Return to *North Korean Studies*
By Aidan Foster-Carter, Asia Times On-line, 29 July 2004
Some 460 North Korean refugees flew into Seoul's Songnam military airport on two chartered Asiana flights on Tuesday and Wednesday. They came from the same officially unidentified Southeast Asian country. (Shall we stop the pussy-footing, please? It's Vietnam, is it not?)
This is an important moment. First of all, the numbers. At a stroke, the Vietnam 460 take the total of North Korean defectors, as they are officially called, reaching South Korea this year, which stood at 760 as of end-June, almost up to the 1,285 who arrived in the whole of 2003.
For decades after the Korean War, the number of North Koreans escaping to the South was tiny, reflecting the near-impassability of the heavily mined and fortified border, the ironically named Demilitarized Zone. A rare soldier or two has made it across the DMZ - in both directions, as we've been reminded recently with the weird tale of Charles Robert Jenkins: the 8th US Cavalry sergeant who disappeared northward across the line in January 1965, and lived in North Korea for the next 39 years until he and their two daughters were reunited with his Japanese abductee wife - you couldn't make this up, could you? - first in Indonesia and now in Japan, where the US Army may yet be stupid enough to charge him with desertion rather than treat him as an intelligence gold mine. But all that is another story.
Take me to the river
So if you want to leave North Korea - and who wouldn't? - you have to head north, across the long river border into China. Hitherto that hasn't been too hard, though some reports say fences are now being built. The west-flowing Yalu is difficult, but in the northeast the Tumen River freezes in winter, while in summer some sections are shallow and narrow enough to wade across. Border guards can be eluded, or sometimes bribed.
No one knows quite how many North Koreans have made that journey over the past decade, since the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's
(DPRK) chronic malnutrition spiraled into outright famine. The often-quoted figure of 300,000 is plausible, if this means cumulative crossings. But the number actually hiding out in China at any given time is probably much lower, especially since Beijing has cracked down viciously on these fugitives in recent years.
Surveys by aid organizations, working in the border area under very difficult conditions, suggest that most such refugees come from North Korea's northeastern border province of North
Hamgyong. That figures, on two counts: the border is near, and conditions are desperate. Formerly an industrial area, too mountainous to grow much food, Hamgyong-pukdo has seen its factories close and its people starve, in unknown numbers. Andrew Natsios - author of the first book on what he calls the Great North Korean Famine, and currently head of the US Agency for International Development
(USAID) - accuses Kim Jong-il's regime of "triage" in North Hamgyong: in effect cutting it off and letting it starve.
So those who can, vote with their feet. A majority seem to be women - and not all of them leave voluntarily. There are many reports now of North Korean women being sold into China, whether for marriage, or to work in bars or worse. As always in such trafficking, abuses are numerous because rights are non-existent. This is a nasty, sordid business.
China persecutes the starving
It's no exaggeration to accuse all governments concerned - make that unconcerned - of behaving appallingly. North Korea, naturally, starves and mistreats its people, and then has the gall to regard any who flee as traitors, and punish them accordingly. If at first you leave simply out of hunger or to find work, but then get caught in China and sent back to be beaten up and jailed, naturally you emerge with no great love for the Dear Leader (Kim
Jong-il) and flee again, this time determined never to go back to such a hell-hole. "Persecuting the starving" is the all-too-apt title of an Amnesty International report on this bitter process.
This well-documented cycle gives the lie to China's despicable refusal to treat any North Koreans who are illicitly on its territory as refugees. The party line from Beijing is that they're all economic migrants. As such, under a border treaty with North Korea, China can and does round them up and send them back. Worse, it won't even let the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) - which has an office in Beijing, but itself stands accused of failing to press hard enough on this issue - visit the border areas and see for itself. All this contravenes international conventions to which China is a signatory.
So what's a poor North Korean in China to do? Staying put, you have to hide out. A few activist non-governmental organizations (NGOs) - mostly South Korean, some Japanese or American; often Christian or Buddhist - may help you, but they too must be furtive, as they risk arrest and deportation: one such, Kim
Hee-tae, was released this month after two years in a Chinese jail. Because of the need to hide, your kids - many refugees are children - can't go to school. It's no life at all, by normal standards. But anything has to be better than North Korea.
Seek asylum - but where?
Other than lie low, or return to North Korea, there are two options. One is to seek asylum in a foreign mission in China. Two years ago there was a rush of embassy incursions in Beijing, aided by activists. The lucky ones who made it eventually got to Seoul; but since then security around embassies has been tightened, and a crackdown in the northeastern border area means that in a sense this tactic has made life worse for the far larger number who remain in China. (Activists hotly argue the pros and cons, as may be imagined.)
A few still succeed via this diplomatic route, such as a group in June who got into a German school in Beijing. But for most, the only option is to continue the journey: to get out of China into another country, they hope more welcoming, and thence onward to Seoul.
That means going either north or south: to Mongolia, or Southeast Asia. Either journey is both physically arduous and risky. On April 2 a 17-year-old boy, Lee
Chol-hun, who had spent half his life hiding in China, was shot - in the back, by some accounts - and killed by a Chinese border guard while trying to cross into Mongolia. (Ah, the heroic People's Liberation Army, bravely defending the motherland against all comers!) Read more on
http://www.northkoreanrefugees.com/boyshot.htm
.
Even once over the border, the unforgiving Gobi takes its toll. Yoo Chul-min was just 10 when he perished on July 7, 2001, lost and exhausted in the desert. For his tragic tale, with pictures of a bright-eyed boy in a baseball cap, and of the wooden cross that marks his lonely grave, see
http://www.familycare.org/stories/yoochul.htm
.
Underground railway
The southerly route, which more take, has its own perils. You have to cross the length of China. Physically you blend in, but just hope no one tries to talk to you and twigs that you're a foreigner. Again this is costly and risky. An "underground railway" of activist NGOs may help with money and safe houses. But mostly you're on your own: not in the arid Gobi, but trying to cross the thick steaming jungles of Southeast Asia undetected. Thailand is the preferred destination, but beggars can't be choosers. So North Koreans turn up in Vietnam, Laos, or even - God help them - Myanmar.
Even there, they often have to continue an underground existence. No doubt we'll get the full story on - and stories of - the Vietnam 460 eventually, but probably they represent an accumulation over several years. The South Korean government that believes in quiet diplomacy on such matters - too quiet by half, say critics, considering it technically recognizes all North Koreans as Republic of Korea
(ROK) citizens - had no doubt been negotiating delicately behind the scenes with Hanoi to bring them to Seoul. There are even reports that Vietnam was threatening to send them back - presumably to China, which would then deport them to North Korea, as is feared to have happened in several recent cases.
