China Arrests 40 More North Korean Refugees (Updated: Threatens UNHCR, Too; More Refugees Leave China and Thailand)

And the gold medal in brutality goes to …

Chinese police have arrested some 40 North Koreans in a series of raids on a border area in Liaoning province, with others detained as they tried to cross the Tumen River into China, according to authoritative Korean sources.  [….]

Plainclothes Chinese security agents conducted a large-scale raid March 17 on North Korean defectors in Shenyang, Liaoning province, arresting about 40 people, sources in China who spoke to RFA’s Korean service on condition of anonymity said.  [Radio Free Asia]

For the new readers — lots of you today, thanks — let there be no doubt about what  will happen to these people.  The Chinese will send them back to North Korea, and North Korea will do exactly what it did to this group of 22, repatriated by South Korea, and this group of 15, caught by the North Koreans while crossing into China.   

China is trying to  “cleanse” itself of North Korean refugees to help insure a dissent-free Olympics.   

This is just one of  several good reasons to hope that the Beijing Olympics will be a gargantuan flop, and to celebrate the increasing likelihood that they will be.  They’re now so fearful of protests against all of the evil they’re doing to people from Darfur to Rangoon to  Lhasa to Dandong, they’re seriously considering banning live broadcasts from Tienanmen Square. 

A ban on live broadcasts would disrupt the plans of NBC and other major international networks, who have paid hundreds of millions of dollars to broadcast the Aug. 8-24 games and are counting on eye-pleasing live shots from the iconic square.  [….]

If the decision stands, it would be a blow to the TV networks whose money to buy the right to broadcast the games accounts for more than half the IOC’s revenues. The biggest spender is NBC. It paid $2.3 billion for the rights for three Olympics from 2004 to 2008 — Athens, Turin and Beijing.  [AP, Charles Hultzer]

A few million deaths is a statistic, but if  royalties are lost, there  will  be lawsuits.

Update:

China has demanded the U.N. refugee agency grant no more asylum to North Korean refugees flowing into the country until the Beijing Olympics is over, threatening not to issue exit visas for 17 North Korean refugees being protected by the agency in the Chinese capital unless the demand is met, an informed source said Thursday. [Kyodo News, via Breitbart]

And did we hear about this from a righteously outraged UNHCR? Not on your life. We heard this from a letter written by eight members of Congress, from both houses and both parties, who sent a letter to Ban Ki Moon, expressing their concern about the situation and asking for his help in obtaining exit visas for 17 North Korean refugees — including a 3 year-old child — who have been living in “safe houses” for a year and a half.

The lawmakers told Ban that the North Korean refugees need “your support and influence…to call upon Beijing to honor its international commitments and immediately provide these refugees exit visas,” which I suppose is like to asking Kermit the Frog to use his good offices with Jim Henson.

Among the lawmakers who signed the letter (via the Chosun Ilbo) are Sens. Tom Coburn (R, Okla.) and Sam Brownback (R, Kan.), and Reps. Sander Levin (D, Mich.), Ed Royce (R, Cal.), and Joe Pitts (R, Penn.); and (via Yonhap) Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R, Fla.), Diane Watson (D, Cal.), and Frank Wolf (R, Va.).

This qualifies as bipartisan, but just barely, which makes you wonder just what about this issue could possibly be toxic or controversial to any Democrats who wouldn’t sign. If I’m right about the significance of food shortages in Pyongyang, a lot of people are soon going to have to offer some uncomfortable explanations about what they were doing about a lot of truly hideous things we may soon be seeing on our TV screens.

Still, the letter seems to have been effective to some degree. As of today, I’m happy to report that seven of the refugees have arrived in the United States:

No details were released about the identities of the defectors except that they included a mother and her two children, the report said. Since their arrival in Chicago on Thursday, three of them were moved to Seattle on Friday, the report said. [Yonhap, via The Hanky]

This makes a grand total of 43 North Korean refugees admitted into the United States since President Bush signed, then stalled, the North Korean Human Rights Act three and a half years ago.

South Korea also appears to be underperforming in comparison to its new government’s rhetoric on refugees and human rights. For years now, North Koreans have been crossing China on the underground railroad to southeast Asian nations such as Thailand, nations which clearly would rather not have them. Thailand has been complaining about the burden of keeping hundreds of these refugees in overcrowded detention centers, jails, and for a lucky few, safehouses to which they’re paroled.

Hundreds more North Korean refugees are similarly stranded in Laos and Cambodia, which may be even more likely to ship them back to China, which would have little compunction about sending them back to North Korea, to die in concentration camps or in front of public firing squads.

South Korea has been flying these refugees to Seoul in small batches of 40 or 50 a week, saying that its own “Hanawon” facility (a sort of time machine where North Koreans are gradually introduced to 21st Century Earth) is also filled to capacity. Bangkok has been asking Seoul to charter some planes, fill them up, and airlift the refugees to Seoul ASAP. The latest word, however, is that Seoul has refused, possibly for fear of — wait for it — offending the North Koreans.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

It’s not completely unreasonable to see Seoul’s side of this story. After all, as long as the refugees are moved out faster than they arrive in Thailand, isn’t that good enough? (Unless your goal is to intentionally mark the North Korean regime as a global pariah, for which very purpose I happen to have a Web site.)

The problem is that 40 or 50 a week isn’t enough to reduce the backlog very quickly, if at all. According to Yonhap, of the more than 2,500 North Korean refugees who came to South Korea last year, about half came through Thailand. If you multiply 40 or 50 per week by 52 weeks, that’s between roughly 2,100 and 2,600 refugees per year, meaning that refugees are being flown to Seoul only about twice as fast as they’re arriving in Thailand. Consider, however, that with China trying to cleanse itself of North Koreans before the Olympics as the North topples back into famine and probable social chaos, it’s reasonable to expect the refugee exodus to expand quickly.

South Korea now says it will bring in more North Koreans each week, but only 75 instead of 40 or 50. That’s an improvement, but it still fails to grasp the urgency of the situation:

In a telephone interview with the Chosun Ilbo, a female North Korean refugee staying in the immigration camp in Bangkok said, “Skin disease is spreading, and medicine is in short supply. Some women are suffocating and faint.” A male North Korean refugee in the same camp said, “There are seven children under 10. They have difficulty eating. We hope the South Korean government will take these children out ahead of others.” [Chosun Ilbo]

The refugees live under appalling conditions in Thailand, with around 300 of them herded into a facility of just 260 sq.m. One mother reportedly dropped her baby on the ground because she fell asleep standing up; some even have to sleep in shower stalls and bathrooms. Accounts say that many refugees have died or passed out because of fevers. Conditions are so bad that these people, who traveled thousands of kilometers and risked their lives to escape Chinese police, are now saying that they’d rather die — that they’re suffering more now than when they were on the run. [Chosun Ilbo]

Those conditions are bad enough for healthy people, but they must be worse for people who are weakened by a difficult journey and a lifetime without decent food or medical care. The best you can say for this is that it beats Camp 22. I’m sure the Thais are probably doing the best they can with their limited resources, but this makes “Brokedown Palace” sound like the Red Roof Inn. South Korea is undoubtedly better resourced than Thailand to feed and house these people.

In the highly unlikely even the South Koreans want my advice, I’d suggest they keep the problem in its proper perspective. If current trends continue, the South Koreans will have to expand Hanawon’s capacity to 23 million within the next year.