Escape from North Korea (21 page)

After Seo had fully recovered, he escaped again to China. This time he took one of his two teenage sons with him. His wife and second son soon followed them across the river. In China, the sons listened to Voice of America and Radio Free Asia and decided they wanted to go to the United States. A Voice of America reporter directed them to Steven Kim, whose 318 Partners organization helped the family get out of China on the new underground railroad. After spending eight months in Vientiane, Laos, the Seos finally arrived in New York City on June 3, 2009.
⁷

China's repatriation policy dates back to the early 1960s, when it concluded a secret agreement governing the border area with North Korea. In 1986, the two countries signed another bilateral agreement. It mandated the return of North Koreans who crossed into
China. Beijing's official position is that it strictly adheres to this obligation and that there are no exceptions.

Despite the clarity of China's no-exceptions policies on the repatriation of refugees, enforcement is erratic—and, as many observers point out, if Beijing wanted to shut down the new underground railroad, it could do so. Instead, in recent years it has allowed more than two thousand North Koreans to escape every year. Professor Zhu Feng, a national-security expert from Peking University, put it this way: China's policy implementation is to “keep one eye open [and] the other eye closed—officially, we will repatriate, but in practice we keep the net quite loose.” He calls China's repatriation policy “cold-blooded” but candidly describes Beijing's policy dilemma: “The problem is that if China refuses to repatriate, that would signal that Beijing wants to bring down the North Korean regime.”
⁸

Enforcement varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, official to official, year to year, and is generally is left to local or provincial authorities. Beijing occasionally issues a crackdown order when it has a political objective. According to aid workers in China, that was the case during the lead-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. By cracking down on North Korean refugees and their helpers during that period, the authorities apparently hoped to avoid international publicity about China's mistreatment of the North Koreans. They didn't want any headline-grabbing escapes to call international attention to its policies. The new underground railroad virtually ceased operations during this period as police activity ratcheted up. Beijing also tightened enforcement during the 2009 celebrations for the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic as well as in the months before the opening of the 2010 Shanghai Expo. It did so again after the death of Kim Jong Il in December 2011.

In contrast, enforcement was haphazard during the famine of the mid-1990s, when as many as half a million North Koreans fled to China. The influx of refugees may have overwhelmed the capacity of law-enforcement agencies to track down refugees and repatriate
them. By the early 2000s, however, Beijing had developed and implemented measures to better enforce its repatriation policy. In 2001, posters began to appear along the Sino-Korean border ordering Chinese citizens to turn in refugees and warning of steep fines for helping them. The rules were posted along the Tumen River, in Chinese and Korean, and stipulated: “It is forbidden to financially help, allow to stay, harbor, or aid in the settlement of people from the neighboring country who have crossed the border illegally.” The fines were stiff, ranging from the equivalent of $600 to $1,200. China also instituted a bounty system, with a hierarchy of payouts to citizens who turned in refugees or provided information on those who helped them. An informant could earn the equivalent of four dollars for reporting the location of a secret shelter. He would receive almost twice that sum that for turning in an individual refugee.
⁹

In December 2002, Beijing launched the One Hundred Day Campaign to root out refugees and return them to North Korea. The One Hundred Day Campaign was a systematic and well-organized dragnet, and thousands of refugees were repatriated during that campaign. Foreigners legally living in the Northeast who were suspected of helping the refugees were warned they would be fined, deported, or jailed. Some aid workers under suspicion were required to sign oaths to the effect that they would not provide assistance to North Koreans.
¹⁰

For the most part, though, enforcement of China's repatriation policies is left to local jurisdictions. Like the majority of social, political, and economic transactions in China, the process is inconsistent, elastic, and highly corrupt. If a refugee or his benefactor has the means to pay local officials to look the other way, he often can escape arrest and repatriation. Refugees refer to these payouts as “fines.” The more precise word is “bribes.” Rescuers keep track of the market price for bribes and build them into their budgets for safe houses and escapes on the new underground railroad. Justin Wheeler, an American who has led twelve North Koreans out of China in two missions,
said he traveled with $3,000 in cash. “If police ask for IDs,” he said, “they will let you go if you pay them $250 or $300 a head.”
¹¹

China takes the preposterous position that the North Koreans in its country are not refugees. They are economic migrants, it argues, and hence not covered as refugees under its international legal obligations. Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing expressed his country's callous attitude toward North Korean refugees in a succinct statement in 2004: “These refugees that you talk about do not exist. . . . [They] are not refugees but are illegal immigrants.”
¹²

When defending their country's policy to Americans, Chinese officials like to use the analogy of Mexicans who enter the United States illegally. They conveniently ignore the fact that Mexicans are not abused by their home country before crossing illegally into the United States or thrown into prison when they are repatriated. Unlike the Kim family regime, the government of Mexico does not deliberately deny its citizens food, nor does it operate a gulag for political dissidents. Mexicans who are sent back to Mexico from the United States are not jailed, starved, tortured, or executed.

