The Marmot’s Hole

UPDATE:

Todd Thacker of OhMyNews International ran an interview with Dr. Eberstadt that you’ll definitely want to read.

ORIGINAL POST:

During a speech given before the Kim Koo Academy on Wednesday, AEI scholar Nicholas Eberstadt — a exceedingly nice gentleman whom I was lucky enough to meet recently — called on Seoul to rescue North Korean defectors who have managed to escape the gulag otherwise known as the DPRK. Anyway, I’ve reprinted the speech below — be sure to read it IN ITS ENTIRETY. Here’s a small sample, just to spark your interest:

For the North Korean border-crossers in China, existence is stripped of the most modest vestiges of ordinary human dignity. In the cruel and unforgiving place to which they escaped, and where they remain still trapped, local rules of survival oblige them to live like animals???if they hope to live at all. You have all read about the border crossers????? existence. Many of them stay in the woods, sleeping by day and foraging by night, alone and in constant fear of discovery by fellow humans. Their women can be sold, like cattle; the men are regularly hunted down and rounded up, almost like dogs.

With nothing to protect them against the two-legged predators, these escapees are at the mercy of the least scrupulous element of the populace North of the Yalu River. They can be robbed without recourse???or raped, or beaten and even killed just for the fun of it. And that is the peril when their hunters are simply ordinary villagers or townsmen. When they are captured by local security agents or members of the secret police, their fate is possibly even more frightening???for then they are deported back to the DPRK, a receiving state that regards any independent and voluntary departure from North Korean ???paradise???? as a crime, an act of betrayal verging on treason. The deportees forced back into North Korea face unspeakable punishments in political prisons, ???re-education camps????, and special detention camps just for children. In addition to the tortures the ???refouled???? returnees can expect to face themselves, there is the added pain of knowing that their family line is also subject to retribution???for in the North Korean control system, horrible penalties can fall on family members as many as three generations removed from the perpetrator of a so-called political crime.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conditions facing today?????s North Korean border-crossers is absolutely perilous???certainly no less grim than those of the Vertriebene or Falasha/Beta Israel before them, and possibly yet more dire.

Today I will argue that the case for a Republic of Korea (ROK) rescue of these escapees???that is to say, for aiding in their relocation to the South, for welcoming them into South Korean life, and for positively determining to abet their integration as ROK citizens and members of ROK society???is compelling, in fact overwhelming.

Indeed, I believe it is imperative that the ROK???for legal, and for moral, but also for entirely practical reasons???accept the challenge now posed by the continuing distress of these very vulnerable fellow Koreans (Koreans so far from home, and yet so near!) and actively rise to meet it.

Read the full speech below.

Ladies and gentlemen,

In the nearly six decades since the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, more than one constitutional democracy presiding over an ethnically homogeneous populace??????governing a nationality????, if you will???has been faced with the prospect of a humanitarian crisis afflicting compatriots living beyond its borders. And on more than one occasion, such states have been moved by those same crises to affect the rescue of their countrymen???by welcoming them into the homeland, embracing them as fellow citizens, and permitting them to enjoy the opportunities and benefits of life under secure, constitutional and democratic rule.

The Federal Republic of Germany faced one such crisis in the very earliest days of its existence. That particular humanitarian emergency entailed the plight of the unlucky people who came to be called Vertriebene: ethnic Germans???most of them women and children???who, by no fault of their own, had to flee before the harsh and vindictive specter of Soviet expansion.

Western Germany welcomed these unfortunates, even though it was not clear that the still-devastated German economic terrain could provide for all these new mouths. Accommodating this huge influx of needy refugees???a population of over 11 million, disproportionately comprised of the elderly, the infirm, and casualties of war???stood to be more than an incidental inconvenience for a then-fragile West German society, where semi-starvation rations were already the norm. Informed opinion, both in West Germany and abroad, held that the prospects for the Vetriebene were bleak???and that the burden of supporting them could only compromise the future of a free Germany. Yet in the event, the miserable unfortunates who flooded into the Federal Republic were soon to prove integral to what became known as the Wirtschaftswunder???the German postwar economic ???miracle????.

