The Marmot’s Hole

N. Korean defectors were the news of the day. Firstly, we had 20 North Korean defectors break into the consular section of the South Korean Embassy in Beijing in the wee hours of Friday morning. From the Korea Times:

A group of 20 people claiming to be North Korean defectors stormed into the South Korean Consulate in Beijing, China, according to sources in Beijing and Seoul Friday.

The asylum seekers barged into the mission early in the morning and are now undergoing screening procedures, through which South Korean diplomats will decide if they are truly North Korean refugees, a Seoul official said.

The South Korean government will help them come to Seoul when it has ascertained they are North Koreans defectors, the official added.

The group consists of six men and 14 women, including three boys and a girl as well as two elderly individuals in their 50s, according to the sources.

They scaled the wall of the consulate compound at around 5:50 a.m. local time, but had to wait outside the building as all the doors were closed. However, they were allowed inside the building less then an hour later as South Korean diplomats at the consulate decided to open the doors about three hours earlier than usual.

Well, one would certainly hope that 20 N. Korean defectors waiting at your doorstep might encourage some flexibility on the part of the Foreign Ministry concerning business hours. Seriously, though, YTN got a hold of the film footage of them infiltrating the consulate — not only is it ESPN highlight material, but also shows that some degree of planning went into this event. Anyway, regardless of your Korean ability, watch the video. Particularly touching is when they say in unison, “We are North Korean defectors. We want to go to [South] Korea.”

I have to say, though, that I find it somewhat disturbing that a group of 20 — including 14 women and 3 children — could break into a diplomatic compound so easily. Not that I’m not happy that they got in, but it does pose some interesting security questions. Next time, it might not be starving N. Korean defectors coming over the fence, after all.

Interesting little tidbit from the last part of that Korea Times piece, BTW:

South Korea, cautious not to provoke the North over the defector issue, has been pursuing a “silent diplomacy” via behind-the-scenes negotiations with China, but these have also become more awkward due to the current situation.

According to a report by a Japanese daily, the Sankei Shimbun, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has recently ordered stronger measures in areas bordering with China to prevent people from leaving the poverty-stricken country.

Those “stronger measures” were spelled out in more detail in the Chosun Ilbo. Kim Jong-il has apparently designated the Sino-Korean frontier as the “most advanced front line,” a term previously used to refer to the 38th parallel and dispatched spies to the border area, intelligence operatives into China, and deployed additional military forces to patrol the frontier. The Sankei, quoting a unknown source, said that with increasing numbers of N. Koreans crossing the border to make money in China and later secretly return to N. Korea, the information and goods these people were bringing back were giving the North Korean regime a sense of crisis. The source noted, however, that despite the strengthened measures, it was fairly easy to bribe your way through.

The Sankei had reported earlier in the week of unusual moves on the other side of the frontier, with Beijing deploying an addition 10,000 PLA regulars to the Sino-Korean border — the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, to be specific — in order to block possible mass defections of armed N. Korean troops. As Aidan Foster-Carter points out in NKzone’s comment section, however, any reports about N. Korea coming out of the Sankei come with one major caveat, namely, that the Sankei is not infrequently full of shit. Reader be warned.

Also on the defector front was the arrest of two North Korean defectors at Ulaan Baatar Airport on Friday (Joongang piece here, and Chosun here). The two had boarded a flight to Los Angeles — where they planned to apply for asylum — and were waiting to take off when Mongolian secrurity personnel came aboard and pulled them off. The South Korean Embassy in UB has asked that the two be allowed to come to Korea, and I doubt very strongly that the Mongolians would consider sending the pair back to North Korea regardless. Nobody knows how or why the Mongolian authorities suddenly boarded the flight, although the head of the defector association in the U.S. who planned the asylum bid — himself a former N. Korean intelligence officer who defected to the States — suggested that it may have resulted from a tip from a pro-North Korean figure in the United States, decent police work on the part of the Mongolians, or wiretapping of the pair’s international phone calls. Personally, given the fact that they were carrying forged South Korean passports, and that the plane was supposed to stop in Incheon, it might have been the South Koreans themselves who blew the whistle. Besides, the two would have been the first defectors to apply for asylum in the U.S. since the North Korean Human Righs Act (NKHRA) was passed, and Seoul has made its dislike of the NKHRA pretty clear.

Something else of interest. The English reports mention that one of the defectors, 35-year-old Chung Sung-il, was a doctor who worked in South Hamgyeong Province. What they didn’t mention, however, was how he got to South Hamgyeong Province. Chung made the mistake of drinking alcohol during the mourning period following the death of Kim Il-sung, and for that mistake, he was placed in political prison camp. After he was released, he and his family were forcibly relocated to Suncheon, South Hamgyeong Province, where he was kept under surveillance.