Tag: refugees

Here is an article that provides a reminder of how difficult the life for many North Korean defectors has been before finding refuge:

Back in my home country, I was charged with trying to escape North Korea and sent to a jail where a dozen male and female, young and old prisoners were squeezed into a room no bigger than a metre square. There was only one toilet in the corner of the room and no privacy.
Like other inmates, I was treated as an enemy of the state and forced to do hard labour, clearing the hills of trees so that crops could be planted. I became so malnourished that my skin turned black and my body was skeletal. I lost big clumps of hair and felt utter despair. But the greatest pain was in my heart. I couldn’t bear being separated from my child. On days I thought about death, the thought of seeing my son again was all that kept me going.We were not allowed to wear shoes in the prison, in case we tried to run away. Slowly the skin on my feet became broken and calloused from the rough stones on the ground. My wounds became infected until finally gangrene set in. It was desperately painful, but what I didn’t realise was this would be my passport to freedom. The prison doctor told me that the United Nations had intervened to condemn the conditions in North Korea’s prisons, and he persuaded the guards that I needed rest.

Thanks to him, I was sent to a prison for children where I was to stay until I was well enough to return to finish my two-year sentence. But after two months, when I was able to walk with a limp, I begged the guards to let me leave. My father had passed away just after I left for China, and I told them I wanted to visit his grave. In a rare moment of generosity, they agreed to let me go and, the minute I was out, I headed for the Chinese border again. I had no money, and I knew the only hope of seeing my son again was to approach another trafficker on the North Korean side and tell him I wanted to be sold again into marriage. Once inside China, I managed to escape.  [Yahoo News]

You can read much more at the link, but this North Korean defector went through a lot before getting to England.  This article is also a reminder of the modern day comfort woman trade that the Chinese government indirectly sponsors with North Korean refuge women in China.

Repackaging identity? South Korean matchmaking service ad promotes 1,000 North marriageable Korean defector women. pic.twitter.com/PmH4tfmaoD

— Elizabeth Shim (@GlobalAsianista) August 22, 2016

https://twitter.com/GlobalAsianista/status/762699465530552320

Over at One Free Korea there is a good article posted about the legal “lawfare” being used by leftists in South Korea against North Korea defectors:

I wish I could say that South Korea’s hard left, most prominently represented these days by the lawyers’ group Minbyun, had also lost its faith in Kim Jong-un. Sadly for South Korean history, Minbyun is no fringe group; it has already produced one South Korean president and one presidential candidate. Once, it defended human rights against right-wing South Korean dictators, but since then, it has lost its way. Today, Minbyun wages lawfare for North Korean dictators. It fraudulently represents itself as a human rights group while abusing the law to deny North Korean refugees their human rights. It has taken to doing this by bullying 12 young North Korean women who had the courage to flee the from a restaurant in China, where their government had effectively impressed them into forced labor.

Minbyun has demanded the right to interrogate the women — publicly, before the eyes of the North Korean authorities who hold their loved ones as hostages — about their intentions to defect. This would be in flagrant violation of a refugee’s absolute right to confidentiality, a right the U.N. High Commission for Refugees has long affirmed. When the judge correctly dismissed Minbyun’s petition, Minbyun demanded that the judge be removed from the case. Since then, an appellate court has refused to remove the judge. 

The justification for Minbyun’s legally frivolous petition is North Korea’s factually absurd claim that the South Korean intelligence service kidnapped the women.   [One Free Korea]

I recommend reading the whole article at the link, but I would not be surprised if there were Pyongyang agents working in conjunction with the Minbyun group some how.

Being responsible for managing overseas workers looks like a very undesirable job to have in North Korea considering the increasing number of prominent defections happening:

North Korea publicly executed six officials in charge of supervision of its workers overseas in May following the defection of 13 workers at a North Korean-run restaurant in China a month earlier, a local Pyongyang watcher said Friday.

“North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ordered six officials, including intelligence officials, to be executed publicly on May 5 due to their lack of control over overseas (North Korean) workers,” Choi Seong-yong, chairman of the Abductees’ Family Union, claimed, citing people familiar with the matter.

Eighty public officials and 100 people who have their family members working overseas were forced to watch the execution, he said.

In early April, a group of 12 women and one man fled from a North Korea-run restaurant in China’s eastern port city of Ningbo and defected to South Korea. In the following month, three female workers at a North Korean restaurant in the midwest city of Shanxi reportedly defected to the South.

“North Korea locked the families of the defectors up and forced them to take ideological education at a training facility in Myohyang Mountain, in the northern part of the communist country,” Choi said.  [Yonhap]

The Korea Times has an article that explains how an increasing number of prominent defections are happening:

More and more North Koreans from various social backgrounds are fleeing their country in pursuit of better lives in South Korea, the United States and other countries.

