If President Lee is Sincere About Protecting Refugees and POW’s, the South Korean Consul in Shenyang Must Go

[10/27: Here’s an update on that 80 year-old POW.]

The latest reports coming from northeastern China emphasize China’s ongoing disregard for the lives of North Korean refugees, and for the pleas of the South Korean government. They also raise questions about President Lee’s sincerity about shifting to a more compassionate policy toward North Korean refugees.

Last week, it was reported that two family members of an escaped South Korean prisoner of war found their way to the South Korean consulate in Shenyang, where the consular staff told them that there was no room for them in the consulate and instead put them up in a nearby guesthouse — stop me if you’ve heard this somewhere before — where the Chinese police promptly found them (link in Korean) arrested them, and trussed them up for the long trip back to the firing squad or Camp 12. The Donga Ilbo gives us a few more details in English here.

And there is more. Another report (also in Korean) has it that another South Korean POW, age 80, managed to escape North Korea but fell ill and was caught by the Chinese police. He’s now in a hospital awaiting deportation to North Korea, where I doubt he’d like long regardless of the outcome chosen for him. The South Koreans says they’re trying to negotiate for his freedom, but that the Chinese aren’t listening.

If there is any good in this, it’s the fact that this news has become a minor scandal in South Korea. There’s little question that something is seriously rotten in the South Korean consulate in Shenyang. Recall the way the consulate rudely turned away escaped South Korean POW Choi Uk-Il in 2007. Back in 2006, three North Korean refugees seemed so certain the South Koreans would betray them that they jumped over the wall of the consulate into the adjacent U.S. Consulate, which hasn’t distinguished itself for representing American values abroad, either.

What really ought to enrage South Koreans, however, is that almost exactly the same thing happened just three years ago. Then, nine family members of prisoners of war were turned away from the consulate and put up in a private guest house, where the Chinese caught them and sent them back to face a firing squad in North Korea. It’s a consistent enough pattern to suggest reckless disregard at the very least, and possibly a deliberate wink-and-nod relationship with the ChiComs. And it would be a greater scandal yet if President Lee, who claims to be more concerned about human rights than his predecessors, allows this to continue without firing the Consul and anyone else who played a part in this.

At times like this, I can only say, thank God for Ban Ki Moon, the Nobel Committee, and the Human Rights Industry. Why, without the awesome moral authority and effectiveness of international institutions like these, terrible atrocities could go on for years unchecked. In this orderly new age in which some of us are blessed to live, the only duty that devolves on the rest of us is to sit here in the warm and comfort of our homes, gnaw on the fat-free organic snack of our choice, and admonish the ragged vagabonds, who are still unchurched in teachings of our faith, not to take matters into their own hands.