Vietnamese sensitivities
Vietnam, though nominally communist, is not especially friendly with North Korea, but it has its own sensitivities on the refugee front (remember boat people?). There's also an ongoing issue with the Montagnard minority, who've been fleeing to Cambodia to escape state persecution. In the party paper Nhan Dan last Sunday, a Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Le Dung, accused UNHCR of conducting "many wrong activities to lure ethnic-minority people in the Central Highland to illegally flee to Cambodia, and [it] even considered to give these people political refugee status".
Not to be outdone in the persecution stakes, on the same date the Cambodian government arrested two reporters (one Irish, Kevin Doyle of the Cambodia Daily) who were trying to reach 17 Montagnard asylum-seekers - and charged them with human trafficking. They were released a day later, after "confessing". Radio Free Asia, one of whose stringers was arrested, has more details.
Coming to America?
The international ramifications run wider yet. More than 1,000 Montagnards won asylum in the United States after an earlier crackdown in 2001. Some US human-rights activists would like North Koreans to be similarly welcomed in the land of the free. On July 21, the US House of Representatives unanimously passed the North Korea Human Rights Act
(NKHRA) 2004. If this becomes law - which is far from certain: it has yet to go to the Senate, and time is short - this would mandate the US to foreground human-right issues in all its dealings with North Korea. One specific provision is to make it easier for North Koreans to seek asylum in the US. Last year just nine applied, of whom six were refused.
This too is controversial. Most of the NKHRA's backers are on the Republican right. (An even tougher separate North Korea Freedom Act, currently before the Senate, avowedly seeks regime change.) The bills' opponents - including South Korea's ruling Uri Party, which is getting up a petition on the subject - fear that raising all this will offend Kim Jong-il's delicate sensibilities. Pyongyang might then pull out of the six-party talks and various dialogues and projects with South Korea, thus jeopardizing what little progress has been achieved in recent years.
Engage and press
I beg to differ. Western European countries, which have recognized North Korea en masse since 2000, see no contradiction in seeking engagement with Pyongyang while actively pursuing human-rights concerns. Thus it was European Union states that this year and last submitted resolutions condemning North Korean human-rights abuses to the UN Commission on Human Rights
(UNCHR; not to be confused with UNHCR). South Korea abstained on this; last year it absented itself from the vote. But the resolutions passed, and a special rapporteur has been appointed to probe and press on these matters, to Pyongyang's fury.
How can that not be right? Read any of the websites that give you chapter and verse on the terrible sufferings of North Korean refugees - too many to list: just
Google! - and if your blood doesn't boil, may I suggest you take your heart in for a service. This of all areas is one where, frankly, I find it hardest to keep the cool detachment of an "expert". In that capacity, I've written no fewer than five reports on North Korea refugee issues in recent years for UNHCR (two are still on their website). But as a human being, I find the hypocrisy and silence of all the governments concerned nauseating.
Lee Chol-hun and Yoo Chol-min, and thousands more, are dead. They deserved better. They had a right to live - and to lead a proper life, not the living hell of a subject of Kim Jong-il or a fugitive in China. So I'm glad for the Vietnam 460: May there be many more. Any decent human being or government should do everything in their power to help them gain sanctuary and a chance to live a human life: the kind you, dear reader, and I take for granted as our birthright as human beings and free people.
Moment of truth
For South Koreans, though, this is an awkward moment of truth. The ROK government is not only slow to help - it has even sometimes initially turned away its own citizens: old prisoners of war illegally held for half a century in North Korea - but also grudging in its provision for the few that do make it to Seoul. Its Hanawon facility, which trains North Koreans for what in some ways is life on another planet, has a capacity of only 400. So the Vietnam 460 have had to be housed at a commandeered training center elsewhere.
Even so, defectors find it tough to adjust to South Korean turbo-capitalism. They face prejudice, and about half are unemployed. Yet if the South can't even integrate the mere few thousands it has so far, how on earth would it cope if it faced a Germany scenario - and suddenly had to take on all 22 million of its impoverished Northern brethren?
That, of course, is the nightmare Seoul seeks to avoid at all costs. Fair enough, in my view, to try a gradualist approach with Pyongyang and hope for a soft landing. If it can be brought off, this would indeed be less risky, and much less costly, than if Kim Jong-il's regime were to collapse on a sudden. Maybe, at long last, the Dear Leader will see reason.
Prepare for the worst
Yet a preference for evolution over revolution is no excuse either for not preparing for a less desirable outcome - which sheer prudence requires, so as not to be overwhelmed if collapse comes - or for not fighting for the human rights of all North Koreans here and now, be they refugees or still enjoying the doubtful mercies of the Dear Leader's rule.
Pyongyang can bleat about being persecuted all it wants, like the late British comedian Kenneth Williams: "Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for me." Not so. On human rights, as on nuclear weapons and a host of other concerns, all that the world asks - and is entitled to ask, and must go on asking - of the DPRK is to behave in a civilized way, like a modern 21st-century state: to treat its people properly and live up to international norms, standards and treaties, many of which it has in fact signed, and so is legally bound by.
As for South Koreans, they had better brace themselves. Why would, or should, their Northern cousins not seek a better life than Kim Jong-il has ever vouchsafed them? South Koreans in the past fought hard for their own human rights against their own dictators, rightly scorning pleas to desist on grounds of national security or economic development. How can they now hesitate to help, let alone deny the same rights to democracy and a decent life to their Northern brethren, without arrant selfishness and rank hypocrisy?
Come to that: how will the cherished goal of Korean reunification really be achieved? By letting a few befuddled lefty activists cavort with cynical DPRK apparatchiks in Incheon to celebrate paid-for summits, as we saw last month? Or by South Koreans taking to their bosom the tired, huddled masses who are Kim Jong-il's victims, to give them the rights to a life hitherto denied to them? In a word: reunification with and for whom, exactly?
So, welcome the Vietnam 460. May many follow them. And will the last North Korean to leave please turn out the lights? No need: Kim Jong-il's power cuts have already rendered it a land of darkness, in every sense. Let there be light, and life. No more weasel excuses.
*Aidan Foster-Carter is honorary senior research fellow in sociology and modern Korea, Leeds University, England.
By Andrei Lankov [Another Korea] (73)
07-01-2004 The South Korean press now writes about the "flood of North Korean
defectors" which is allegedly overwhelming South Korea. Indeed, the number of defections has reached unprecedented levels. In 2002 alone some 1,100 North Koreans defected to the South.
Is 1,100 really a large number? Perhaps it is. After all, the recent increase in defections is explosive: for the years 1991-1995 the average annual number of defectors was 33, and during 1996-2000 it rose to 135. If we go back to the 1980s the average number of defections was merely 6 (yes, six!) per year!
However, if we consider some other countries that used to deal with similar problems, South
Korea's plight does not appear to be too dramatic. For example, between 1962 and 1988 the number of East Germans who defected to West Germany averaged some 21,000 annually (the actual figure fluctuated between 11,000 and 42,000 per year). This makes a striking contrast with the North Korean annual average of 6 (!) defections per year in the pre-1990s era.
