Seoul to seek UN’s help for defectors

Seoul will likely raise the issue of North Korean defectors detained in China at a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) next week in an effort to prevent Beijing’s possible repatriation of them, a foreign ministry spokesman said Tuesday.

“We have yet to raise the issue at any of the UNHRC meetings held in Geneva,” spokesman Cho Byung-jae said. “However, we are positively considering addressing the matter at the upcoming meeting, though we are reviewing whether to name a specific country or not.”

Cho noted that South Korea has repeatedly called on Beijing not to repatriate the North Korean defectors held in China to their Stalinist homeland, including at a summit on Jan. 9 last year, but to no avail.

“Seoul has urged Beijing to deal with the plight of North Koreans from a humanitarian perspective, saying they shouldn’t be deported by force," he said.

The remarks came following the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MOFAT) has failed to persuade Beijing to stop its plan to send back dozens of North Korean defectors reportedly caught by Chinese authorities this month.

Human rights groups have been raising their voice on the issue as Pyongyang is believed to have begun to impose harsher punishment, including a lifetime labor camp imprisonment and execution after Kim Jong-un took the helm of the country late last year.

“Along with our efforts through diplomatic channels with China, I think that seeking support at the UNHRC would help the defectors not be sent back to the North against their will,” Cho said.

MOFAT officials said Ambassador Kim Bong-hyun, deputy minister for multilateral and global affairs, will attend the forthcoming meeting of the U.N. refugee agency.

They said the South will urge China to comply with an international refugee law, which is widely believed to be a major policy shift in a bid to ratchet up pressure on Beijing.

MOFAT reportedly plans to convey its new call to Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, who is scheduled to visit Seoul early next month.

MOFAT officials, however, could not confirm how many North Korean defectors in China were facing repatriation.

Rep. Park Sun-young of the conservative minor Liberty Forward Party estimates that 34 North Korean defectors were caught by Chinese police on five separate occasions this month.

Tens of thousands of North Korean defectors are believed to be hiding in China, hoping to travel to Thailand or other Southeast Asian countries before resettling in the South, which is home to more than 23,000 of them.

China does not recognize North Korean defectors as asylum-seekers, according to defectors in South Korea and human rights activists.


(2012-02-21/koreatimes)