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NK Escapees Committed to Saving Refugees in China
Kim Song-min left his home town of Hoechon City in Chagang-do, North Korea, on Oct. 1, 1995, leaving behind 30 years of bitter memories as an orphan since his teen age years. ``There was no one to cry for me and no lingering attachment because the native place was full sorrow and the suffering from hunger was part of the life there,'' he said.
The North Korean People's Army officer crossed the Tumen River into China but was arrested by Chinese security agents months later at Dairen Harbor when he attempted to embark on a ship bound for South Korea. After 40 days of detention in a coffin-like prison at a Chinese concentration camp, he was put onboard a train to be taken for further interrogation in North Korea, but while the train was on route, he jumped off and escaped again.
After four years of living the life of a fugitive in China, Kim, 38, set his foot on the Korean soil on Feb. 9, 1999.
On Thursday, at the National Press Center in Seoul, three other escapees with similar experiences gave testimonies against the forced repatriation of North Korean refugees by China.
The meeting set up to hear the testimonies of Kim, Yu Chi-song, Choe Jung-hyon and Li Min-bok was organized by the Commission to Help North Korean Refugees (CNKR), which has been working for national and international appeal of the problem since April of last year. The organization backed by Protestant Christians keeps several regional councils in the United States and Japan as well local chapters worldwide in cities such as Berlin and Sydney.
The organization's task meets the urgency these days as some 60 refugees who rioted at the Chinese detention camps in Tumen were repatriated to North Korea to likely face their death.
Amnesty International has asked its international members to send letters or faxes with protest messages to Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, Jilin Province Governor Hong Hu, North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun, North Korean Minister of Public Security Paek Hak-rim and Kim Song-chull, counsellor of the Office of Permanent Mission of the DPRK to the U.N. by June 15. Zhu's fax number is (0086) 10-6524-1596 and Kim's is (0041) 22-786-0662.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has announced that it is investigating the incident.
Amnesty International demanded the list of those who were repatriated for the Tumen incident and sought assurances of their safety and human rights, as well as the permission for international human rights observers to visit North Korea.
The thing that fuels the hectic movement of the pro-North Korean refugee campaigners here is a pair of recent incidents _ the disappearance of a Korean pastor in Yanji in northeastern China early December last year and the assassination of Kim Young-dal in Osaka, Japan. The Rev. Kim Dong-shik is believed to have been abducted by North Korean agents for his activities to save other North Korean refugees after helping 13 North Koreans come to Korea via Mongolia. He was last seen on Dec. 10 last year. Prof. Kim from Kansai University was killed as the head of RENK, which rescues North Koreans who are in urgent situations. The conference in Seoul began with a homage paid to Prof. Kim whose funeral was taking place on the same day.
``Father used to tell the family members that his disappearance would mean that he was taken into North Korea,'' said Kim Hwa-mi, daughter of the missing pastor, who has worked for over a decade to rescue North Koreans. His son still remains in China to receive any news about his father though he understands that his father was too exposed to North Korean agents.
The pro-North Korean refugees group gathered more than 6.5 million signatures to call for the assurance of legal status as refugees for
the escapees from North Korea. It has conducted six surveys of the refugees in China, collecting 2,193 personal data.
According to the group, China returned 5,400 refugees to North Korea in 1997 and 6,300 in 1998 on the basis of the bilateral treaty on illegal immigrants signed between im Kim Il-sung and Chou Eun-lai. A defector said it had been used to curb the illegal Chinese entry, when they were poor, before adopting the open markets. Only 400 deserters defected to Korea since 1994.
A spokesman of CNKR said the actual number of North Korean refugees in China and other neighboring countries probably amount to hundreds of thousands more than the 20-30 thousands figure given by the Chinese authorities. He said, ``We know that the number of the refugees to be repatriated from China this time would be more than 10,000.''
Kim Sang-chul, former Seoul mayor and a lawyer, who spoke as secretary general of CNKR, said the repatriates include women and child and even handicapped people who might have received lenient punishments but most of them are believed to have been executed.
The interview of the four newcomers last week, which was different from the formal press briefings held by other defectors from the North, was concentrated on the reality of the refugees waiting for the forced-repatriation at the concentration camps in China, and their fate after the return home.
Their social background in the North were different also with their status ranging from a troop information and education army officer to a party official to an academic at an agricultural science institute.
The thing that binds the quartet is the fact that they are defectors who escaped North Korea twice.
``At that moment, when we were standing on the border,'' said Kim Min-song, former captain who escaped to China before coming here, ``we, North Korean defectors, felt like the Republic of Korea was our mother country.''
``The South Korean mission had been taken as a lighthouse for hope by the defectors before the the doors closed shut,'' said Li, 42, who assumed the role of the spokesman for the North Korean defectors. Li, from Sohung, Hwanghae Province, North Korea, now works as an advisor to the Korean Rural Development Administration.
``I had to pass through prisons in four different countries prior to coming to Seoul in 1995,'' said Li.
To North Koreans who want to flee the country, the Chagang-do, formerly the North Hamgyong-do Province, has been a good outlet to go over the border because it faces China with the shortest distance over the Tumen River on the Sino-Korean border.
However, it is a known fact among the refugees and would-be defectors from North Korea that China is not the country to be used as a gateway to Korea.
``Auschwitz was a scene of calamity during the war and it was against other ethnic people,'' said Lee. ``But the abusive dealing with the defectors retaken into North Korea was done in peacetime and against the same nationals.'