How did the North Korean authorities manage to keep the number of defections so low? It would be an oversimplification to believe that it was done with brute force alone. A major role was played by propaganda as well. Until the late 1980s the vast majority of North Koreans did not consider defecting simply because they believed that it would not be worth the effort. They might be unhappy about their own system, but until very recently South Korea had been seen as a land of hunger and repression where the defectors would probably become victims of sadistic CIA torturers. Many defectors admitted that they had once believed that every North Korean would be paraded for press conferences and then sent to prisons where the torturers of the Korean CIA, assisted by their American colleagues, would squeeze out every morsel of information about the
"country of juche".
Another important role was played by the system of travel permits that made it almost impossible for the average North Korean to even approach the border. In order to defect, one had to approach the border
and this was difficult when every traveller was required to have special permits issued by the police.
And then the border protection system itself came into play. Theoretically, there are three
"ways out" from North Korea. A would-be defector could either try to cross the DMZ, defect by sea, or go to China.
The first option was plainly suicidal. The DMZ is not considered to be the
world's most heavily protected border for nothing. Even if one managed to approach the area unnoticed (a very unlikely prospect), he or she still had to cross the few miles of mine fields and barbed fences, guarded by numerous patrols that would shoot to kill. Successful crossings of the DMZ occasionally took place, but they usually involved those who had an
insider's knowledge of the system: it was often the border guards who got across.
An escape by sea is difficult as well. In the DPRK most of the coastal beaches were (and still are) off-limits to common citizens, and several lines of electrified barbed wire fences and sand strips stretch along the coast for hundreds of miles. Only a few selected beaches are open to the public, and they are kept under constant surveillance. Fishermen who, by the nature of their work, have access to watercraft are carefully checked by the security agencies (yet fishermen are still grossly over-represented among defectors).
One could not reach the South through China. Until the late 1980s Chinese did occasionally accept defectors from the North, but only if they happened to be a well-placed politician. Beijing granted asylum to prominent members of the anti-Kim Il-sung opposition of the 1950s. However, for the vast majority of humble defectors without connections in high places, a different fate was waiting. They would be apprehended by the Chinese police and then sent back to North Korea, to certain death. Thus, the North Korean government did not bother to invest much in protecting the border with China. The Chinese police were
(correctly) believed to be a better deterrent!
Many defectors were North Koreans stationed overseas - diplomats, spies, seamen, and the like. However, the people who were sent to work in foreign lands were carefully selected
and they were well aware that in case of their defection their families would pay the consequences.
This situation only changed in the early 1990s. The economic crisis brought a relaxation or even a collapse of police control over the populace. The changes in China also suddenly transformed it into a very attractive place for most North Koreans
both in its own right and as a possible springboard to the South. But that is another story...
** Prof. Andrei Lankov was born in Leningrad (now in St. Petersburg), Russia, and has been teaching Korean history at the Australian National University since
1996. This series is sponsored by Dimple.
By Andrei Lankov [Another Korea] (72)
06-29-2004 In September 1994, a young North Korean named Kim Hyong-dok arrived in Seoul. It was the end of a long trip: he had spent two years trying to secure a passage to the South. He succeeded against all odds and came to Seoul full of expectations.
Two years later Kim Hyong-dok made another escape attempt - this time he was trying to flee back to the North. He was apprehended and jailed, since an attempt to go to North Korea without proper permission is still a crime under South Korean law. In 2001 Kim Hyong-dok - by that time a university graduate and a clerical worker in parliament, remarked: ``I shall not escape any more. Utopia does not exist anywhere.'' Alas, comprehension of this fact comes to most North Korean defectors with great pain.
North Korean defectors do not fare well in the South. Between one third and one half of them are unemployed, and most others are relegated to low-level unskilled jobs.
Of course, the press sometimes reports remarkably successful adaptations. Lee
Chong-guk has established his own restaurant chain in the South. Sin Yong-hui became a moderately successful actress. Her husband Choi
Se-ung founded a highly successful company that deals in currency exchange. Yo
Man-chol opened a small restaurant in Seoul (the restaurant industry for some reasons is especially popular among defectors).
However, a closer look at these stories begets an unpleasant discovery. Who are these lucky people? They are a far cry from the former loggers, peasants, or fishermen who form the majority of the defectors of the last decade.
Restaurateur Lee Chong-guk used to be a cook at Chongryu-gwan, the most famous of all Pyongyang restaurants. His colleague, Yo
Man-chol, is a former captain in the Ministry of Public Safety (the North Korean police) - not a big wig, but unequivocally a member of the elite. Sin Yong-hui was dancer in the Mansudae troupe (the North Korean equivalent of the
Bolshoi). Her husband Choi Se-ung - perhaps the most successful of all defectors - worked for many years in the overseas offices of North Korean trade companies. In North Korea this is a telltale mark of a very high social position. Indeed, his father was the head of the financial department in the Party's Central Committee, and this safely puts his family in the top 0.01 percent.
Defectors who found employment in research centers and universities also came from the DPRK ruling elite. Chang
Hae-song, a former North Korean playwright and journalist, who once specialized in radio dramas about the sufferings of the South Korean people, nowadays works in the Institute of Unification Policy and writes about North Korea. His daughter also attracted some attention when she posted an exceptional score in the South Korean version of the scholastic aptitude test. Many ex-officers continued service in South Korean armed forces, mainly in the intelligence agencies or psychological warfare units. For example, Lee Ung-pyong who, in 1983, fled in his MIG-19 fighter jet to Seoul; taught at the Air Force academy until his death in 2002.
Indeed, the heroes of almost all of the "success stories"' of the North Korean defectors come from the elite. There is nothing surprising in this. Members of the North Korean upper crust have a good education and possess leadership skills, they know how to learn and how to manage, and last but not least, they have social ambitions.
However, this does not bode well for the future political transition of North Korea. It appears the only leadership material available in the North will be found within the existent elite. The local Party secretaries would become democratically elected mayors, and will avow their loyalty to democracy with the same zeal they once gave to their professions of loyalty to the Great Leader. The secret police operatives will become successful entrepreneurs, and the children of people who sent hundreds of North Koreans to prisons will graduate from the best universities to lead the sons and daughters of their parents' victims. We have seen it in many other ex-Communist countries.
But what is the alternative? Will it be possible to prosecute all those who played a part in the crimes of the regime? Unlikely: there are far too many of them. And who will become the administrators, teachers, policemen, and engineers in the post-Kim North Korea whenever it arises? And, should unification occur, would not the wholesale replacement of the elite by Southerners be an even greater evil? The only thing I know is that the few next decades of Korean history are unlikely to be tranquil...
