Tag: NK defectors

The first group ever of North Korean refugees allowed asylum status in the United States has arrived:

Six refugees from North Korea, including four women who say they were victims of sexual slavery or forced marriages, have fled to the United States, a senator said Saturday.

The group is the first from North Korea to be given official refugee status since passage of a 2004 law that makes it easier for North Koreans to apply for such status.

Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, said the six refugees arrived at an undisclosed U.S. location Friday night from a Southeast Asian nation. He would not identify from which nation they came because of worries about security for their families and to avoid diplomatic complications with the country that sent them.

“This is a great act of compassion by the United States and the other countries involved,” said Brownback, a co-sponsor of the law. He said that the refugees’ arrival in the United States showed “the act is working” by making the refugees’ human rights a part of U.S. policy toward the North.

It is very common for North Korean women who are hiding secretly in northern China to become victims of sexual slavery and forced marriages because if they don’t agree to such practices than they can be turned over to the Chinese authorities which means deportation back to North Korea and from there the gulag.

Hopefully this will be more than just a one time event because this will give refugees hiding in China and other Asian countries another outlet to seek asylum besides South Korea.  This news is not going to make South Korea to happy though.  South Korea is actively trying to prevent North Koreans from defecting in order to appease the Kim Jong Il government in North Korea.  Appeasing the North Koreans is of more interest to the current South Korean government than human rights of refugees.

This is pretty amazing that this family actually made across the maritime border without being detected:

A family of five North Koreans, including two children, were found adrift aboard a small barge inside South Korean water across the eastern sea border, military officials said Sunday.

A South Korean coast guard boat spotted the barge carrying the North Koreans sailing across the tightly guarded border in the East Sea on Saturday night and towed it to Goseong, a port on the east coast, they said.

The North Koreans told investigators their boat had drifted for two days before striking a rock, the officials said.

The military and the Coast Guard were jointly investigating whether the North Koreans had an intention to defect, they said.

The investigation should be short, but I’m not sure what else a family of five on a barge would be doing out in the middle of the East Sea in the cold other than defect.