Escape from North Korea (32 page)

Like every country that hosts North Korean refugees, Mongolia was reluctant to release information about them, including divulging how many entered the country illegally. It was concerned both with the security of the refugees and with maintaining good relations with China, North Korea, and South Korea, none of which wanted a spotlight on the crisis. In a rare public comment on the subject, a Mongolian official said in 2003 that more than five hundred North Koreans had been resettled to South Korea from Mongolia since 1999.
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For a while, North Koreans were able to move around relatively inconspicuously in China's Heilongjiang Province, which is home to many Korean-Chinese. But sometime in the early or mid-2000s, as part of its overall crackdown on North Korean refugees, the Chinese government stepped up ID checks in the sparsely populated areas of that province and in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Zone. They arrested so many North Koreans that the escape route through Mongolia virtually shut down. Some still got through, but the preferred escape route shifted to Southeast Asia.

North Koreans sometimes give idiosyncratic reasons for choosing a particular destination on the new underground railroad. Eom Myong-hui, who arrived in Seoul in 2002, selected Burma because she had heard that this was where, in 1983, North Korea tried to assassinate the visiting South Korean president, Chun Doo-hwan, in a bomb attack that missed the president but killed half the South Korean cabinet. Eom Myong-hui mistakenly assumed that the generals running Burma hated North Korea because of that incident and would therefore treat an escaped North Korean kindly. When
she discovered, upon arrival, that she would be arrested and jailed for illegal entry, she made a beeline for neighboring Thailand, where she found a warmer welcome.
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Most North Koreans rely on their guides to make the decision about their destination country. The guides in turn base their decision on three factors: how easy it is to cross the border into a given country, how welcoming that country is to North Koreans, and how good the guides' contacts are in that country. Passengers on underground railroad routes through Southeast Asia have sought asylum in Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Since President Lee Myun-bak took office in February 2008 under a pledge of doing more to help fleeing North Koreans, South Korea's policy toward the refugees has improved. Consular facilities worldwide are under instructions to help North Koreans who knock on their door. The United States has a similar policy regarding refugees from North Korea. Most North Koreans want to settle in South Korea, but if they prefer to go to the United States, they are welcome under the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004.

Not all South Korean diplomats got President Lee Myun-bak's message, as seen in a September 2009 case involving nine North Korean refugees who had made their way to Vietnam. Tim Peters, the American activist based in Seoul, was one of the organizers of that rescue. “We went to the South Koreans initially,” he said, referring to the South Korean Embassy in Hanoi. “But they would not let us in.” His group made three separate inquiries at the South Korean Embassy. Each time, the embassy refused to accept the North Koreans.
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The group ended up at the Danish Embassy, which had to erect a tent in its garden to accommodate them. In Copenhagen, a spokesman for the foreign ministry announced that the North Koreans would be allowed to stay at the embassy. “We do not send people out who could face some kind of persecution,” the Dane said. The international publicity probably helped the refugees. Seoul agreed
to accept them. Vietnam gave them permission to leave the country, and they left for South Korea within the month.

The coalition of organizations that sponsored the mission had selected Hanoi as the destination for the nine refugees in part because the group hoped to reopen the Vietnam route on the new underground railroad. The flow of refugees to Vietnam had slowed drastically after a diplomatic incident in 2004 involving hundreds of North Koreans. Since that time, the government of Vietnam and the South Korean Embassy in Hanoi both had become less hospitable to North Koreans. A refugee who applied for asylum in Vietnam could expect to spend many months in uncomfortable detention before being permitted to go to Seoul. The rescuers hoped to spur the South Korean government to become a better advocate for the refugees. They also hoped to press Vietnam to improve its treatment of arriving North Koreans.

But the shadow of the 2004 incident still lingered. In 2004, the South Korean government had secretly chartered a plane and flown out 468 North Koreans who had sought asylum at its embassy in Hanoi. The South Korean Embassy had been supporting the refugees for months either in its own facilities or in private shelters run by South Korean citizens. The refugees were living in cramped conditions, one man reportedly tried to commit suicide, and the South Korean officials were worried that the refugees might despair and become violent. “The situation was not manageable,” an official of the South Korean Foreign Ministry was quoted as saying.
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In an effort to minimize the damage to what it saw as its improving ties with North Korea, South Korea tried unsuccessfully to keep its rescue mission secret. When news of the airlift got out, as of course it was bound to do, government officials refused to release the name of the country where the refugees had been staying. They said only that the North Koreans had arrived in Seoul from Southeast Asia.

North Korea, however, had no such reticence, and it used the incident to try to intimidate South Korea into reducing assistance to North Korean refugees in China and elsewhere. It issued a belligerent statement outing Vietnam as the country from which its citizens had been “lured” by South Korea. It described the airlift as a “criminal” act, a “heinous crime of terrorism.” By its “enticement and abduction” of North Korean citizens, the statement said, South Korea had pushed inter-Korean relations into a period of “acute confrontation.”

By letting the North Korean refugees depart, the Vietnamese government, for its part, took sides against North Korea, an ideological ally, in order to preserve good ties with South Korea, which was making significant investments in Vietnam's developing economy. Several weeks after the airlift, South Korea announced a $21 million loan to Vietnam on favorable terms. The timing of the deal may or may not have been coincidental. Several months later, South Korea announced that it would never again attempt a large-scale rescue of refugees. North Korea's intimidation apparently had worked.