As West Germany flourished, the Federal Republic not only continued to welcome in its kinsmen still trapped overseas, but actively sought them out, purposely financing their transit and even purchasing their freedom from the odious dictatorships that held them in bondage. Indeed: in addition to the Vertriebene, the Federal Republic of Germany was to absorb another eight million ethnic German Aussiedler in the four decades between the early 1950s and the German nation?????s ultimate reunification.

The state of Israel also faced humanitarian refugee crises???recurrently. Hapless, impoverished and persecuted Jewish populations figured all too prominently within the worldwide Jewish diaspora. From the very founding of the Israeli state in 1948???by a fateful historical twist, the very same year as the UN?????s Human Rights declaration???the government of Israel made a point not only to welcome these Jews into their country with open arms, but also actively to seek them out, and to aid in their passage into their promised land.

Particularly dramatic mass rescue efforts were organized for the endangered Jews of Yemen, and then, decades later, for the starving Beta Israel (Jews sometimes called Falasha) from Ethiopia. These bold and successful air missions are recorded by history as ???Operation Flying Carpet????, ???Operation Moses????, ???Operation Solomon????, and ???Operation Sheba????. In an inconstant and often heartless world, their inspiring example has demonstrated to us all the potentialities of humanitarian rescue if and when a free society is genuinely committed to serving as ???its brother?????s keeper????.

Those stirring Israeli rescue missions, it is worth noting, raised their own concerns and questions at the time amongst the populace receiving those desperate pilgrims. The impoverished and benighted Jews from Yemen and Ethiopia were utter strangers to modernity. Most of them could not read; many of them had never owned a pair of shoes; some had never even seen an airplane until the moment of their deliverance. How could such people stand a chance of meeting the demanding challenges of life in a sophisticated industrial society?

Today we know the answer. The story of Yemeni and Ethiopian assimilation into modern Israeli society was not perfect???tales involving human beings never are. With the passage of time, nevertheless, integration has worked remarkably well???far better, in fact, than many would have dared to hope. The Yemeni and Ethiopian refugees and their descendants are loyal and productive citizens in their newfound homeland???proud supporters of Israeli democracy and participants in the Israeli economy. Moreover, by this loving gesture to ???the least of her people????, Israel?????s democracy was itself further affirmed and further strengthened.

Today, it is the Republic of Korea that faces a humanitarian crisis among overseas compatriots. This is a terrible saga, an ongoing tragedy. It is a drama no doubt will all too familiar to everyone in this auditorium???for this particular humanitarian crisis is neither ???breaking news????, nor has it exactly escaped international notice. Quite the contrary: over the past decade this piteous situation has been chronicled, again and again, and in practically every modern tongue (all the languages of the United Nations, at the very least). But let me recount it to you anyway.

Not far from where we are gathered today???maybe a half hour?????s journey north, by jet plane???an untold number of terrified Koreans are hiding in a foreign land, engaged there in a grave and uncertain struggle for survival. (There may be tens of thousands in the ranks of these mis??rables, or there may be hundreds of thousands???it is a chilling indication of their plight that we should have no reliable information about such a basic fact.)

These wretched vagabonds???most of them women and children???are of course escapees from North Korea. They have individually crossed the Yalu and the Tumen into China in tiny, separated groups, driven commonly into the unknown by Kim Jong Il?????s man-made???or more precisely, yongjoda-made???famine. That catastrophe???the only peacetime famine to befall an urbanized, literate society in all of human history???claimed hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of victims in the 1990s; though the death toll from the ongoing North Korean food crisis seems for the moment to have subsided, hunger remains a dire problem in the DPRK???especially for that society?????s officially disfavored strata.

For the North Korean border-crossers in China, existence is stripped of the most modest vestiges of ordinary human dignity. In the cruel and unforgiving place to which they escaped, and where they remain still trapped, local rules of survival oblige them to live like animals???if they hope to live at all. You have all read about the border crossers????? existence. Many of them stay in the woods, sleeping by day and foraging by night, alone and in constant fear of discovery by fellow humans. Their women can be sold, like cattle; the men are regularly hunted down and rounded up, almost like dogs.

