Tag: defectors

I think the most blame should be put on the mother who did not ask anyone for help though I would not be surprised if she was suffering from depression that contributed to her death:

Han Sung-ok, 42, seemed determined to pick through nearly every lettuce on the market stand. She turned each one over and examined it while her six-year-old son clambered on the fence nearby. 

The vegetable seller in the southern Seoul suburb looked on, annoyed. This was one picky customer and she didn’t even buy a lot of vegetables – only one or two items for as little as she could pay. On this occasion it was a lettuce for 500 won (about $0.40; £0.33). 

Uttering only a few words, Han handed over her money and left with her son.

Just a few weeks later, both were dead. 

Having fled food shortages in her native North Korea and dreaming of a new life, Han and her son are believed to have starved to death in one of the wealthiest cities in Asia. Their bodies lay undiscovered for two months until someone came to read the water meter and noticed a bad smell.

Mother and son were found apart on the floor. The only food in their tiny rented apartment was a bag of red pepper chilli flakes.

BBC

You can read the whole thing at the link, but she definitely had a hard life and trouble adapting to South Korean culture. People in the government probably should have done more to check on her welfare, but ultimately if she would have reached out to defector organizations or even a local church she could have gotten help instead of starving to death.

Another North Korean soldier has defected:

 A North Korean soldier defected to South Korea in a midnight river crossing in the border area known as the Demilitarized Zone, South Korea’s military said Thursday.

The defection comes at a sensitive time. Efforts by Seoul to improve relations between the two Koreas have been stymied amid stalled U.S.-North Korean nuclear talks.

The soldier was spotted via a thermal observation device in the Imjin River at about 11:38 p.m. Wednesday after crossing a central section of the Military Demarcation Line that divides the peninsula, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The river was swollen from rainy weather, making it difficult for local troops to determine the object in the river was a person until the soldier emerged from the water just before midnight, officials told reporters at a briefing.

The local military unit then sent a team and took the individual safely into custody, they said, adding that no unusual North Korean military movements were detected in the area.

“The man is an active-duty soldier who expressed his desire to defect to the South,” officials said. “Related procedures are underway.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but that is quite a swim getting across the Imjim River during monsoon season. According to Yonhap this was the first defection across the Imjim River since 2010.

Via a reader tip comes news that the North Koreans that arrived undetected by the ROK authorities in Samcheok may not have been fishermen as claimed:

Mystery continues to shroud the defection of two North Korean sailors earlier this month after their wooden boat entered a South Korean harbor completely undetected, which set off a scandal over the lack of alertness by the South’s military. 

Jeon Dong-jin, a South Korean fisherman who saw the North Korean boat enter Samcheok Harbor in Gangwon on June 15 told the JoongAng Ilbo on Wednesday that he was first filled with curiosity at seeing North Koreans for the first time, but soon became afraid.  

“It reminded me of the time an armed North Korean squad infiltrated Gangneung in 1996,” he said, in reference to an incident in which 26 North Korean reconnaissance agents covertly landed near Gangneung, Gangwon, on a submarine but were hunted down by the South Korean army after being spotted. In the ensuing series of firefights that lasted from September to November that year, 12 South Korean soldiers and four civilians were killed, as well as 24 of the North’s agents. 

“If the North Koreans on the wooden dinghy had been armed agents, we would have all been killed,” said Jeon. 

Four North Koreans were on the boat at sea for six days – four in South Korean waters – until it moored at Samcheok. The first person to report the North Koreans did not belong to the military, but was instead a resident of the harbor city. After questioning, two of the crew defected to the South, while the other two returned to the North through the border village of Panmunjom on June 18. 

Many residents of the city are upset with the military’s inability to detect the boat’s infiltration. 

“In their words, [the military] said they were closely monitoring the [maritime border] with cutting edge technology, but in reality they did nothing while the dinghy entered the harbor,” said one resident, Jang Hyung-baek. “I can’t help but think we were tricked.” 

According to Captain Jeon, Samcheok residents remain particularly dubious about the claim that the North Korean sailors had been marooned on their vessel for almost a week. 

“Except for one of them, who looked like he was deliberately growing a beard, the North Koreans were clean-shaven,” he said. “I’ve never heard of a case where people set adrift at sea shave themselves.” 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but just looking at how they are dressed in the picture indicates to me that this was a failed spy operation. They are clearly dressed to try and blend in with the ROK population, not as fishermen. The Moon administration will definitely want to continue to claim these are fishermen in order not to spoil the so called reconciliation mood that is going on right now.