The popularity of other Southeast Asian countries as destinations on the new underground railroad ebbs and flows. Guides became wary of Cambodia in 2009 after that country sent twenty Uighur refugees back to China at the request of Beijing. They feared that Cambodia might adopt the same policy vis-à-vis North Koreans and send them back to China if Beijing made a similar demand. Another factor militating against the Cambodia route is Phnom Penh's history of good ties with Pyongyang. Kim Il Sung, the late founder of North Korea, was a close friend of Cambodia's former King Norodom Sihanouk, who lived in exile in a sixty-room mansion in Pyongyang in the 1970s. The countries continue to have warm ties.

Thailand is another destination for North Koreans on the run. The kingdom does not border China; to get there, North Koreans first must pass through Burma, Laos, or Vietnam. Guides typically escort refugees across the Thai border and then say good-bye. Turn
yourselves in to the police, the refugees are instructed. The police will feed you, give you a place to sleep, and then arrange for you to be taken south to the international detention center. “It's the fastest way to get to Bangkok,” says an American who guides North Koreans out of China on the new underground railroad. It's also the fastest way for a refugee to get to Seoul. The journey—from the day a North Korean arrives at the international detention center in Bangkok until the day he gets off the plane at Incheon Airport in South Korea—takes about one month.

Phil Robertson is deputy director of the Asia office of Human Rights Watch and an expert on refugees in Asia. Thailand does not want to repeat its difficult experience during the Vietnam War, when it was a magnet for refugees, he said. The Thai government takes a tough position regarding people who enter the country illegally. The North Koreans are an exception, Robertson noted. But even then, the government requires that they be dealt with in accordance with Thai law. The North Koreans must pay fines for entering the country illegally and serve a term in detention before they are permitted to depart for Seoul under the supervision of South Korean officials. The Thai government takes the position that it is “deporting” North Koreans back to their home country of “Korea.” The geographic distinctions between North and South Korea are “conveniently blurred,” explained a classified diplomatic cable from the American Embassy in Bangkok, as disclosed by Wikileaks. The cable also noted that South Korea is “an important trade partner and market for Thai labor.”
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“Thailand does not lose anything by helping the North Koreans,” Robertson, of Human Rights Watch, observed. It might even gain something in terms of the goodwill it earns from South Korea and the United States for its humane treatment of the North Koreans. He pointed out that unlike the tens of thousands of Burmese who have crossed into Thailand and are living in refugee camps along the border, the North Koreans all have a guaranteed place to go: South
Korea. Nor are they a burden on the Thai economy. South Korea helps pay for their care while they are in Thailand, and it also pays their fines for entering Thailand illegally.
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South Korea's proactive approach to helping North Koreans in Thailand is a change from as recently as 2007, when four hundred refugees went on a hunger strike at the international detention center in Bangkok. The North Koreans were protesting cramped accommodations and poor sanitary conditions at the detention center as well as delays in their resettlement in South Korea. The improvement in their treatment is probably due to the change in government in South Korea in 2008, when President Lee Myung-bak took office. His government has pushed for better treatment of North Korean refugees.

Thailand has become an increasingly popular way station for North Koreans traveling on the new underground railroad. According to the Thai national police, only forty-six North Koreans were arrested and detained in Thailand in 2004. By 2010, that number had increased many times over. That year, the number of North Koreans who entered Thailand illegally was reported to be 2,482.
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Southeast Asia is where most North Koreans get their first taste of freedom, and there is bitter to go along with the sweet. Refugees usually experience a sense of elation at having reached safety. But that can be coupled with feelings of frustration and boredom when they must wait weeks or months before leaving for their new homes. They also worry about what will come next.
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Sarah Yun is a young American who manages a shelter for North Koreans in a Southeast Asia city that she wishes to remain unnamed. The shelter is sponsored by Liberty in North Korea. LiNK's shelter is a large, two-story house built around a sunny courtyard that is home to a few potted plants and a basketball hoop. The kitchen, living
room, and dining room are all common spaces. There are two dormitory-style bedrooms—one for men, one for women—each with beds on the floor, Korean-style, covered with cheerful coverlets. Yun and another house manager share the third bedroom. The fourth bedroom serves as their office. A tiny fifth bedroom is filled with boxes of clothes and shoes, and the residents may help themselves to these. Many of the North Koreans arrive at the shelter with little or nothing other than the clothes on their backs.

Refugees relax in the LiNK shelter for a few days before turning themselves in to the local authorities or at a South Korean consular facility. Soon after their arrival at the shelter, they are briefed about what to expect from the local government and from the South Korean diplomats who will interview them. They receive tips about how to handle themselves in a range of possible situations, including run-ins with the police or other government authorities. They get advice about their rights under local law—a concept that is foreign to most of them. The shelter also sets up video conferences with North Korean refugees who recently have settled in South Korea. The new arrivals have an opportunity to ask questions of people who have had experiences similar to theirs. Most of the refugees move on after a few days, but a few stay in the shelter for longer periods of time. North Koreans who decide to seek asylum in the United States typically spend several months there while officials are processing their applications.

On the day I visit, the clients the shelter is hosting include two sisters who are waiting to join their father in the United States. The sisters haven't heard yet whether the State Department has approved their application for asylum. They already have had their initial entry interviews at the American Embassy. Those seemed to have gone well, although on the day we meet, the younger sister is still brooding over her failure to remember the name of Kim Jong Il's mother. She knows the woman's name as well as she knows her own, she
says, but she was so flustered at the time of the interview that it popped out of her head. Like the World War II stories of strangers professing to be American—and asked who won the World Series to prove they weren't German spies—North Korean refugees typically must answer a range of questions about life in North Korea to ensure they really are from that country. There have been cases of Chinese nationals posing as North Korean refugees in order to receive South Korean citizenship.