Seoul Summit: All North Korean refugees are political refugees

(by guest blogger Andy Jackson)

This a part of a series of posts on the Seoul Summit: Promoting Human Rights in North Korea and related events. The portions in the blockquote were taken from my notes. I apologize for any inaccuracies.

Joel Charny, Vice President for Policy at Refugees International, spoke during the third session of the Seoul Summit:

My trip to China to talk to North Korean refugees was one of the most difficult in years of humanitarian work. Almost everyone we talked to had lost a family member over the past five years do to famine, disease or abandonment.

The situation in China for North Korean Refugees is now as bad as it has ever been. People crossing now have about 24 hours to find shelter [before they are likely to be caught by Chinese authorities. 100-250 people a week deported back to NK (5,000 to 12,000 a year).

There are 20,000 to 50,000 North Korean refugees in China. That number is putting pressure on the local Korean-Chinese community.

Chinese say that they have a treaty with NK to control the border. They consider it a national security issue.

Relatively few refugees are fleeing direct political persecution but in North Korea it is impossible to separate economic problems (such as distribution of food) from the political system. Even if they don’t start out as political refugees they become so through the act of defecting.

China is the key.

We should increase aid at the border to groups but it must small scale because large amounts of aid would draw the notice of Chinese officials.

I would like to see the Japanese, American, EU and UN envoys on North Korean human rights meet in the same room in the next two weeks to coordinate strategy.

I don’t think economic pressure on China will work. We can try to quietly get the Chinese to stop arresting North Korean refugees. That can be done through a combination of public and private diplomacy.

I will elaborate a little bit on what Charny said about the North Korean “˜economic refugees’ and the political system. The problem is not just the general inefficiency of the communist system (although that was certainly a contributing factor). The bulk of the people who are starving in North Korea are at the lowest rungs of the North Korean system. That system elevates those who are loyal to the Kim Jong-il regime and demotes those who are considered disloyal along with their families.

Those “˜politically unreliable’ families are placed away from the capital, with the lowest ranking families being placed in internal exile in the central highlands. When the famine struck in the 1990s, it was no accident that the areas hit first and hardest where those populated by the exiles. It was also no accident that the most of the areas put off-limits to international aid groups were in the central highlands.

The Kim Jong-il regime is now cutting off international food aid, not because the famine in North Korea is over, but because the famine for the politically reliable in North Korea is over.

In short, most of the people who are fleeing “˜economic hardship’ in North Korea were put in that condition by specific North Korean government policies that denied them access to food and other supplies. They did not fall through cracks in the system. They were put in the cracks by the system. They are political refugees.

Here is more of Charny’s views on China and North Korean refugees.