SEOUL, South Korea — Senior South Korean officials are warning of a human rights calamity brewing in China, where thousands of North Korean defectors may be forcibly returned to their home country to face dire punishments.
Migrant crises are challenging policymakers from the Mediterranean Sea to the U.S.-Mexico border, but the fate of thousands of vulnerable North Koreans now living in China poses a particularly thorny diplomatic and humanitarian problem.
The deeply isolated regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un closed its borders for years as a quarantine measure against COVID-19. Pyongyang is expected to reopen those borders, resulting in forcible repatriations. Experts say Chinese authorities are prepared to use detention, physical abuse and even death.
Officials, lawmakers, researchers and victims spoke Wednesday at a conference in Seoul, “Forced Repatriation of North Korean Escapees Detained in China.”
“Their human rights should be respected, and they should be allowed entry into any country they hope to go to,” said South Korean Unification Minister Kim Yung-ho. “South Korea will accept all escapees who wish to come to Korea. There will not be any discrimination or disadvantages.”
With Beijing-Seoul relations frayed, China has not indicated that it will allow those who have fled North Korea, whom it considers economic migrants, to leave for South Korea.
SEE ALSO: Defector’s fate unsettled after North Korea confirms detention
Given the grim conditions prevailing in parts of North Korea, China is ignoring the clear preference of the migrants and their likely fate if forced to return to the North, said Choe Jae-hyung, a National Assembly parliamentarian with South Korea’s ruling Democratic Party of Korea. “Escaping from North Korea is a clear choice for their lives,” he said.
Conference speakers demanded action from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and urged China to adhere to the various human rights conventions it signed.
They said leverage may be applied during a two-month window of opportunity. Chinese officials are eager to avoid negative publicity before hosting the Hangzhou Asian Games from Sept. 23 to Oct. 8.
A looming calamity
The long-running sore spot on the divided, heavily armed Korean Peninsula started with the catastrophic famines of the early 1990s, when desperate North Koreans crossed into more prosperous China. Although the number has declined in recent years, North Koreans who enter China illegally lack any legal protections, face human trafficking risks and, if caught, can be forcibly returned to face the justice of Pyongyang’s totalitarian regime.
Su Bo-bae, a researcher at the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights, said her organization has recorded 8,148 forced repatriations from China to North Korea. That number could soar as China upgrades its people-monitoring infrastructure with smart IDs, artificial intelligence, biometrics and facial recognition software.
Citing Elizabeth Salmon, the U.N. special rapporteur on North Korean human rights, Mr. Choe said 600 to 2,000 North Koreans in China, rounded up during and after the worst of the COVID-19 crisis, are at risk of forced deportation by the end of the year, when North Korea is expected to reopen its gates. Once repatriated, they face a spectrum of punishment for their “anti-socialist behavior.”
Recorded conversations from a handful of former inmates offered grim details.
One said Chinese authorities in a border detention center continually reassured North Korean detainees for fear they would commit suicide before their forced returns. Another recalled that he and fellow inmates were fed only corn after they were deported to North Korea in shackles and placed in a labor camp. A malnourished woman disappeared, likely because of starvation.
A captive pleaded in vain to be allowed to work. Instead, he was kept kneeling in a cell for days, generating agonizing joint cramps that made it almost impossible to stand up. Lower body pressure sores were so severe that his skin came off with his clothes.
Mr. Choe said other defectors forced to return to North Korea spoke of sexual assaults and forced abortions.
Some 75% of North Korean migrants in China are women. Those living with Chinese men face an especially precarious existence. They try to avoid people, suffer nightmares, are subject to uncontrollable crying and carry suicide pills in case of capture by Chinese authorities, said Kim Jeong-ah, who heads the civic group Rights for Female North Korean Refugees.
Ms. Kim, a North Korean defector who made it to South Korea, has not seen her daughter in 14 years. Her Chinese husband has assumed all parental rights.
Some deportees face the ultimate punishment.
“If it is found that they contacted South Korean people, the severity of their sentences becomes more serious,” said Ms. Kim. “They may face execution.”
Next steps
China has signed other international pacts on the treatment of migrants, including the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1984 Convention against Torture.
Beijing has shut down attempts to discuss the human rights of North Korean citizens. China fought for the North during the Korean War and shares a mutual defense treaty and antipathy toward the U.S. and its regional allies.
On Monday, China’s mission to the United Nations said it opposes a proposed U.N. Security Council meeting to discuss rights abuses in North Korea because it could “intensify conflict and antagonism.”
Meanwhile, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has moved to strengthen relations with the U.S. and Japan, irking Beijing. The strained China-South Korea bilateral relations are not amenable to a solution.
China is not the only problem. Lee Shin-wha, South Korean ambassador for North Korean Human Rights, said international bodies are not pulling their weight.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees “has the right to ask for third-party mediation but did not execute that right,” she said. “On forcible reparation, there has not been active discussion.”
UNHCR officials have “pointed out the uncooperative nature of the Chinese government,” Ms. Lee said, but “we want a clear and official statement.”
She vowed to raise the North Korean defector issue at the Japan-South Korea-U.S. trilateral summit that President Biden is hosting Friday at Camp David. Any agreement to assist North Koreans in China must be swiftly executed.
China “may postpone repatriation until after the Asian Games,” said Bae Sun-kyoo, an editorial writer for South Korea’s leading daily, the conservative Chosun Ilbo. “We can buy some time and make political and diplomatic efforts in that two-month window.”
Mr. Choe agreed. “The time should be cleverly utilized,” he said.
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.