With nothing to protect them against the two-legged predators, these escapees are at the mercy of the least scrupulous element of the populace North of the Yalu River. They can be robbed without recourse???or raped, or beaten and even killed just for the fun of it. And that is the peril when their hunters are simply ordinary villagers or townsmen. When they are captured by local security agents or members of the secret police, their fate is possibly even more frightening???for then they are deported back to the DPRK, a receiving state that regards any independent and voluntary departure from North Korean ???paradise???? as a crime, an act of betrayal verging on treason. The deportees forced back into North Korea face unspeakable punishments in political prisons, ???re-education camps????, and special detention camps just for children. In addition to the tortures the ???refouled???? returnees can expect to face themselves, there is the added pain of knowing that their family line is also subject to retribution???for in the North Korean control system, horrible penalties can fall on family members as many as three generations removed from the perpetrator of a so-called political crime.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conditions facing today?????s North Korean border-crossers is absolutely perilous???certainly no less grim than those of the Vertriebene or Falasha/Beta Israel before them, and possibly yet more dire.

Today I will argue that the case for a Republic of Korea (ROK) rescue of these escapees???that is to say, for aiding in their relocation to the South, for welcoming them into South Korean life, and for positively determining to abet their integration as ROK citizens and members of ROK society???is compelling, in fact overwhelming.

Indeed, I believe it is imperative that the ROK???for legal, and for moral, but also for entirely practical reasons???accept the challenge now posed by the continuing distress of these very vulnerable fellow Koreans (Koreans so far from home, and yet so near!) and actively rise to meet it.

II

Of the many points that could be raised for my case, let me mention but six in the interest of time.

First: welcoming in and embracing North Korean escapees who wish to come to the ROK and enjoy the guarantees of constitutional democracy is not simply a sentimental impulse. Rather it is a position consistent with the ROK?????s most basic laws???if not actually impelled by your code of law.

The rights and jurisdiction of people living in the northern part of the Korean peninsula are spelled out in the ROK constitution. Though that document was subject to considerable emendation during the first four decades of ROK governance???the constitution went through nine revisions between 1948 and 1987???the basic promise of citizenship held out to brethren in the North would never waiver. Nor does it today???from the standpoint of the law.

After stipulating, in Article 2, that the government of the ROK has the right to define nationality for the country, the ROK Constitution goes on to define the legal conception of the Korean nation. Let me quote to you Article 3 of the ROK Constitution:

The territory of the Republic of Korea shall consist of the Korean peninsula and its adjacent islands.

And your Constitution goes further–in Article 2(2), it specifically stipulates that:

The State shall protect its citizens abroad as provided by Act.

Are ordinary North Koreans who wish to claim South Korean citizenship then eligible for it under ROK law? The answer is a clear and utterly unambiguous ???yes????. There is not the slightest doubt about the matter. The question in fact has been reviewed by the ROK Supreme Court.

On November 12, 1996, the Court ruled on a pending deportation case that one Ms. Lee Young Soon, a North Korean who had been living in China, but had made her way to the South, was in fact automatically qualified for ROK citizenship. The relevant portion of the ruling reads as follows:

???Under Clause 3 of the [ROK] Constitution, North Koreans should be acknowledged as citizens of the Republic of Korea????.

In a free and open society, acknowledging, proclaiming and honoring a country?????s basic constitutional rights and duties should hardly seem a matter open to question, much less controversy. Reaffirming the ROK?????s constitutional obligations to North Korean escapees who long to reach South Korea, furthermore, would have intangible but far-reaching and salutary effects for the ROK, both domestically and internationally. Such a declaration would further strengthen the rule of law in South Korea, thus reinforcing the political foundations upon which the ROK?????s own freedom, prosperity and security ultimately rest. And it would provide a magnificent demonstration to the world that South Korea?????s commitment to its basic legal principles is very real, not merely rhetorical or opportunistic.

Let me mention another consideration. Ladies and gentlemen, South Korea is still a state under siege???like Israel, the Republic of Korea remains locked in conflict with neighboring forces that entirely deny its authority: its right to exist as a government at all. Can anyone think of a gesture that would better remind the international community the reasons that the ROK is the legitimate state in the intra-penisular Korean contest?