I do find it interesting that the ROK repatriated two of the North Koreans right away while the other two stayed. If they were on a spy mission and were compromised and it is interesting that two of the spies took the chance to defect instead of going back to North Korea.

I hope Ms. Shin understands that peace is not going to allow her to go home to North Korea with out repercussions. As long as the Kim regime remains in place, defectors will never be welcomed back with open arms:

A tearful North Korean defector shouted “Please, let me go back home!” as a black limousine carrying North Korean leader Kim Jong Un passed by her in Hanoi on Tuesday.
Shin Eun Ha is one of two North Korean defectors who flew to Vietnam to wish for progress during a second summit between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump this week. They joined a crowd gathered near a Hanoi hotel where Kim is staying.
Shin said she hopes the summit will help achieve peace so she can return to her hometown of Musan, which she fled in 2003.
“For defectors, North Korea isn’t a country of hatred but a place that we are desperate to go back to even in our dreams,” Shin told The Associated Press. “I hope to see a day when we can go back to North Korea by taking a train like Kim Jong Un used to come here.”
Later Tuesday, when Kim’s limousine left his hotel, escorted by motorcycle outriders, Shin cried and shouted repeatedly, “Please, let me go home.”
“I don’t understand why we should live while missing our hometown,” Shin said.
She and her fellow defector came as part of a popular South Korean TV program featuring North Korean defectors. Shin, a 30-year-old nurse in Seoul, has been a regular guest on the program, titled “Now On My Way to Meet You.”

Associated Press

Here is an update on the North Korean soldier defector who was shot while fleeing across the JSA to defect to the South.  His story is very similar to other defectors who are surprised how hard one has to work in South Korea to earn money:

North Korean defector Oh Chong-song, whose bold dash across the heavily armed border in November last year made global headlines, has been struggling in South Korea since he was released from hospital.

“I took a job as a construction worker to feed myself,” Oh (not his real name) told the Chosun Ilbo Wednesday. “I experienced how hard it is to make money in the South.” Oh left Hanawon, a halfway house that helps North Korean defectors adjust to life in South Korea, in June after a long hospital stay to treat his many gunshot wounds and clear him of a mass of parasites in his stomach.

He now lives in Seoul. “I couldn’t work too long on the construction site due to my bad back, and I now work part-time at a social enterprise,” he said.

Oh denied a media report that he bought two cars and ended up selling them after running out of money. “That’s not true,” he said. “What I was given when I left Hanawon was W4 million in settlement support money and am entitled to live in public rental housing,” he said. “I didn’t have much money left after I bought furniture and a refrigerator (US$1=W1,130).”

Oh now looks no different than many young South Korean men in their 20s. He is slender and around 177 cm tall. Dressed in a navy-blue suit and white shirt, he had also dyed his hair light brown. Because he was born and raised in Kaesong close to the inter-Korean border, he does not have a distinct North Korean accent.

Oh insisted he had been misquoted in an interview with Japan’s Sankei Shimbun last weekend. The right-wing Japanese newspaper stirred up controversy by quoting Oh as saying that the South Korean military is a joke.

“I was misquoted and what I said was lost in translation,” he claimed Wednesday. “I watched video footage of South Korean soldiers crawling to save me,” he added, raising his voice as his emotions ran high. “I served in the North Korean military and do not know much about South Korean military life. You serve 10 years in the North Korean military and two years in the South Korean military, and all I said was it must be easier in the South.”

“But what I was quoted as saying made it sound like I laughed at the South Korean military.” Oh claimed the Sankei sent him a message apologizing for mistakes by the interpreter.  [Chosun Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but apparently there is a lot of disinformation being put out about him.  I would not be surprised if the disinformation campaign against him is a coordinated effort by ROK leftists to discredit him as much as possible.

Sure he is sorry (insert eye roll):

Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon held meeting with defectors in Seoul on Wednesday where he apologized for his controversial decision to prevent a defector-turned-journalist from covering recent inter-Korean talks, a participant said.

Cho had a lunch meeting with representatives of three North Korean defector groups at a Seoul restaurant to explain his position on the controversy and listen to defectors’ opinions on pending inter-Korean issues.

One participant said after the meeting, “Minister Cho said sorry and made an apology for excluding a defector-turned-journalist from the coverage of inter-Korean talks.”

The minister recently caused a stir by excluding a defector-turned-journalist of the conservative Chosun Ilbo daily newspaper from the pool of reporters covering high-level inter-Korean talks held at the truce village of Panmunjom on Oct. 15.  [Chosun Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but this is just another example of how the Moon administration has been stomping out conservative media coverage in South Korea.