** Prof. Andrei Lankov was born in Leningrad (now in St. Petersburg), Russia, and has been teaching Korean history at the Australian National University since
1996. This series is sponsored by Dimple.
[KOREA HERALD] 2003-02-23
The wife of Lee Han-young, a relative of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il who was shot to death at his apartment in Seongnam, south of Seoul, by men believed to be North Korean agents in 1997, will file a lawsuit today seeking compensation from the government, a civic group official said yesterday. Kim Jong-eun, 33, will also ask for a court order commanding police to reinstate Lee with her husband's belongings, said Do Hee-yun, a senior official of a civic group set up to promote the rights of North Korean defectors. Kim will file the suit at the Seoul District Court with assistance from the civic group officials, Do said. He said the government, who should have put Lee under special protection, must accept their share of the blame for his apparent assassination by North Korean agents. Lee, a nephew-in-law of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, was shot by unidentified men in front of his apartment and died 10 days later. Police failed to catch the attackers who were said to have been sent from the North. Do said Kim and other bereaved family members have since lived in a state of fear without the relief of government support.
By Soh Ji-young Staff Reporter [KOREA TIMES] 2000-12-06
Two historical inter-Korean family reunions have been held and North Korean-related projects are being actively carried out more than ever before, but there is an age-old issue that is rather neglected and still needs to be solved - caring for the North Korean defectors living in the South. "Defectors from the North find it extremely difficult to adjust to life in South Korea, as they are not used to the capitalist system", said a staff member of the Commission to Help North Korean Refugees (CNKR). "Defectors have a very high unemployment rate, and even the ones who do have jobs cannot hold them for long,' he said, adding that only about 10 percent succeed in adapting to Southern life". As they have wounds that cut deep, they suffer from loneliness and instability, but they are usually neglected and left alone to solve their problems on their own,' he said.
Government programs must be strengthened to effectively care for the defectors, he emphasized. There are currently about 10 organizations related to North Korean defectors in Korea. Several large-size organizations receive government subsidies, while organizations that are formed by civil groups or the defectors themselves face difficulties in carrying out activities, due to low budgets. The oldest and largest organization is the Soongui Comradeship Association under the National Police Agency. Consisting of about 700 members, defectors are automatically admitted after completing the two-year government surveillance period. It mainly helps defectors to find jobs in the South.
[KOREA HERALD] 2000-11-08
Crime, unemployment rates higher among N.K.defectors. Despite an increased budget to help North Korean defectors settle in South Korean society, the crime and unemployment rates for North Koreans living in the South have been on the rise this year. During a parliamentary inspection of the Unification Ministry, Rep. Kim Seong-ho of the ruling Millennium Democratic Party (MDP) said that more than 2.9 billion won ($2.6 million) was allocated to support the defectors in 1999, compared with 1.2 billion won a year ago." Despite the sharply increased spending, however, 142 out of the total 526 North Korean defectors still remain unemployed, recording a jobless rate of 27 percent," Kim said. The number of crimes involving defectors has also surged, he said, noting that 31 crimes have been recorded in the first eight months of this year, compared with 55 cases for all of 1999, 44 in 1998 and22 in 1997, respectively. (KJH)
[KOREA HERALD] 1998-07-15
The mission of a team of North Korean commandos who attempted to infiltrate South Korea through the east coast Sunday may have been to try and assassinate or abduct Hwang Jang-yop, the highest ranking defector from the Stalinist country, an informed military intelligence source in Seoul said yesterday. The source, who requested anonymity, told The Korea Herald that South Korean police have already stepped up security for Hwang and some other defectors from the North. Hwang, formerly a secretary of North Korean Workers' Party and the architect of the North's juche (self-reliance) ideology, defected to the South in April last year. His defection to the Capitalist South was compared to Karl Marx's defection to the United States.
The military source said, some hawkish military and intelligence figures in the North have threatened to take Hwang back to Pyongyang or assassinate him for slandering North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. The time clock for bringing Hwang back, he said, would be before Sept. 9, the date of North Korea's 50th founding anniversary.Hwang, appearing in South Korean television programs, has condemned Kim and his Stalinist regime. The source noted that North Korean agents don't hesitate to kill or kidnap people. As an example, he cited the killing of Lee Han-young, a nephew of Kim Jong-il who defected to the South more than a dozen years ago.
Lee was shot to death in February last year at an apartment in Pundang in the southern outskirts of Seoul. Lee had denounced Kim Jong-il in a book before being killed. His assassins are still at large. The source also noted that North Korean agents last year kidnapped a South Korean priest in China and are suspected of assassinating a South Korean diplomat in Vladivostok. Sunday's incursion took place only 20 days after a North Korean spy submarine was captured after getting entangled in a fishing net in the same general area. Nine bodies, all shot to death, were found inside the sub. ``What kind of urgent mission do you think it would take for the North Koreans to consider infiltrating again so shortly after the last incident?' the intelligence source said.`` It seems that this time the three-man squad attempted to fulfil the mission the captured submarine crew failed to do,' he surmised. He added the Tonghae-Kangnung areas, some 250km east of Seoul, provide good locations for North Korean agents to get ashore and hide. The region also has good access to other cities in South Korea.
Thousands of South Korean troops and police were still combing the east coast beach and nearby mountains yesterday for the third consecutive day. They were looking for traces of two to three North Korean commandos believed to have come ashore Sunday near Tonghae naval port. The search started after the body of an armed North Korean agent, clad in a diving suit, was found Sunday morning on a beach. An autopsy showed that the dead spy died of a heart attack before coming ashore. The cause of the heart attack is unknown. Defense Ministry officials suspect a team of three Communist infiltrators aboard a Yugo-class submarine arrived Saturday night at seas some 1.5km off the beach and attempted to get ashore using a 1.5-meter-long submersible at around 2 a.m. Sunday. A similar submersible propeller was found in a North Korean submarine captured June 22 off Sokcho, some 50km north of Tonghae.
Military authorities are under attack for not announcing the finding right away. The report was delayed by Lee Jong-chan, chief of the Agency for National Security Planning, to the National Assembly Monday. The two other commandos may have already slipped into Seoul or other South Korean cities, or into mountain areas near the east coast. They may have also drowned or returned to their submarine, Defense Ministry officials said. If they have slipped into a city or returned to their sub, it is virtually impossible to find them, they said. Navy warships and aircraft continued to search the East Sea to track signs of a fleeing North Korean submarine, while Army troops and police stopped and searched vehicles in Tonghae- Kangnung areas, where dusk-to-dawn curfew was placed. Navy scuba divers continued underwater searches to look for more bodies in the case other commandos drowned.
[KOREA HERALD] 1998-01-16
Fast-growing unemployment resulting from the current economic downturn is not sparing North Korean defectors residing in the South. Some defectors have lost their jobs due to recent corporate layoffs and company bankruptcies. They say it is more difficult for themselves, than for others here, to maintain a livelihood and find work again. Choi Se-woong was a former high-ranking official with a large North Korean trading company, who came to Seoul in 1995 along with his wife and two children. He found a new job here on a contract with a local merchant bank as a foreign currency dealer. Choi said he will likely lose that position, since the bank's operations were suspended by the government in December because of huge debts resulting from non-performing loans.