Second: rescuing the North Korean escapees is unquestionably the right thing to do from the humanitarian standpoint. The circumstances that have forced North Koreans to risk their lives crossing the Chinese border to forage and beg are so awful as to defy understanding by comfortable, well-fed and well-protected souls such as ourselves. North Korea?????s subjects have long suffered under a police state once described by Professor Robert Scalapino, America?????s eminent and arguably leading Asia scholar, as ???the closest approximation of totalitarianism that could be achieved by a society operated by human beings????. But as we all know, North Koreans today lacks not only the bread of righteousness???they lack their daily bread as well. As we are all too aware, North Korea is still in the grip of the ghastly food crisis that may have killed as many as million???or more???in the Great North Korean Famine 1990s.

Due to the extreme secrecy of the North Korean state, we do not know just how serious the privation facing ordinary North Koreans today actually is. Even the international humanitarian organizations that have supplied Pyongyang with hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars worth of supplies over the past decade have not been given honest information about the distress in North Korea that they are paying???still paying???to relieve. But we know that ordinary North Korean children and young people these days are stunted and wasted???so small and slight on average that, by comparison to their South Korean brethren, they now look as if they were drawn from a different race. (That is why the North Korean military has steadily relaxed its height and weight prerequisites for service in the KPA???requirements reportedly so modest that the height requirement could be met today in South Korea by a typical 8-year-old schoolboy.)

News reports suggest that North Korea?????s food situation, once again, is taking a turn for the worse???reports seemingly confirmed, inter alia, by announcements that rations are again being cut across that blighted bitter land. Under such circumstances, ladies and gentlemen, the argument for humanitarian rescue would appear self-evidently arresting.

Third: Rescue of today?????s North Korean border-crossers and escapees will result in an immediate overnight improvement in their living conditions, their legal protections???and in their human rights. The point is so obvious, I believe, as to require no elaboration.

Fourth: welcoming in these escapees from North Korea will create direct and acute pressure upon Pyongyang better to attend the needs and aspirations of its subjects. Sending the signal throughout the DPRK that escapees have an real alternative to the Hell of Kim Jong Il?????s ???workers paradise???? and the Purgatory of a no-mans land just across the Chinese border will compel the Kim Jong Il regime to re-examine the destructive policies and practices that are driving North Koreans to flee.

Addressing the reality of a beckoning safe haven for North Korean escapees would require the regime to adopt a more pragmatic and humane food policy, to tolerate a wider scope for self-betterment through individual initiatives, and to build sturdier links to the world economy. In short, the possibility of a real alternative to life in the North will push that regime, much against its wishes, to open the door a bit to a more liberal order???not a to liberal order, to be sure, but perhaps to a system with more benevolence than any they have yet known.

We do not know and cannot know the status of the discourse within the inner circles of DPRK hierarchy about the question of ???reform????. And it is probably fruitless to speculate about just who among that country?????s top mass-murderers may secretly be a ???closet reformer????, or what ???reform???? would actually mean to them: for North Korea today, after all, ordinary Stalinism might count as a liberal advance.

We do know, however, that the North Korean state can be moved in the direction of more pragmatic policies and practices: the small economic steps of recent years???changes termed ???the July 2002 North Korean reforms???? in some circles???shows that the DPRK system can bend in the direction of rationality. Perhaps all that is needed for the North Korean system to bend still further in that direction is a heavier weight of exigency.

There is no question, incidentally, that North Korean leadership regards the exodus of escapees as a weight that may force them to bend. If they did not, why was it that after the now-famous July 2005 mass repatriation to Seoul of 468 North Koreans, the DPRK media should have published a long and hysterical fulmination denouncing the ???enticement???? of its citizens to the South, and declaring that such migration was a ???plot to topple our system?????

Rescuing North Korean escapees will not only unequivocally improve the quality of life for the escapees themselves???it will help to improve the quality of life for those who cannot yet escape the DPRK.

Fifth, welcoming in and embracing North Korean escapees will constitute a concrete and tangible step in the reconciliation between North and South. These escapees, indeed, will constitute a living bond across divided Korea???and because they will be well treated in the South, it will be a bond of healing.

Rescuing and embracing the escapees will send a multiplicity of signals to the North, all of them propitious: that Northerners are truly regard in the South as long-lost brothers; that South Korea is not the ???Hell on Earth???? they have been taught to fear this past half century and more; that a humanistic liberal democracy awaits on the other side of the DMZ. And the word will assuredly get back to the North. As the people of the DPRK learn the fate of escapees to the South, this will generate further pressure for more moderate and humane rule in the North.

