feet froze. My face was covered in ice."

Their small group of boys climbed many hills until, just before dawn, they saw the frozen Tumen. "I was frightened I would be shot, but I had decided to go." They crawled to the border, then ran. At the first town, their young leader abandoned them.

Matthew knocked on a cottage door. "I said right out, 'I am from North Korea' and a man gave me some food." China's Yanbian prefecture is home to 700,000 ethnic Koreans, many of whom have relations across the border.

Some 30,000 of them are Christians - a legacy of the powerful Protestant missionary movement in pre-war Korea. Many are sympathetic to visitors, though not all.

The boys' danger was only just beginning, explained one Christian. "The ones who cross the river are very noticeable. If you don't speak Chinese you are immediately suspect. This is where the children have trouble."

They are prey to North Korean gangsters who rob border-crossers returning home. There are also Chinese gangs who force girls as young as 15 into prostitution or sell them as brides.

Before the latest action, on any given day up to 300,000 North Koreans were hiding in China, diplomats and aid groups estimate.

Many are members of the local elite, with money to bribe border guards as they wade or swim the Tumen or sprint across its frozen surface in winter.

Most stay a few days or weeks to collect food, perhaps from Chinese-Korean relatives. Young women come to find Chinese husbands, though marriage offers no protection from deportation.

In recent years, foreign non-governmental organisations, as well as religious and humanitarian groups from South Korea and America, have quietly built an astonishing underground network across the Chinese border region.

An "underground railroad" of guides and safe houses began smuggling a handful of refugees out of China to South Korea, via third countries such as Mongolia, Burma, Vietnam and Thailand.

In Yanbian, foreign non-governmental organisations opened feeding stations and farms. Christians founded secret orphanages, factories to provide work and underground clinics for the many who arrived sick. This spring the authorities lost patience.

"Luke", another teenager in the safe house, knows what that can mean. His first visit to China ended in arrest and deportation. "The Chinese kept me in a prison for two days, asking who took care of me in China.

"I didn't tell them, I just said I came to China for food. They were really angry. First they beat us with rubber truncheons, then they used an electric prod.

"They used the prod here and here." He touched his chest and the nape of his neck. "I was tied to the chair. I did not faint like some, but I was shaking and trembling.

"They used the prod when I did not answer, and then they used it for no reason. Then they sent us back."

Each North Korean camp differs and some are more lenient than others. All ask the same three questions. Have you been to China frequently? Where did you go? Above all, did you meet South Koreans, Christians or foreigners?

Luke returned to North Korea in a large batch of children and adults and was then quickly separated into children's center.

He was packed in a room with 50 other youths so tightly that they could not all sit at once, let alone sleep. Finally he escaped the lightly guarded camp.

Luke recalled constant hunger at home. "My family used to eat grass and tree bark. If we could eat corn that was a really good meal."

"Martha", a local woman, has sheltered North Korean children at another safe house for two years. Her current charges also escaped from children's labour camp.

Martha, a Christian, is risking much. She said: "For the past year my own family has not known where I live, they just have a phone number. If I am caught I will be fined or jailed."

North Korea's border cities see bleak future

Chosun Ilbo (07.09.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (04.10.2001) C Website: www.hrwf.net/ Email: info@hrwf.net - The scenes of North Korea as seen from Tumen and Dandong in northeastern China look bleak. From the perspective of North Korea, however, the region is "the delivery room of hope." Sinuiju, North Pyongyang province; Manpo, Jagang province; Hyesan, Yanggang province; Musan, Hyeoryong and Onsong, North Hamgyong province, dubbed "the border region," offer an atmosphere quite different from that of the inland area. These border towns began to attract people and goods influenced by China's opening and reform, the phenomenon of which was accelerated by food shortages. Mining towns along the Tumen River, which used to house political exiles, are losing their "proper functions."

Trains destined for the north are always packed even though pass getting procedures are troublesome. Required for travel to the border area are special passes with blue lines printed, the securing of which is said to be often through bribery, according to North Korea watchers here. The size of the bribe has reportedly spiraled to NKW500 recently from NKW200 in the early 1990s. There are still routes braved by those who don't carry special passes. They jump off trains before passes are checked and continue traveling on foot. The authorities have since installed "No. 10 checkpoints" at the entrance of border towns in a bid to control road travelers, but the persistent will to survive helps determined and desperate escapees find roads crossing the border.

Marketplaces in the border area are thriving with colorful Chinese commodities and various products transported from the inland. Foreign goods shops also do good business, as they are frequented by Chinese residents and former Korean residents in Japan who have migrated to the North, both categories of whom are alienated from the system. Their divergence with the locals in living standards often results in conflicts.

Most typical border cities are Sinuiju and Hyesan. The former is not as beautiful and tidy as Pyongyang, but its citizens are more lively and richer. They harbor little of the inferiority complex to their capital counterparts. Thanks to their frequent contacts with Chinese across the Yalu River, their ways of thinking are much more liberal. Young couples speeding on motorcycles and ordinary citizens criticizing ranking party officials are often seen there. Many people who have quit their normal jobs are engaged in commerce earnestly, though thugs coming from the inland present disorderly scenes. Females follow the latest fashion so much that they are said to influence even Pyongyang women.

Evading surveillance by the authorities, some border area residents watch Chinese televisions. Watching the 1988 Seoul Olympics through Chinese televisions, they are said to have reshaped their understanding of South Korea. A perception prevails in the border area that "becoming Workers' Party members is of no use. Money is almighty." The economy-first way of life; to the extent of giving rise to an impression that "everyone is bent on commerce;" confronts the solid wall of politics in the North, say North Korea watchers. Such perceptions spread inland aboard trains to influence a shift in the consciousness of North Koreans.

These remarks Kim Jong Il has allegedly made are widely circulated in the North: "I would rather see Sinuiju disappear from the map," and "Even without Hyesan, we can carry out the social revolution." Due to discord with the central government, the watchers say, the border area suffers from no small amount of disadvantages. Border area residents are liable to be labelled as "subversive." Open executions take place most often in the border region, purportedly as a means of rooting out rampant crimes involving wanderers and smugglers.

Above all, the border area offers final routes of escape from the North. In an effort to block the exodus of North Koreans, border guard brigades were established in five border cities along the Yalu and Tumen Rivers in 1996. Five more such brigades have since been inaugurated in Sinuiju, Manpo, Hyesan, Chongjin and Sonbong, setting up checkpoints every 500m in some places and every 3km elsewhere. Their guarding activities have recently been intensified.

Meanwhile, trading with China is thriving through such border routes as Onsong-Shatouji, Namyang-Tuman, Chongsong-Kaisantun, Hyeryong-Sanhe, Nodokni-Nanting and Musan-Chongsan along the Tumen River, and Hyesan-Changbaixian, Junggangjin-Linjiang, Manpo-Jian and Sinuiju-Dandong along the Yalu River.