A teenage math prodigy refused to return home and has sought asylum at the South Korean consulate in Hong Kong after participating in the International Mathematics Olympiad there in early July, media outlets there reported Thursday.

Diplomatic sources said Friday that a top military officer and three diplomats fled from North Korea this month and are on their way to third countries via China.

Some other sources claimed a construction worker and two employees at a North Korean restaurant in Malta presumably defected to South Korea after deserting their respective workplaces between 2015 and early this year.

Noting that those defectors are from the middle- and upper-classes, analysts speculated that a growing number of North Koreans regardless of their backgrounds are unhappy with their country’s young leader Kim Jong-un in the wake of sanctions and the country’s accelerated isolation.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but it makes me wonder if this is being caused by a combination of the sanctions, disillusionment with the Kim regime and the subversive media entering into North Korea challenging the constant propaganda that North Koreans have to deal with every day.

Considering how China is now angered at the ROK for allowing the THAAD deployment they could retaliate by not allowing this teenage defector to leave the embassy:

A North Korean teenager sought refuge in the South Korean consulate in Hong Kong after attending an international math competition, local newspapers in Hong Kong reported Thursday.

The 18-year-old boy was in Hong Kong to attend the International Mathematical Olympiad at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the newspaper Ming Pao reported. According to the report, the student was one of the six North Korean official delegates of the competition.

According to South China Morning Post, all six members of the North’s team and the two supervisors attended the closing dinner of the competition on July 15.

At some point after that, the report said quoting a diplomatic source, one of the students vanished and later sought refuge at the South Korean diplomatic mission.

The mission asked for strengthened security protection from the Hong Kong government, fearing a possible North Korean retaliation, and armed anti-terrorist troops are now guarding the consulate around the clock.

“The South Korean government requested the Hong Kong government to allow the student’s departure, but no definite answer was given,” a Hong Kong source told the JoongAng Ilbo. “The Chinese Foreign Ministry is apparently reviewing the issue.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but it is going to be very interesting to see how this turns out.

Ambassador @YeonmiParkNK talks to @businessinsider about life in the West after escaping from #NorthKorea https://t.co/29cXn2Mpjv

— One Young World (@OneYoungWorld) July 14, 2016

I am a bit surprised that it has taken this long for a North Korean defector to serve in the ROK military:

A North Korean defector recently completed his mandatory military service in South Korea, according to Korea Hana Foundation, a state-funded organization helping defectors, Thursday.

Kim Ji-hwan, 22, was discharged on Feb. 23 after serving two years as an Air Force sergeant in the 8th Fighter Wing in Wonju, Gangwon Province.

Kim is the first North Korean defector to have completed military service here, according to the Military Manpower Administration (MMA).

All able-bodied South Korean men aged between 19 and 37 are subject to compulsory military duty. But those who escaped from North Korea can legally refuse the draft under the Conscription Law, the MMA said.

Despite this, Kim applied for service in the Air Force. There are no other North Korean defectors serving in the military.

Kim fled to South Korea with his family in 2005. [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

This is the second group of overseas North Korean restaurant workers to defect to South Korea in the past two months.  I have to wonder if ROK intelligence is focusing hard on getting North Korean restaurant workers to defect in an effort to close the restaurants and dry up a source of foreign currency for the Kim regime?:

Up to three North Korean restaurant staff have recently escaped their workplace in China for possible defection to South Korea, a source familiar with inter-Korean affairs said Monday.

The North Koreans are currently staying in a third country in Southeast Asia after running away from a North Korea-run restaurant located at the northwestern Chinese city of Xian, according to the source.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Via a reader tip comes the below article about how a progressive legal team is trying to gain access to the 13 North Korean restaurant workers that defected to South Korea:

A progressive South Korean legal organization has been denied access to the 13 North Korean defectors who fled a state-run restaurant in China.

Lawyers for a Democratic Society had requested interviews with the North Korean waitresses and their manager, but after being rejected at the defector custody center is planning to take legal action, Yonhap reported.

During a press conference Monday, the lawyers said they were told by an intelligence official that access was not allowed because the “North Korean workers had entered South Korea out of their own free will.”

“If that is correct, the government must grant them their right to counsel,” the lawyers told reporters.  [UPI]

You can read the rest at the link, but it is likely that the ROK intelligence officers are concerned that the lawyers like some other progressive groups in South Korea are influenced by North Korean handlers.   The Kim regime has been launching a vigorous propaganda campaign against the defectors and I would not put it past them to use these lawyers to pass messages about how their family members are being threatened back in North Korea by their defection and to come back.