Sixth, accepting North Korean escapees into the South will provide invaluable experience and guidance as South Koreans consider all the practical preparations that will be needed for the eventual reconciliation of the entire populations of the North and South.

We know already about the challenges and difficulties North Korean emigrants face in the South as they struggle to assimilate from the frozen monochrome of DPRK existence into the splendid, dizzying Technicolor of modern life in the ROK. Now is the time to learn more about the steps and measures in education, training, support and acceptance that will be needed to help these ordinary people stream in to the vibrant flow of ROK life. Now is the time to learn how small businesses, NGOs, religious groups, and all the other wonderful panoply of civic associations in a ???civil society???? can best abet these former outcasts in their own individual transformations into citizens of a free and democratic Korea.

Needless to say, learning how to make this integration work brings us one step closer to the day when the entire Korean people will be able to live as one???reconciled, united, secure, prosperous, and free.

III

If the probity of a rescue campaign to bring North Korean escapees to South Korea clear and compelling???as I believe it is???why then has force of moral argument and humanitarian need not translated into political action? Why are the escapees not being rescued en masse? Why instead are they rotting today, without hope, just a few hundred miles from Seoul?

Ladies and gentlemen, forgive me if I speak frankly???for I consider myself a friend of Korea, and want to speak among friends.

The answer is quite clear. The self-styled ???human rights???? champions who came to power in the ROK in 1998, and who have subsequently governed uninterrupted through two successive Presidencies, have to the very best of their abilities ignored the tears, the prayers and the heart-rending distress of endangered compatriots with lives flickering as precariously as candle-flames just across the Yalu and the Tumen.

Perverse and improbable as it may seem, these one-time dissidents???activists who sought office by promising the South Korean public to speak up for the vulnerable, to stand up for the disempowered and to embody solidarity with the victimized???have done almost everything within their power to avert their gaze from a human rights disaster second to none in the contemporary world: a disaster befalling their own Korean minjok.

This part of the saga of North Korea?????s escapees is almost as painful to recount as the actual travails the escapees have had to endure. But we must recognize and report this part of the saga, if only out of respect for the suffering of victims alive and dead, and in our capacity as witnesses for generations as yet unborn.

Christian epistemology distinguishes between ???sins of omission???? and ???sins of commission????. Christian or not, this template provides all of us with a useful taxonomy for examining the South Korean government?????s response to the plight of the North Korean escapees.

That the escapees still huddle in hiding nearly ten years into this crisis speaks clearly enough to the ???sins of omission????. Let us focus for on what might be described as ???sins of commission????.

We can note the milestones in this passion without rehearsing every detail. We may for example go back to the year 2002, when handfuls of North Korean escapees were breaching the boundaries of Western embassies in Beijing, seeking asylum. Chinese security operative stormed some of those diplomatic compounds, in a number of cases beating these asylum-seekers and physically dragging them away safety. After Beijing came under a storm of international criticism for its shocking, violent, probably illegal abuse of these asylum-seekers, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson retorted that the ROK government had been secretly asking China?????s help in keeping North Korean escapees out of the South Korean diplomatic compound.

The ROK government never refuted the Chinese assertion. That episode occurred on the watch of Nobel Peace Laureate and human rights role model, President Kim Dae Jung.

With the transition from the Kim Dae Jung Presidency to the Roh Moo Hyun Administration, it is true that more North Korean refugees were repatriated to the ROK than ever before: over 3,000 since President Roh?????s inauguration, more than half of the total since the 1953 Korean War ceasefire. But such numbers still constitute a mere trickle of incomers, not even a stream???and it is a flow that has hardly been encouraged by official policy.

Quite the contrary: in December 2004, the ROK Unification Ministry announced that it was slashing the government?????s per capita resettlement stipend for North Korean newcomers by almost two-thirds???and that it would be stepping up its screening and interrogations of would-be resettlers.

One rationale indicated for the increased scrutiny of North Korean escapees was the possibility that DPRK spies were posing as defectors. If so, that would mark an unusual???one is tempted to say a unique???expression of concern about the risks of domestic subversion by the current Administration, since Roh government has otherwise reined in longstanding police and intelligence counter-espionage activities, and cut back the government?????s prosecution of suspected spies and agents to less than a handful of cases a year.

