(by guest blogger, Andy Jackson)
Two years after the North Korean Human Rights Act was passed, is US government policy towards North Korean defectors and refugees changing? Suzanne Scholte, an advocate for North Korean human rights, thinks it is (Yonhap):
Scholte noted the shift in the U.S. administration’s attitude about North Korean refugees, said to number in the tens of thousands, hiding in China and other Asian countries and trying to resettle elsewhere.
There is “tremendous response” from the administration in efforts to get them out of China and even bring them to the U.S., she said.
“Every time we bring defectors over, we go to the State Department. It’s the same with the National Security Council and the Capitol Hill,” she said.
“Now we are seeing that they are actually going to make many more policy initiatives.”
I will believe it when I see it. The State Department has been painfully slow in implementing the act, which instructs it to “facilitate” the acceptance of North Korean refugees into the US.
We shall see.
23 Comments
Andy,
i saw your post on the thread about shelton and figured that your guest blogger status needs to be encouraged. as many have already pointed out, the number of comments is not the same as the number of people who read the post and find it interesting. a lot of the time the stuff that is the most interesting is the same stuff that i’m the least able to comment on. (why read stuff that i already know enough about to the point that i have opinions?)
i know that defectors are seen as a terrible source of information, but wouldn’t the Americans want to get these people into the country to A) find out what they know, because the CIA, i imagine, doesn’t have many eyes on the ground, and B) make a statement to the world about where America stands on human rights issues? Bush and Co. could really use the good PR at the moment. (the fact that a lot of the people helping out the defectors are doing so through Christian organizations seems like a PR goldmine, doesn’t it?)
Why drag feet with something that’s good for everyone except the enemy?
Apparently the State Department has been reluctant to implement the act because of worries that admission of North Koreans into the United States would harm the 6-party talks.
There’s some good commentary from the Public Radio program Pacific Time:
http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R603231830/c
Personally, considering how the talks have been going, I don’t see how welcoming North Koreans would hurt.
Can’t see how admitting N.K. refugees would harm the six-nation talks any more than shutting down KJI’s money laundering operation in Macau, so I wonder if that’s really a factor. It could be a lack of cooperation from S. Korea and China.
Michael, a lack of cooperation from China, maybe. But when it comes to getting NK refugees out of China and into the United States, how could a lack of cooperation from South Korea be a factor?
I have gone on record many times with my disgust at Chung Dong-young and even Roh Moohyun for their shameless kowtowing to Pyongyang, but there are times where the Seoul-bashing is not as deserved: more NK refugees have been resettled into the South during the Roh administration than in all other administrations combined (I think).
Yet at the same time, Washington has taken in no North Korean refugees despite this act. If they had, there wouldn’t be a reason for this post.
Over at One Free Korea’s former blog, he wrote a couple of posts about a lifer in the State Department who has power in the East Asian area who he had heard was the reason why the embassies in Asia are not accepting refugees despite the Act of Congress.
It was around the time the CNN aired special came out and part of it showed a refugee who had made it to Thailand being turned out by the US Embassy there.
I don’t have time to find the link to the post, but it was worth finding….
Kushibo, I meant that technically North Korean refugees are South Koreans and Seoul expects them to settle here, so I should have been more specific.
Well, considering the rhetoric about the Roh-Chung regime trying to keep NK refugees out, I didn’t see that that is what you meant at all.
NK refugees resettling in the South have to go through a process of assimilation. Those facilities are, I believe, operating beyond the limits for which they were set up. If some other country were to offer to resettle some refugees, I think the South would not stop them; they are currently overwhelmed, but no other country has taken more than a handful.
Doling out criticism over not taking in enough refugees has been easier than trying to help out with the situation.
(Not to say I don’t believe that’s what you meant; after you explained what you meant, I understood what you were getting at, even if I disagree.)
Kushibo’s right on China being the main obstacle, but South Korean non-cooperation (if that is what is actually happening in the field) would hinder the project and probably reflects passive hostility to the whole U.S. approach to North Korea, driven by fear of instability.
On the U.S. side, there has been a lot of the same type of DHS organizational confusion and sclerosis that has mucked up even the normal visa process for many countries. If we are to believe Jay Lefkowitz, there should be movement before mid-year.
I worry that the quickening erosion of Bush administration authority and power will sap Washington of the will to follow through with the North Koreans — or tempt Bush to seek diplomatic achievement on the cheap by caving in at the 6-party talks.