Kim, the former North Korean Army captain and writer, and Yu, who declined to show his face because his family members still leaves in North Kore , reiterated that China is not a haven for the North Korean defectors. To the North Korean defectors it is a cul-de-sac whose exit seems to be open only to the South Korea but quite the opposite in the matter of the gateway.
Yu said, after hearing the KBS broadcast report from the South that China is beefing up the camps to accommodate the North Korean refugees, he launched his defection in a misbelief that they would be more tolerant than ever.
According to Yu, in 1996 one company guarded a certain section of the border and it was enlarged to be taken by four companies at the end of the year.
``I agree with Hwang Jang-yop's remark that North Korea is found on feudalistic, Stalinist regime, and is topped by all the evil systems in the world,'' Yu said, referring to senior North Korean defector who authored Kim Il-sung's key ideology of ``Juche,'' or self rule.
Yu, who has connection with relatives abroad, was scheduled to be released from the prison for defectors and political criminals in 1997 - at the time of the worst food crisis in North Korea's history. But he heard that six out of seven ex-defectors were taken out on a stretcher from the interrogation center, whose one month confinement corresponds to a three-year regular imprisonment in the North.
Yu met North Korean women who were sold to brothels by Chinese brokers as he passed through Shenyang and Changchun in China.
Choe Jung-hon reported of a prison in Hyoryong City, where some 40 people shared a floor only 13 square meters wide. Among them was a 20-year-old who was rejected for asylum at U.S. Embassy in Beijing.
Choe had an opportunity to escape North Korea earlier in 1997 but he had to beat off raids by North Korean agents twice in 1999 while maneuvering in North China in further efforts to take his family, including his 10-year-old daughter, who was taken as a hostage over the Tumen River.
``This is not an issue among ethnic Koreans, but a global human rights issue,'' Choe declares.
One of the most striking revelations during the testimony of the four was that, as Choe elaborated, the reunion of separated families could hamper the course of reunification as the residents in the North who concealed the``defection'' to the South during the Korean War of their families cannot sustain their livelihood.
``The issue of the family reunion could be more disturbing than to be helpful without the assurance of safety for those who has relatives in the other side,'' said the former renegade communist party official.
Choe said there could not be any smooth path to the reunification without discarding the ``enemy class,'' while 10 million people of separated families might say hello from the South, or guarantee of their safety./// Li agreed to Choe's prediction that the reunions would be not that helpful because it will shake up the ``foundation'' of the particular persons in the North.
Li and others, in accord, criticized the negative reception by the Korean overseas missions against the North Korean defectors while the Seoul government has an engagement policy toward North Korea.Li reminded of the German lesson of buying in of ``political criminals'' of East Germany to promote the Unification.
As for the food aid. the agronomist said the rice aid to the North will first go to the wartime storage or to the troops and then the party officials. The comparatively new comers, among defectors to South Korea, said they have never heard of the food aid to the North.
``Then there might be a chance that bits of residue would arrive on the thresholds of the people if the continual aid from the South came to the North,'' said Lee, who criticized the North's negation of private farming despite the reality of death 6-7 million people dying of starvation.
The international director of the CNKR, who reported the survey of the North Korean deserters did not confirm when asked whether they have ever received the food from the South or heard of the news or any recipients among acquaintances or relatives.
Can the Seoul government deter the refugees? The diehard defectors said they are committed to helping the distressed who wanted to leave North Korea.
In the legal sense, Kim Myung-gi, a professor at Seoul's Myungji University, said the forced repatriation of the North Koreans in China is a ``sheer violation of the the international laws and the United Nations Charter.''
``Even though they were taken as ``economic refugees,'' they should be regarded as political defectors since they face execution or other heavy punishments,'' said the dean of the university's graduate school.``Moreover, they left their country to acquire food,'' said Kim, ``so they should not have been punished since it was a matter of survival.''
He noted the 47th Article of the North Korean Criminal Law that stipulates that ``betrayers of the mother nation'' spend seven years in imprisonment or death. Recently, the North Korean authorities ordered family members to notify the government when any of their relatives disappear overnight.
Defectors revealed, however, that the deserters of the country are not confined to the northern province bordering China. It has spread to the south and inland though their eventual flee to South Korea is not easy even in Hong Kong because of its return to China. Yu said, ``Fake permissions are available going out of Pyongyang.''
Hunchun, Tumen, Yanji, Longjing and Helong are the towns mainly involved with the desertion of the North Koreans and their forced return, according to the pro-North Korean refugee crusaders.
Lee said he witnessed a mother who gave birth to a baby coiled by the intestines probably because of the stress from the extreme suffering as a refugee. The defectors maintain that they had to play a game of hide-and-seek with the Chinese and North Korean authorities.
The situation of the refugees could be said that they are ``on the way of defecting.'' But it could not be told when and where their ordeals in the third country, under the threat of arrest could end up, whereas the fear of repatriation to the world's last Stalinist country to face possible gun-shot execution lingering in their minds.
The disillusionment of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, particularly after the death of the elder Kim, turned to be one of the reasons that spurred the refugees to flee from the North. Cannibalism took place after then. Kim Min-son revealed that there were 47 reported incidents of an assassination attempting on the Kims between 1992 and 1994 - though all of the involved were executed. The defectors did not brush aside the possibility of war with the South, in desperation by the rogue regime, or internal revolts.
Reiterating the suffering of the deserters, Kim said ``Before human rights, there's no distinction between you and I, and there is only us because we are brothers.'' He added, ``It's not a matter of political agenda but of the moral of human beings.''
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