As the ROK government was changing its rules to let escapees know they could expect a chillier welcome in the South, it was also embracing what might be called a ???see no evil???? policy regarding the North Korean escapees, diligently neglecting reports that might morally obligate increased concern for their well being, and responding with ruthlessly optimistic ???spin???? to ominous accounts about the fate of North Korean border-crossers.

For a full month last year, for example, the ROK Foreign Ministry officially denied that China was rounding up hundreds of escapees, and ???refouling???? them back to North Korea???only to be forced eventually to admit that those stories were true. Subsequent news accounts by the ROK?????s own semi-official Yonhap newswire have reported the execution of dozens of North Korean returnees ???to discourage North Koreans from seeking asylum in South Korea????.

(You may have heard, incidentally, of the stunning recent video smuggled out of North Korea that documents horrifying daytime public executions in the DPRK???but if you live in South Korea, you will not have seen it on TV. The video has been broadcast all over the rest of the free world, but the Roh Administration has made sure that South Korean television will not carry it.)

Could Seoul?????s posture toward the plight of the North Korean escapees possibly get any more callous than this? As we learned earlier this year: apparently so.

In January, the ROK Minister of Unification repeated what had earlier been described in the local press as ???virtually an official statement of regret to the North???? about the aforementioned mass repatriation of 468 North Korean refuges executed in the summer of 2004, and went further. This time he declared ???we disapprove of mass defections???? and promised ???there will not be another large-scale movement of North Korean refugees???? into the South. ???North Korea takes the refugee issue as a threat to its regime????, he continued, and ???undermining the North is not our policy????.

The Minister was not mis-speaking: to the contrary, was providing an absolutely faithful description of his government?????s broader approach to North Korea policy.

It is an approach that has prompted the ROK Ministry of National Defense to deny that North Korea is the ???main enemy???? for South Korea?????s armed forces, striking all such references from this year?????s MND ???White Paper????. It is an approach that recently led the South Korean government to abstain???for the third year in row!???from voting on the United Nations Human Rights Commission resolution condemning human rights abuses in the DPRK. ???There is no need to provoke the North by voting on the resolution????, unnamed South Korean government officials explained at the time.

Nor, apparently, to provoke the North with any expressed disapproval of the political condition of Pyongyang?????s subjects, even within the ROK?????s own democracy. The Wall Street Journal has quoted a previous Roh Administration Unification Minister as dismissing talk of political rights in North Korea with the memorable phrase ???political freedom is a luxury, like pearls for a pig????.

There is an awful coherence to this approach to relations with the North. Plainly put: it is an approach regards the jailers who run the DPRK as ???partners for peace???? in the Korean peninsula, while it treats the captives and escapees from this huge open-air prison as troublesome claimants who constantly get in the way of the Seoul?????s grand imaginary designs for peninsular peace.

Ladies and gentlemen, let us call things by their proper names, here and now. The central obstacle to peace, reconciliation and unification in the Korean is not the North Korean population???rather it is the wicked regime that enslaves them.

While enslaving them, that same regime strives to destroy you: you, after all, are the true intended targets of the DPRK?????s chemical weapons, biological weapons, its short range missiles, and now perhaps, its atomic weapons. There is no contradiction whatever between the North?????s treatment of its subjects and its program of perfecting WMD threats against the South: both are animated and guided by a single worldview and strategy.

At this point let me quickly dispel any intimations of partisanship in the critique I have just offered. It is true that South Korea?????s current opposition party has raised a few voices in honorable exception to the current ???see no evil???? policy for North Korean escapees. But it is a fact that the current opposition party controlled the ROK National Assembly for a number of years during both the Kim Dae Jung and the Roh Moo Hyun Administrations. Over that tenure I am unaware of any legislation passed, or even hearings convened, to assuage the distress of North Korea?????s escapees.

Ladies and gentlemen, from our own lives we may know that there is a dark and uncomfortable realm in which toleration of evil, or appeasement of evil, suddenly turns into active collaboration with evil. But as we may also know from our own lives, it is never too late for redemption. As it is with individual souls, so too with nations: and the first step to rejecting evil and choosing goodness in the Korean peninsula today is to welcome in the North Korean escapees.

