What of it? Has the ROK government ever said they would not allow the US, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, France, the UK, Palau, or any other country to take in North Korean refugees?

These countries have shown a lack of interest and will at helping resettle North Korean refugees; they have taken in virtually zero. It seems a red herring to suggest that South Korea is somehow preventing them from doing so.

There is a bottleneck to the assimilation process here. If significantly more NK refugees are to be spirited out of China, then other countries will have to take some. The Kim Daejung and Roh Moohyun administrations have both expanded the Hanawon facilities for processing and assimilating former DPRKers, so the constant beating up on them in the absence of any other country doing anything is disingenuous.

Slim, the numbers of refugees admitted to South Korea do not gel so neatly with the rise and fall of famine conditions in the North. By 1998, some two million may have died in the previous three years, yet the number of admitted refugees was quite low then compared to later.

The loosening of the DPRK border, along with less repression in the PRC may be factors, but none of these would guarantee resettlement in the ROK. My point is that it was the Kim Daejung administration that took a much greater initiative than before, and then the Roh Moohyun administration — derided as it is for turning its back on refugees (some of the criticism is deserved) — not only expanded the capacity for the South to take in refugees, but it has taken in more than all before combined, including the Kim Daejung administration, which had also accompllished the same feat.

http://www.time.com/time/asia/.....tory2.html

With that said I think the involvement of South Korea as a home to refugees is missing the issue entirely. Of course South Korea is the last stop for most North Korean refugees but the current situation is such that it is easier for them to go through a third country out of China than it is to go directly from China to South Korea. That’s unfortunate. The final tally really doesn’t matter. As well, there is a technical point in the South Korean constitution that if changed would, I believe, give great support to refugees in China. South Korea doesn’t consider the citizens of North Korea as being from another country. As much as it might hurt some folks’ pride here in South Korea, taking the official steps to recognize the de facto situation would take away a loophole that China has in returning refugees to North Korea. Technically, China is only returning vagrants who are trying to move from one part of Korea to the other for economic purposes. Now, everyone knows that isn’t really true, but as long as South Korea refuses to recognize the legitimacy of North Korea as a separate sovereign nation China can continue to ignore their responsibility under the UN refugee commission which they are ostensibly signed on to.

Anyway, I just find it a tad disingenuous to suggest that the sole country taking in North Korean refugees isn’t doing enough when no one else is helping out. And I also think that, despite the kowtowing of the preening Chung Dong-young, the Roh Administration does deserve some credit for allowing in more refugees than all other administrations combined.

Except that under the Republic of Korea’s Constitution, those poor bastards are citizens of the Republic of Korea.