Seriously? South Korea agreed to enforce the North's writ against defections? Isn't that essentially China's refugee policy & an agreement to tear up the 1951 Refugee Convention? https://t.co/LMeHeXmuKT

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) October 16, 2018

I met a group of NK defectors from SK recently. Asked whether I should refer them as "defectors" or "new settlers" they said smiling: "freed people." https://t.co/I3nupZ52Yu

— North Korea & Human Rights (@rghkim) August 19, 2018

It didn’t take long for the North Koreans to use the proposed family unions as leverage against the South Korean government:

North Korea’s state-run media released a string of articles on Friday that criticized the South Korean government, hinting that planned reunions for families split between the two nations could be canceled. An editorial in the official state newspaper of the North Korean ruling party, Rodong Sinmun, argued that South Korea had been exaggerating its role in denuclearization talks between Pyongyang and Washington. South Korea’s role in the talks does “not even amount to that of an assistant,” the editorial stated. The same article described comments made by South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Singapore last week as “presumptuous” and “flippant.”  [Washington Post]

You can read more at the link, but it appears the North Koreans are trying to put the ROK government back in its place as being subservient to the Kim regime with the denuclearization talks solely between the US and North Korea.

Here is the main reason they are threatening the cancelation of the family reunions:

In another attack against the Moon administration, Uriminzokkiri, a North Korean propaganda website, urged it to repatriate a dozen North Korean restaurant workers who came to the South in 2016.

The 12 had worked at a North Korean restaurant in China. Pyongyang claims they were abducted by South Korean authorities. The South has said the workers defected of their own free will.

Uriminzokkiri said there could be an “obstacle” in the planned reunion of families divided by the 1950-53 Korean War next month if the workers are not returned.

It lashed out at Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon by name, accusing him of “siding with” the former government which it said plotted the workers’ defection. [Reuters]

I think even for a left wing administration like President Moon’s, this will be politically very difficult to do.  Could you imagine the backlash of forcibly removing these defectors from South Korea and handing them over to the Kim regime?

It looks like the Kim regime has made good progress on getting the restaurant workers returned to North Korea:

A former North Korean restaurant manager who defected to South Korea in 2016 together with a dozen female workers claimed Sunday that Seoul’s spy agency had lured and blackmailed him into defecting.

Ho Kang-il’s claim, made in a phone interview with Yonhap News Agency, corroborates suspicions that the high-profile defection was not voluntary and the then-government of President Park Geun-hye orchestrated it behind the scenes.

During the interview, Ho claimed that the South’s National Intelligence Service had tried to persuade him to defect, saying it would help him open a restaurant in a Southeast Asian nation, but the spy agency didn’t make good on the promise.

“Originally, I was a cooperator of the NIS and brought information to them,” Ho said. “But they lured me, saying that if I come (to the South) with my employees, they would get us to obtain South Korean citizenship and then they would open a restaurant in Southeast Asia that could also be used as an NIS hideout. They told me to run the restaurant there with the employees.”

Ho claimed NIS agents blackmailed him when he hesitated.

“They threatened that unless I come to the South with the employees, they would divulge to the North Korean Embassy that I had cooperated with the NIS until then,” Ho said. “I had no choice but to do what they told me to.”

He also said that the restaurant employees had thought they would be going to a restaurant in Southeast Asia, and it was only after they got on board the flight that they learned they were headed to the South.

Questions about their defection first arose in May after a local cable broadcaster aired an interview with the restaurant manager. Pyongyang has demanded their return, saying they were abducted by South Korean intelligence, but the South Korean government has claimed that all of the North Koreans defected voluntarily.

Last week, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, Tomas Ojea Quintana, called for a “thorough” and “independent” investigation after he met with some of the defectors.

“It is clear that there were some shortcomings in regards to how they were brought to South Korea,” Quintana told reporters. “From the information I received from some of them, they were taken to the Republic of Korea without knowing they were coming here.”  [Yonhap]

First of all the ROK intelligence service should be asking North Koreans if they want to defect, however I don’t believe they should not be blackmailing them.  With that said we don’t know if the blackmail claims from the restaurant manager are true.  Remember these allegations from the restaurant manager only came up after the Moon administration came to power.  Is the Moon administration putting him under intense pressure and allowing the North Koreans to contact him with threats against his family back in North Korea?

Remember these restaurant workers could have easily have made statements to the media that they were kidnapped before Moon became President or even over the first year of the Moon administration.  It was only this past May when JTBC, Pyongyang’s favorite South Korean news channel, was allowed to interview the restaurant manager did these claims come up.  It is going to be interesting to see if the Moon administration ups the pressure on the restaurant workers to voluntarily return to North Korea to keep the current peace process moving forward.