IV

There are, to be sure, many practical problems and objections to be considered in any practical and purposeful effort of humanitarian rescue for the North Korean escapees. Let me mention two of them here.

The first concerns China, the escapees????? most unwelcoming host. Despite its international treaty obligations???Beijing is signatory to the UN Convention and Protocol on Refugees, the UN Convention Against Torture, and the Vienna Conventions on Diplomatic and Consular Relations–the Chinese government routinely hunts downs, rounds up and deports North Korean escapees to a certainty of savage punishment back in the DPRK. As we have already noted, some of these hunts have taken Chinese agents into the embassies and consulates of foreign governments against the express wishes of foreign diplomatic representatives.

China asserts that she is not bound in this instance by the Refugee Convention and Protocol because the North Korean escapees are ???economic migrants???? rather than ???refugees????. Legal analyst Benjamin Neaderland also raises the possibility that China may face conflicting international legal obligations with respect to the escapees: if China has a secret bilateral pact with the DPRK concerning the repatriation of illegal emigrants, as may be the case, a ???Chinese argument that they are bound to return North Koreans found to be traveling illegally [would] not [be] without merit in international law????.

China?????s current intransigence is hardly a trivial obstacle???but it is not necessarily an insuperable one, either.

The wordplay China uses to evade its Refugee Convention responsibilities is of course grotesque, and transparent. China is however a dictatorship???a government that takes liberties with the law through sheer force of habit.

And China is emboldened to take liberties with these particular laws precisely because the Republic of Korea???a constitutional democracy under rule of law???is today so very conspicuously avoiding its own legal responsibilities toward those same escapees. China?????s leeway for legal obfuscation would be tremendously reduced if South Korea made it clear that Seoul intended to resettle any and all escapees who wished to head South???and was willing to make an international issue of this.

The possible contradiction between presumed bilateral obligations to Pyongyang and international treaty obligations, moreover, seemingly evaporates if Seoul remembers its constitutional obligation to make ROK citizens of ordinary North Korean escapees desirous of that status.

Here again Neaderland:

If the South Korean government were to assert that the North Koreans in China possess South Korean nationality, it could plausibly claim that China is treaty-bound by the Vienna Convention to allow access to any North Korean seeking to enter a South Korean consulate in China. While there may be policy reasons????that stand in the way of South Korea asserting such a claim, it is a claim potentially supported by international law and one that China would have to take seriously if offered by South Korea.

If Seoul adopts an activist stance and insists upon the law???including its own laws???many of the problems encountered with China today may solve themselves.

The second issue concerns the United States. With the passage of the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004, Washington is now committed to taking in an as yet undetermined number of North Korean asylum seekers. Shouldn?????t a big country like the United States???a country peopled through immigration???shoulder a major share of the burden of resettling North Korean escapees?

Speaking as an American (and as a founding member of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea), I will be happy to see North Korean escapees flown to freedom in the United States???and I hope our active Korean-American community and Korean-American religious organizations will take the lead in helping them adjust to their newfound life.

That being said, we must also recognize that there is an international division of labor in the global struggle for freedom.

In this division of labor, the United States????? indispensable contribution in our bilateral relationship has???and remains???the guarantee, underwritten by the lives of US soldiers and the treasure of US taxpayers, that South Korea could be the home for freedom in the Korean peninsula. South Korea?????s indispensable contribution in this arrangement is to act on that guarantee.

There is constant talk of ???burden sharing???? in the US-ROK relationship, but discussions of ???burden sharing???? in this humanitarian rescue challenge must not become an excuse for delay or avoidance of Seoul?????s own special duties in this particular humanitarian emergency.

V

Ladies and gentlemen, Korea is a nation with a long and venerable history???the myth of Tangun takes us back almost 5,000 years.

Nevertheless, Korea?????s greatest and most glorious days still lie ahead. The reunification of the Korean people under free and democratic governance will be an epochal event???not just in Korean history, but in world history.

Against great odds, South Korea has become the home of freedom in the peninsula. Now the task is to extend that freedom to the North: if need be, one Korean at a time.

Your home of freedom is their home, too, ladies and gentlemen.

Bring them home.