U.S. Experts Denounce China's Handling of N. Korean Refugees
WASHINGTON – Top U.S. experts on the North Korean refugee crisis criticized China’s actions against the refugees Thursday during the release of a report on the issue.
“To be clear, they are refugees. They are not economic migrants as the government of China and some others would have us believe,” declared Marcus Noland, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and co-editor of the report The North Korean Refugee Crisis: Human Rights and International Response.
Noland was joined by Jana Mason, one of the authors of the report, and Debra Liang-Fenton, executive director of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK).
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Speakers pointed to a 2005 survey of 1,300 North Korean refugees in China and documented reports of human rights violation by the Kim Jong-Il regime to support the idea that North Koreans are refugees and deserve to be treated as refugees by China.
Mason explained that China has, however, refused to consider the North Koreans as refugees and instead has stepped-up security measures around the border region as well as at the embassies. For example, she listed that China has put barbed wire around some of the embassies, conducted military exercises in the streets, and sent letters to all the embassies ordering them to hand over any North Koreans seeking protection in their premise to the Chinese government.
Additionally, Mason referenced a statistic she came across that indicated that at the height of refugee return, China forcibly returned as many as 200 North Korean refugees a day. The refugees upon return face harsh penalties for defecting, including political prison camps, torture, and even public execution.
The primary reason for leaving North Korea is deprivation, Noland highlighted from the survey. One significant deprivation emphasized by the North Korean refugees is food.
Despite over 10 years of international food assistance feeding up to a third of the North Korean population, more than 40 percent of those interviewed were unaware of the aid program, according to the survey. Among those who knew about it, 96 percent did not believe they had personally benefited. Nearly all believed the military were the beneficiary of the aid.
Another interesting finding from the survey was that about two-thirds of the refugees pointed to South Korea as the preferred final destination while 19 percent said the United States was their preferred place of resettlement.
“Interestingly enough, the older, less educated refugees tend to prefer South Korea [and] the younger, more educated refugees tend to want to come to the United States,” said Noland, “which is really an astonishing fact given their life-long exposure to virulently anti-America propaganda.”
In his concluding speech, Noland addressed the comparison by some between the China-North Korean refugees and the United States-Mexico immigration situation. He responded that Mexico does not criminalize citizens who leave the country.
“Mexico celebrates the people who come to the United States,” explained Noland. “They even allow them to vote in the Mexican elections…They do not imprison them when they try to bring money back to their families in Mexico. And they certainly don’t stage public executions and force school children to attend.
“So I want to make it very clear that the population we are talking about is a population of refugees and the…comparison to the American southwest is fundamentally misguided.”
The experts agreed that the refugee crisis ultimately stems from internal problems in North Korea. However, since the United States cannot address the problem directly, they have to handle the issue indirectly through main countries receiving refugees: China and South Korea.
The report’s recommendations for China are as follows:
•China should stop repatriation of North Koreans in its borders.
•China should allow the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) into the border region to assess cases of North Korean asylum seekers.
•Chinese policy should move on two tracks: upholding its international obligations with respect to North Korean refugees; and continuing its preferred strategy of political and economic engagement with North Korea with respect to the broader security issues on the peninsula.
•With the help of South Korea, Japan and the U.S., China should establish temporary resettlement camps together with third-country commitments to accept the refugees for permanent resettlement.