``I'm 37-year-old. But in the South, I feel like a one-year-old baby abandoned by his parents,' he said. ``The government asked for the IMF help to solve the urgent financial trouble. Now we have to work to make our foreign currency market more sound.' Kim Nam-jun, 37, an ex-North Korean soldier who defected in 1989, is also expecting to lose his job after Kia, the leading auto manufacturer he had worked nine years for, went bankrupt last year. According to government statistics, 18 North Koreans registered last year with government employment offices. But only five of them succeeded in finding work. Said Kim Yong-chul, secretary general of a defectors' support group, ``Under the current economic difficulties, hundreds of North Korean defectors here are suffering more than others. Most have no special skills nor connections to rely on.
[KOREA HERALD] 1997-02-18
The attempt made on the life of a North Korean defector here served as a warning to the government, the people of South Korea and potential exiles inside North Korea looking for a chance to flee. It showed the lengths to which the beleaguered and belligerent Stalinist regime in Pyongyang will go. North Korea is clearly on the brink of collapse and will only stop short of an open armed incursion across the border. Frequent threats of violence and retaliation by Pyongyang against what it claims are acts of hostility by the South may not end in empty talk. It is suspected that two North Korean agents were involved in the shooting of 38-year-old Lee Han-young, a nephew of a former wife of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. The incident took place outside an apartment in the southern outskirts of Seoul, Saturday night. In 1982, Lee defected to the South by way of Europe. His presence herewas made public after news reports detailed the desire of other members of his family to defect to the South. Lee's recent book, with its inside account of the Kim court in Pyongyang, could well have touched a raw nerve causing the setting in motion of its espionage and assassination machine.
The probability of North Korea being involved in the shooting incident was enhanced by recent events _ the defection attempt of the chief Juche ideologue and foreign policymaker of North Korea, Hwang Jang-yop, still holed up in South Korean Embassy in Beijing, and the observance of Kim's birthday last Saturday. The aura of Kim's ``heavenly' leadership and his ``impeccable' Juche ideology was seriously undermined by the bolting of Hwang. This is a powerful enough reason for desperate North Korea to act out of rage and frustration, marking its turncoat ex-subjects as targets. Hwang is faced with uncertainty in view of the fact that a less celebrated figure fell victim so easily. The case of Lee alerts the nation to the heightened level of tension between the two Koreas and the need of greater measures to ensure the safety of North Korean defectors who are branded traitors by North Korean propaganda. Ever since the Korean armistice, a total of 788 North Koreans have chosen freedom by crossing the Korean Demilitarized Zone or arriving via third countries. The number includes captured commandos and saboteurs who changed their allegiance, like Kim Shin-jo or Kim Hyon-hui, who bombed a Korean Airlines flight.
These exiles have been open to the constant menace of terrorist attacks as only a select few receive proper security from the government. Most others are left out in the cold. The unguarded, exposed status of the socialist ``turncoats' combined with the difficulty of adapting to an alien way of life, including the vital question of earning a livelihood, has made their lot hard and dangerous. The pains Lee took undergoing plastic surgery, giving himself a new name and moving his residence often are testament to the agonizing years of his new life here, which seems to have come to a tragic end. As well as with general reinforcement of our defense preparedness along the border and the coastlines, stepped-up vigilance in the rear is necessary to ward off infiltration operations by North Korean agents. The efforts should be focused on the protection of those hundreds of defectors from the North which Communist agents are targeting. The prominent defector, Hwang has made us aware that more North Korean spies than we supposed are on the loose here. Some of them are planted in sensitive positions deep inside the Seoul government. A more intensive hunt for the sesecret agents supported by sharpened public awareness is in order. Updated: 02/18/1997
[KOREA HERALD] 1997-02-17
Suspected North Korean agents shot and critically wounded a North Korean defector related to the Stalinist country's leader, Kim Jong-il, at an apartment on the southern outskirts of Seoul Saturday night, police said. Police said the shooting was an apparent Communist retaliation for the defection of the North's top ideologue, Hwang Jang-yop, last Wednesday. Lee Han-young, 36, a nephew of Kim's former wife, Sung Hye- rim, was shot in the head and chest at around 9:50 p.m. Saturday in an apartment by two men, police said quoting witnesses. Lee, who defected to the South in 1982, was in critical condition at the Cha Hospital in Pundang.
The government called an emergency meeting of top security officials to discuss the shooting. At least two North Korean agents were involved in the ``premeditated assassination,' said Kim Choong-nam, chief of the Pundang Police Station in Songnam. Hesaid two shells from a Belgian-made Browning pistol - a standard weapon for North Korean agents - were found near Lee.
Pyongyang last week threatened unspecified retaliation, accusing South Korea of having ``kidnapped' Hwang, 72, the architecture of the North's juche (self-reliance) ideology. Hwang is now staying at the South Korean consulate in Beijing, seeking asylum in South Korea. The shooting happened as Lee was returning to the apartment of a friend, where he had been staying since last December. Lee last month divorced his wife, Kim Jong-un. Two men in their 30s or 40s attacked Lee as he was about to ring the bell of the apartment on the 14th floor. One held him, while the other shot him, police said. Hearing a scuffle outside the door, Nam Sang-hwa, the wife of Lee's friend, Kim Jang-hyon, looked into a door video-phone and saw two strangers with a pistol confronting Lee. She rushed out to find him slumped on the floor. Lee raised two fingers and muttered "ganchop, ganchop", meaning North Korean agents, before passing out, Nam told police.
Nam said she did not hear the gun shots. Police suspected the attackers used a silencer-mounted pistol. Another witness, who said he also saw the two men through his door video-phone, told police they ran away immediately after the shooting. One of them was wearing a raincoat, said the witness, identified only as Park. An apartment security guard who rushed to the 14th floor after hearing Nam's calling said that Lee lay on the floor, blood on his face. Lee's friends said that in the wake of Hwang's defection Lee had expressed concern that he might be a target of North Korean terrorism. Police and the military were put on the highest alert against the possibility that Pyongyang may attempt other terrorist acts, including the hijacking of a South Korean airplane and the kidnapping and assassination of South Koreans. Authorities took additional precautions by tightening security around key government facilities and foreign embassies. Police said security for all other North Korean defectors was stepped up.