I hope this is not the case, but I wonder if there are diplomatic moral hazard concerns at a deeper level in the U.S. government: that an open-door policy on admitting North Koreans would provide South Korea and China with too easy a way to evade or put off the inevitable how-to-wind-down-North Korea question. In this view, the U.S. would help save lives but end up being a safety valve for Kim Jong-il’s regime.
The 6-party talks are anything other than dead? I’ve heard that the Bush admin has had many fights with the State Department, so maybe this in another in which they ignore what he wants and do what they want. (Or maybe it’s only Bush that has any sympathy for defectors and nobody else in his admin gives a damn, so nothing gets done).
“follow through with the North Koreans” … I dropped the word refugees.
Kushibo, where did you hear that resettlement facilities for the refugees are operating over capacity? I’m just curious. Also, I really did mean as I explained later, although I’d have to add that if S.K. is “currently overwhelmed” by the small numbers of refugees coming here they might as well welcome U.S. assistance in taking in refugees, since the numbers don’t seem to be dropping.
Michael, here is a Wikipedia article with the numbers of refugees:
pre-1989 - 607
1990 - 9
1991 - 9
1992 - 8
1993 - 8
1994 - 52
1995 - 41
1996 - 56
1997 - 85
1998 - 71
1999 - 148
2000 - 312
2001 - 583
2002 - 1,139
2003 - 1,281
2004 - 1,894
2005 - 1,387
2006 - not available
The two presidents so criticized for opening up to North Korea both took in more North Korean refugees than their predecessors combined.
During Roh’s administration, 4562 North Korean refugees have come in, to be processesed in the Hanawon facility that is designed to take in 400 people at one time. (2253 were taken in during the Kim Daejung administration; 875 were taken in during the entire time before that).
It was Kim Daejung’s administration during which Hanawon was established, in 1999, and doubled, in 2002. During the Roh administration, in 2004, the facility was expanded.
I am a little hard-pressed for time so I can’t find an article on how Hanawon is at its limits, but the Wikipedia description below suggests a need to keep expanding it. South Korea can’t take unlimited numbers of refugees; it would be good for other countries to help out.
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.
Kushibo, I hope you aren’t saying it’s “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” about me, because that’s a massive stretch of an interpretation from my comments and isn’t my opinion.
No, Michael, I am not. I am mentioning that because it has long been a common theme among some in the Korea-related English-language blogosphere.
OK, just add “K.E.L.B.” or “Angry Expat Commentariat” after things like that so we know who you’re addressing
Except that under the Republic of Korea’s Constitution, those poor bastards are citizens of the Republic of Korea.
Wouldn’t Seoul consider it a significant loss of face were it to allow the United States to accept North Korean refugees (who, as others have pointed out, are legally and factually South Korean citizens)?
Without intending to be churlish about the Roh administration’s welcome mat, the rise in numbers also reflects the rise in SUPPLY of refugees and timing of the worst of the famine in North Korea, which peaked in 1998, under DJ. In earlier administrations, there wasn’t the breakdown in North Korean border control that would allow North Koreans to take the treasonous step of leaving the workers’ paradise.
I’ve tried to gather information about exactly what the North Korean Human Rights Act says and what it allows the State Department to do, short of actually referring to the act posted on the Senate.gov website. Reading their jargon is like pulling teeth. Anyone know of a good website that actually details what the Act does and what changes it provides for?
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.
Lost Nomad had a good article about aiding N.K. refugees:
http://www.time.com/time/asia/.....tory2.html
Brendon Carr wrote:
Except that under the Republic of Korea’s Constitution, those poor bastards are citizens of the Republic of Korea.
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.
Michael, thanks for sharing the article!! That is definately a keeper. I have sections of a diary from one my ancestors who was a Quaker in western Pennsylvania and involved in the underground railroad. He mentions numerous times how people he worked with had been approached by “bounty hunters” hired by local governments in the southern states to pressure the Quakers into stopping their activities. In some cases, people he knew were lynched for their involvement in the underground. It’s hard to imagine that still going on today, and against a more formidable opponent in the Chinese government to boot. I really hope the Bush “inaction” that the article spoke of evolves into a spirit of cooperation with organizations like Peter’s. It’s every bit as important as the underground railroad of old.