I’ve complained about the Roh administration policy towards North Korean refugees in the past. This time I want to give props to the MOFAT folks who tried to do the right thing, even if they failed (Yonhap via the Hanky):
The Foreign Ministry Wednesday summoned a Chinese envoy to protest both the arrest of four North Korean defectors at an international school in Beijing and the use of force against South Korean diplomats who tried to intervene.
Chinese police on Tuesday arrested four North Korean defectors who entered a South Korean international school in the Chinese capital. Four South Korean diplomats were dispatched to the scene, and two were briefly physically restrained by the police while trying to stop the arrest, a ministry official said.
The ministry called in a Chinese embassy official, whose identity was not released, to demand the release of the North Korean defectors while filing complaint over the use of force against South Korean diplomats in Beijing.
As has been noted elsewhere, North Korean defectors are legally citizens of the Republic of Korea and the Korean government has the duty to protect them (per articles 2 and 3 of the Korean Constitution), so the Ministry is well within its rights to demand that the four defectors in question be turned over.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that the Chinese have to comply.
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I was going to write that China was probably OK to treat them as Norks, but then I realized that, since the snuck in without any passport or ID, they didn’t enter as Norks per se. So China should take it at face value if the South Korean diplomats are claiming them as citizens.
I don’t get the schizophrenic approach the ROK embassies have towards the defectors. I just finished ‘Welcome to Paradise’ where it seems some of the embassies in SE Asia shut their dooors to the defectors while the Camboadian one actively sought the defectors out.
The book I am reading now is Michael Breen’s ‘Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s Dear Leader.’ The funny part: I checked it of the public library here in China.
I’m glad the Korean diplomats tried to do the right thing though they were wrongfully thwarted. The Chinese have much explaining to do regarding how they dealt with these people.
This isn’t the first time NK refugees have been hauled off the campus of a Korean school. I’m surprised that they continue to seek safe haven there.
The Chinese media, not surprisingly, is faulting the Korean diplomats for ignoring international law and their own status by interfering with the detention of trespassers. The Chinese police are claiming that they were responding to a phone call from school personnel concerned about unknown intruders posing a threat to campus safety.
http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2007.....513s.shtml
While I’m certainly sympathetic towards the plight of North Korean refugees, it does sound like the ROK diplomats exceeded their authorities. Although the South Korean Constitution recognizes NK refugees as South Korean citizens, that same constitution only carries legal weight in South Korea.
Also, just because the international school is run by South Koreans, it’s not necessarily run by the government of South Korea, and I doubt it has the status of a diplomatic or other official government facility.
Then again, I’m no lawyer.
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