North Korea watchers in Seoul said the shooting was seen as a warning to defectors that they were not safe in the South, discouraging more defection. It's also a warning against the South to stop luring North Korean defectors, they said. Because of his ties to the North Korean leader, Lee had been under close protection. His defection was disclosed only in February last year following the report that his aunt, the mother of Kim Jong-il's oldest son, was trying to defect to the West from her Moscow apartment along with his mother, Sung Hye-rang. The terrorist attack took place while the military and police were on heightened alert following Hwang's defection in Beijing. Hwang has been quoted as saying to a businessman from Seoul that there are some 50,000 North Korean agents in the South, "with some deep in your side". Hwang once served as tutor for the North Korean leader. The shooting also came as Pyongyang prepared to celebrate the 55th birthday of Kim Jong-il, who took power on the death of his father, Kim Il-sung, in July 1994.In September last year, a North Korean submarine was found off South Korea's East Coast. Twenty-four North Korean intruders and 11 South Koreans died in shootouts during a 49- day manhunt. An increasing number of North Koreans have escaped the Stalinist country in recent years and some of then have succeeded in defecting to the South.
Yonhap reported that a DPRK scientist has defected and disclosed secrets on Pyongyang's nuclear development and weapons, a Japanese monthly
news magazine reported in its August edition. According to "Gendai" on
Wednesday, Kim Kwang-bin, a head of the DPRK's No. 38 atomic research center, defected to an unknown third country recently through the PRC in
September last year. ("N.K. SCIENTIST DISCLOSES
NUCLEAR SECRETS: JAPANESE MAGAZINE ", 2004-07-21)
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi says he will seek special consideration from Washington for an alleged US Army deserter who's in Tokyo for medical treatment. The ailing Charles Robert Jenkins and his Japanese wife, Hitomi Soga had an emotional reunion in Jakarta last week after being separated for two years. The US says it will request custody of the 64 year former army sergeant on desertion charges but may delay the request out of consideration for Jenkin's health problems. Presenter/Interviewer: Sonya De Masi Speakers: Debbie Hodgson, a reporter with Newsweek Japan...
A MOTHER WEEPS FOR HER G.I. SON WHO DEFECTED TO NORTH KOREA
LIFE, Reporting: David Friend, November 1982.
At first the puzzled U.S. Army simply called him AWOL. Facts were scarce. Around two a.m., August 28, Pfc. Joseph White, 20, walked away from Guard Post Oullette on the South Korean side of the Demilitarized Zone, shot off the lock of a gate and disappeared into no-man's-land. Within the day, North Korean broadcasts were exulting that an American soldier had "requested political asylum." If true, it was the first U.S. defection to North Korea in 17 years, the fifth since the DMZ was established in 1953 dividing South Korea from the Communist North. The previous GIs were used briefly for propaganda and were never heard from again. Back in Joseph White's hometown of St. Louis, his father, Norval, 52, a painter on a General Motors assembly line, insisted that his son had been captured. His wife, Kathleen, said through her tears, "It just doesn't make any sense. Why would Joey want to leave his ice cream, his chocolate syrup, his money?" But by the end of the week, a videotape of the young soldier shattered his family's hopes.
Speaking in the Pyongyang People's Cultural Palace, Pfc. White, still in uniform, condemned U.S. militarism and then led a chant in homage to North Korean dictator Kim Ilsung. Joe White was a strange defector to Communism. He had been the arch-conservative in a family of blue-collar Democrats, a cold warrior who, at 13, wrote to his senator to warn of the Communist menace. Turned down by West Point, Joe enrolled in Missouri's Kemper Military School and College, where he was regarded as a loner. A fair student but a poor athlete, he dropped out and enlisted in the Army after deciding Kemper was full of "losers." In letters home from Korea, samples of which appear on the following pages, White gave no hint that his political ideas were shifting. If anything, he seemed only more fanatical. "It was drummed into him," Norval White recalls, " Hey, buddy. When you cross that line, you're gone forever"...
Highest-ranking N.K. defector Hwang Jang-Yop received death threat -
but he is still alive and will hold a press conference...
Several South Korean NGOs including nknstop.org are holding a press conference to urge the Seoul government to participate in the campaign to improve North Korea's human rights during the upcoming UN HR Committee resolution, and to repel the pro-North, leftist elements in South Korea to Pyongyang:
Time: 10 AM, Tuesday, March 9
Place: Cecil Restaurant (ph. 738-1484) in the City
Hall area near British Embassy
Speakers: Hwang Jang Yop (see below)
Norbert Vollertsen with Doug Shin
Prof. Kim Dong Gil (former head of SK's political party)
Bong Tae Hong (People Protecting Freedom and Democracy) and many more
Presided by Park Chang Sung (nknstop.org--nkn stands for North Korean Nuke)
Quiz: Who dunnit?
Pyongyang? -- They've gotta be really crazy. . .
Hanchongryun? -- Maybe. . .
Another usual suspect? -- In order to restrict
Hwang's free speech before the general election as they did in Washington last fall, and to
pre-empt his proposed Japan visit?
Big hint: Why did the threat include Koh Young Hwan, a former first secretary in DPRK's embassy to Congo,
who defected to Seoul in 1991 and has been totally silent ever since? --Fuzzing as a diversion tactic!
How come no one ever saw the culprit leaving the package there?--Guess!!!
NB: In spite of recent threat on his life (read the news linked below), Hwang Jang Yop WILL BE there!
SEOUL, March 8 (Yonhap) -- A North Korean defectors' group in Seoul received a package containing a death threat against its leader early Monday, warning him not to pursue anti-Pyongyang activities, police said.
A member of the group, whose name was not immediately released, said the package contained a picture of Hwang
Jang-yop, 82, honorary chairman of the defectors' association in South Korea, pierced by a butcher's knife.
Hwang, a former secretary of North Korea's Workers' Party, is the highest-ranking defector from the communist country.
The package, which was found on the floor outside the office door, also had a message inside saying, "Brace yourself, Hwang
Jang-yop, the traitor of the people," police said.
"Hwang's picture was stained with red material, supposedly blood...and there was a dozen printed notes," the defector told the police.
Hwang, who defected to the South in 1997, abandoning his high-profile position as North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's mentor, has actively voiced opposition to the northern regime here and in the United States. He is under heavy police protection because of concerns that he may be the target of North Korean assassins.
Another prominent North Korean defector, Lee Han-young, a nephew of Kim Jong-il's estranged live-in wife Sung
Hae-rim, was shot to death in 1997 in a town outside Seoul by North Korean agents, Seoul intelligence officials believe.
The threatening message, which didn't identify the writer, said "Hwang has repaid North Korean love and trust with betrayal, and he's devising a plot against Pyongyang like a mad (expletive)."
It also denounced Hwang's scheduled visit to Japan later this month, saying he's trying to hold hands with the Japanese "military regime" to threaten North Korea.
Hwang will fly to Tokyo to testify against North Korea in the National Assembly, according to Nihon Geizai Shimbun on Saturday.
South Korean officials said Monday, however, his trip to Tokyo is not likely to materialize in March as he may not be able to get a new passport and visa within this month. Hwang, whose defector status requires him to get a new passport each time he goes overseas, was issued a single-entry visa to visit the United States last October following an invitation from a non-governmental rights group.