China's policy on the North Korean refugees violates its obligations under international treaties it has signed. Its repatriation policy is a violation of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol to that Convention. China has been a party since 1982. The Refugee Convention defines as refugees those who have fled their home country because “of a well-founded fear of being persecuted” in that country “for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.” The Convention prohibits the refugees' host country from expelling them except on grounds of national security or public order.
¹³

North Koreans who enter China with a well-founded fear of persecution meet the Convention's definition of refugees, says Roberta Cohen, an expert on international refugee law. China, however, automatically sends them back. It does so without interviewing
them about their reasons for escaping from North Korea. It has no screening process to determine who is a refugee, nor does it permit the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to interview North Koreans to determine whether they endured persecution at home.
¹⁴

Under the Refugee Convention, fear of persecution is the only factor used in determining someone's refugee status. Cohen argues that the definition applies to the North Koreans who flee to China in search of food because the North Korean government has denied them access to food for political reasons. In North Korea, food is distributed based on party loyalty. The army and members of the Workers' Party take priority over ordinary citizens. Many of the North Koreans crossing into China during periods of food shortages come from the underprivileged classes who are deliberately starved by their government, which typically routes precious food supplies to favored groups. “Their quest for economic survival could well be based on political persecution,” Cohen says.
¹⁵

The most compelling argument in support of China's obligation to grant refugee status to North Koreans in China is what happens to them when they're repatriated. There is no question that returnees face persecution and severe punishment. Under UNHCR rules, this qualifies them as
refugées sur place
and entitles them to protection. Even if their reasons for leaving their county of birth don't fit the Convention's definition of ordinary refugees, the fact that they will face persecution and punishment if they return does so. The Convention bars “
refoulement
,” the diplomatic term for returning refugees to places where their lives would be endangered.

China has gotten away with its inhumane repatriation policy for years, with only occasional criticism from human rights groups. Neither the United Nations nor individual governments have challenged China directly and publicly in an international forum. In early 2012, South Korea finally seemed to find its voice. The National Assembly passed a resolution urging China to stop sending North Koreans
back home. Rep. Park Sun-young staged a hunger strike in front of the Chinese Embassy in Seoul. The South Korean government raised the issue of Beijing's repatriation policy in the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, but even then it declined to mention China by name.
¹⁶

The South Korean public, too, seemed to be waking up to the fate of its North Korean brothers and sisters hiding in China. Protestors held daily rallies in front of the Chinese Embassy, marched in the Place des Nations near the United Nations office in Geneva, and enlisted celebrity support for their cause. A grassroots organization called Save My Friend used social media to publicize China's complicity in North Korea's brutality against its own people and to launch an online signature campaign urging the United Nations to take action. North Korea's abuse of its citizens is “one of the greatest atrocities of our time,” Save My Friend wrote on its website. By forcibly repatriating North Koreans, it said, China is guilty of supporting the deaths of thousands of innocent lives.
¹⁷

Another aspect of China's mistreatment of the North Korean refugees is its willingness to turn a blind eye to North Korean security agents who operate on its soil—and in some cases commit illegal acts such as extortion and kidnapping. China's security officials aren't the only ones to keep tabs on refugees and rescuers. North Korean agents do so, too, and they do so with apparent impunity within China's borders.

Some of the North Korean agents in China pretend to be refugees and infiltrate the shelters and hideouts of real refugees. Some seek out Christians or brokers to help them find passage to South Korea on the new underground railroad. Once in Seoul, they either have a specific mission to carry out—such as the failed assassination attempt on defector Hwang Jang-yop in 2010—or they become
sleeper agents, awaiting activation by Pyongyang. Other North Korean agents operate in China as spies, gathering information on refugees and the activists who help them, and earning extra cash by extorting hush money from them. North Koreans in China report cases of fellow refugees who vanish, presumably abducted by agents. Rescuers have also disappeared.

Kidnapping other countries' citizens on other countries' soil is nothing new for North Korea. Pyongyang has long been in the abduction game, starting with the Korean War, when some eighty thousand South Koreans were abducted and taken to the North. Since the war ended in 1953, the South Korean government estimates that North Korea has kidnapped nearly four thousand South Koreans. Many were fishermen who had the misfortune to sail too near North Korean waters. The list of South Korean victims also includes a South Korean movie star—a favorite of Kim Jong Il—and her director husband. The actress was lured to Hong Kong, kidnapped from the famous Repulse Bay beach, forced onto a boat, and taken to North Korea. A South Korean student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was kidnapped while on vacation in Vienna.
¹⁸