The death threat this morning also targeted other high-level defectors living in South Korea, including Kim
Deok-hong, former president of a North Korean trade company, and Goh Yeong-hwan, former first secretary of the North Korean Embassy to the Congo and now a reunification policy researcher in Seoul.
Kim Min-su, operation director of the defectors association, said the threat came from those who opposed their activities to publicize the dismal living conditions in North Korea.
"Hwang has visited Washington and is planning a Tokyo trip to divulge the realities of North Korea. It should be someone holding a grudge against him and our association for doing that," he said.
By Olenka Frenkiel, Reporter, This World
Kwon Hyok is one of about 4,000 North Korean defectors living in Seoul, South Korea.
Locations of secret prison camps, or Gulag, are marked in black Most escaped because of hunger, fear, torture, imprisonment or a simple hatred of the regime.
But Kwon Hyok is not one of those. In 1999 he was a North Korean intelligence agent stationed in Beijing when he was persuaded by the South Koreans to defect.
Six years before, in 1993, Kwon Hyok says he was Head of Security at prison camp 22 in
Haengyong, an isolated area near the border with Russia.
Camp 22 is one of a network of prisons in North Korea modelled on the Soviet Gulag where hundreds of thousands of prisoners are held.
Most of them have been charged with no crime. They are there because of the "Heredity Rule". Prisoners were like pigs or dogs. You could kill them without caring whether they lived or died
"In North Korea, " Kwon Hyok explains, "political prisoners are those who say or do something against the dead President Kim Il-sung, or his son Kim
Jong-il. But it also includes a wide network of next of kin. It's designed to root out the seeds of those classed as disloyal to North Korea."
In prison, says Kwon Hyok, "there is a watchdog system in place between members of five different families. So if I were caught trying to escape, then my family and the four neighbouring families are shot to death out of collective responsibility."
Torture, he says, was routine. "Prisoners were like pigs or dogs. You could kill them without caring whether they lived or died.."
"For the first three years" he explained " you enjoy torturing people but then it wears off and someone else takes over. But most of the time you do it because you enjoy it."
But Kwon Hyok had something else he wanted to tell. He says he witnessed chemical experiments being carried out on political prisoners in specially constructed gas chambers.
"How did you feel when you saw the children die?", I asked. His answer shocked me.
"I had no sympathy at all because I was taught to think that they were all enemies of our country and that all our country's problems were their fault. So I felt they deserved to die."
There have been many rumours of human experimentation on political prisoners in North Korea. But never has anyone offered documentary proof. Until now.
In Seoul I met Kim Sang-hun, a distinguished human rights activist. He showed me documents given to him by someone else completely unrelated to Kwon
Hyok. He told me the man had recently snatched them illicitly from Camp 22 before escaping.
They are headed Letter Of Transfer, marked Top Secret and dated February 2002 . They each bear the name of a male victim, his date and place of birth. The text reads: "The above person is transferred from Camp 22 for the purpose of human experimentation with liquid gas for chemical weapons."
I took one of the documents to a Korean expert in London who examined it and confirmed that there was nothing to suggest it was not genuine.
But I wanted to run a check of my own with Kwon Hyok. Without showing him the Letter of Transfer, I asked him very specifically, without prompting him in any way.
"How were the victims selected when they went for human experimentation? Was there some bureaucracy, some paperwork?"
"When we escorted them to the site we would receive a Letter of Transfer," he said.
Sadly, as long as these reports continue from defectors, and as long as the North Korean government continues to deny all allegations of human rights abuse, while refusing to allow access to its prisons, such allegations cannot be dismissed or ignored.
By Andrew Carroll, News Editor, 01-20-2004 17:19
After arriving in the South, North Koreans are faced with the daunting task of fitting into a completely different culture and struggle with issues such as the education system.
When a North Korean makes the decision to leave his homeland his or her life will never be the same. Never again will they have to worry about malnutrition or starvation. Never again will they have to worry about being sent to prison for the slightest sign of dissent.
But that doesn’t mean the difficulties are over either. Far from it...
SANG-HUN CHOE, Associated Press, Posted on Sat, Jan. 17, 2004
SEOUL, South Korea - Rim Young Son, a former North Korean army lieutenant, leads a network of activists who help refugees escape the harsh conditions in the isolated communist country and reach freedom in South Korea. The group calls itself "Schindler's Club," comparing its mission of aiding defectors to that of German factory owner Oskar Schindler who saved Jews from Nazi death camps during World War II. "I cannot just sit and watch poor North Korean refugees fleeing the barbaric rule of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il," said Rim, who escaped to the South in 1993. But authorities in South Korea say the club has a dark side...
01-13-2004 SEOUL (Yonhap) The number of North Korean defectors is likely to keep increasing this year by 10 to 20 percent compared with last year, South Korean officials said Tuesday.
The number of northern escapees who arrived here last year was 1,281, up 12 percent from the corresponding period of 2002 when it was 1,139.
``It is clear that the number of North Korean defectors is gradually on the rise,'' Hong Jae-hyung, head of the Unification Ministry's humanitarian operations bureau, told reporters.
Nearly 4,000 North Koreans have defected to the South since the Korean War ended in 1953. Their ranks have increased significantly in recent years as the North's food shortages became exacerbated.
By some accounts, tens of thousands of North Koreans are hiding in northeastern China, hoping to gain asylum in South Korea after escaping their communist homeland...
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, January 10, 2004
The place we should really lose sleep over is North Korea, not Iraq. That's because President Bush is in effect acquiescing as North Korea builds up its nuclear arsenal.
An administration that was panicked about Iraq's virtually nonexistent nuclear programs is blase as North Korea reprocesses plutonium, enriches uranium and gets set to produce up to 200 atomic weapons by 2010. North Korea balances its budget by counterfeiting American $100 bills, so counting on its scruples not to sell a nuclear warhead to terrorists seems a dangerous bet.
Granted, all the North Korea options are awful. President Bill Clinton's approach was to bargain with North Korea, and that achieved a freeze on plutonium programs but the North Koreans cheated by starting a separate, much smaller uranium program. President Bush has refused to negotiate directly with the North Koreans, and the result is that Kim Jong Il is now pursuing both the plutonium and uranium approaches and could eventually produce several dozen warheads a year.
The upshot is that we've slipped from a troublesome situation to an appalling one. Now the administration is stalling for time, hoping that North Korea will collapse before its arms can proliferate. This looks like Iraq-style wishful thinking.
In the summer of 2002, insiders say, the U.S. had a defector report that Mr. Kim might soon be ousted. Experts on Korea were deeply
sceptical about that unconfirmed report, but it matched what hard-liners wanted to believe, so they passed it all the way up to President Bush himself. That defector's report, later discredited, helped harden the administration's give-no-inch approach leading Mr. Kim to begin reprocessing plutonium last year.
On a visit to China last month, I interviewed North Korean refugees hiding in Manchuria. These are ordinary workers and farmers, not top officials, but they offer a window into the mood in the most isolated country in the world and those interviews left me feeling that the administration is wrong to believe that Mr. Kim will be ousted soon. A coup may be possible any day, but in such a tightly controlled society there's no hint of a popular uprising brewing from the ground up.
"People still believe in [the late `Great Leader'] Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il; they still worship them," said Ms. Jung, a 26-year-old woman who dislikes her country's government. "I think Kim Jong Il will still be in power 10 years from
now"...
2004-01-09. Defectors are switching to more dangerous mountain routes
Desperation is driving North Koreans to make the increasingly hazardous journey across the border to China despite an intensifying crackdown on defectors in the border area, RFA's Korean service reports.
The Chinese government has beefed up the guard against North Koreans, but North Koreans still keep coming to
China, North Korean defector Jung Il-young said in an interview, echoing other recent defectors.
North Koreans know now that the routes they used to take such as around the Dooman River, Do-Moon, Yong-Jung, Wha-Ryung and
Jang-Beak are under heavy guard. So they have started to cross the border on foot and walk more than 40 kms through the mountains to Moo-Song, Song-Gang, and
Tong-Hwa.
A South Korean human rights group warned in December that the situation was becoming more and more dangerous for North Koreans seeking to escape famine and oppression in the world's last Stalinist state.
The South Korean Democracy Network Against the North Korean Gulag said North Korean security forces were stepping up their monitoring of mobile phones in the area, using the signals to locate defectors on the move. That the flow of refugees continues despite additional security measures highlights desperation of many North Korean citizens...
BY BARBARA DEMICK, Saturday, November 15, 2003, Los Angeles Times
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA--Like so many worker ants, the North Korean soldiers spent their days underground in a vast labyrinth of tunnels. Their daily commute involved walking down four steep flights of stairs and then along a corridor that went nearly 800 yards into a mountain. They carried tightly sealed cartons, believed to contain raw materials for North Korea's secretive weapons program. Some days, especially if they were being punished, they were assigned simply to dig more tunnels.
K., a North Korean now in his 30s, was recruited at age 17 into an elite military unit working for the agency responsible for weapons production in North Korea. He took an oath to work underground for the rest of his working life and was assigned to a cave in remote Musan County in North Hamgyong province, about 15 miles from the Chinese border.
"This is how we hide from our enemies. Everything in North Korea is underground," said K., who described the cave where he worked on the condition that he be quoted using only his first initial and that certain identifying details be kept vague...
by Yoo-Sung Hwang
NOVEMBER 20, 2003 22:49. It was reported that a former national army captive, Jeon Yong-il (72), and his wife, Choi Eun-hi (68), a couple who were arrested by the public peace authorities in Hangzou, Zhejiang while trying to escape to South Korea with forged passports, were sent to an asylum for North Korean escapees in Tumen, located adjacent to North Korea.
The Korean Embassy in China said on November 20 that they were carrying on negotiations with Chinese authorities to keep the couple from being sent to North Korea. An embassy source said that “they asked the Chinese side to protect the couple from personal danger and to return them to South Korea because it is certain that they were former national army captives.” However, their return to South Korea is uncertain since the asylum for North Korean escapees in Tumen where the couple was sent is actually a waiting place where the North Korean secret service and border guards come to take the escapees back to North Korea.
“The action of the Chinese public peace authorities sending them to Tumen appeared to have followed a general guideline in dealing with arrested North Korean escapees rather than from a decision made by the central government when we take into account the time it took,” said an embassy source adding, “It will be difficult to send them to North Korea as the Korean government has formally asked for their return to Korea.”
Jeon and his wife escaped from North Korea on September 15 and revealed their identities and their intentions to return to Korea to the Korean Embassy in Beijing several times through a Korean-Chinese proxy. However, the Korean Embassy said that they had to wait until their identities were proved since they were not on the list of national army captives who had survived. After this, they went to Zhejiang and were arrested while trying to fly to Korea using forged passports. In regards to the reproach for their irresponsible dealing with the return of national army captives who escaped North Korea, the Embassy explained, “Jeon didn’t come to the consulate by himself to apply for exile but instead sent a Korean-Chinese proxy. We told them to wait in Beijing while we were looking for their names on the survived captives list, but they seem to have been arrested as they hurried to return to Korea with forged passports at another person’s instigation, perhaps a broker.”
According to the representative of the Association of Families Abducted by North Korea, Choi Seong-ryong, who has been supporting Jeon’s return to Korea, Jeon is a native of Youngcheon, Gyeonbuk and joined the national army in 1951 and served in the 6th division 19th regiment 3rd battalion 2nd company 2nd platoon until he was captured at the battle of the highland of Jae-am Mountain, Kimhwa-gun in July 1953. Jeon said that his younger brother, Jeon Soo-il, his only blood relation, is living at his home.
BY BOK KU LEE, June 5, 2003
Bok Ku Lee is not my real name, but one I've adopted to protect my family. For a number of years I served as head of the technical department at a munitions complex that made missile guidance systems and related electronic devices for North Korea's military. I was one of 100,000 or so scientific and professional people involved in the regime's weapons of mass destruction industry.
While I made enough money to modestly feed my family, I witnessed mass starvation and oppression of those less fortunate, and unspeakable abuses of power and lifestyle excesses by senior political officials of the regime. As did everyone, I lived in constant fear of being sent to the gulag for the slightest indiscretion.
Nonetheless, I was trusted with some of the regime's biggest secrets. While serving, I was sent to Iran to test launch one of our missiles with a new guidance system for the then-ruling Ayatollah Khomeini. I consulted with colleagues who were sent to serve on an operational war basis for Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War, and others who were sent to other countries to sell, service and install such missile systems. I ordered, supervised and monitored the foreign purchases of electronic and guidance material--90% of which came from Japanese suppliers. I worked with some of the 60 or so Russian scientists who had been "cherry picked" by the regime to work in Pyongyang's nuclear, atomic, chemical and biological warfare programs--and who continue to work there.
Yet, like most of my fellow countrymen, I longed for the day when I could escape the Stalinist prison my country had become. That day came six years ago. I made my escape in July 1997 by crossing the Yalu River into China after sundown. I lived in China for two years with enough money, contacts and employable skills to make me less vulnerable to starvation or capture than most North Korean refugees. That said, I lived in constant terror of capture by Chinese authorities, for I knew that such capture would have resulted in a death sentence upon repatriation to the North. In 1999, thanks to an ethnic Korean in China who notified me of a fishing boat scheduled to ferry dozens of illegal laborers that very night, and, unknown to the operators of this boat, I escaped to South Korea as a true stowaway...