The End of a Family

The Korea Times reports:

A North Korean woman trying to defect to South Korea was taken into custody by Chinese police in Beijing Friday after repeatedly failing to gain refuge at a South Korean school there, a government official said.

The South Koreans claim to have sent an official to the South Korean International School, presumably to try to help this woman. Thanks to the effectiveness of Ban Ki-Moon’s quiet diplomacy, the Chinese police had already hauled her away when the official arrived. She will be sent back to North Korea, where she’ll probably be shot or sent to a slow death in a concentration camp. The idea of South Korea raising any real fuss over this woman’s fate is a facade. The official South Korean policy is to discourage defections by raising as many difficulties in their paths as possible. Here is how Chung Dong-Young, South Korea’s Minister of Unification (a/k/a North Korea’s Minister for Southern Affairs) put it:

For the people in the North to live their lives in the North with their families is necessary both for individuals and for co-existence and co-prosperity. The policies of reconciliation and cooperation call for humanitarian aid to the North along with strengthening of economic cooperation, and continuous pursuit of North Korea’s participation in the international community. . . .

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If this woman’s death means nothing else, it might be the perfect illustration of the callous fatuousness of Chung’s Rot-in-Hell policy. South Korea’s (unmonitored) aid notwithstanding, living her life with her family was not an option for this woman:

The woman, 35, who was identified by her family name Kim, left North Korea for China in May after her husband died of hunger, he said. Her son had also died of illness, he added.

She made her first attempt to defect to the South by visiting a South Korean international school in Dalian, in China’s Liaoning Province, on Wednesday, but her plea to meet with South Korean consulate officials was rejected, Yonhap reported.

And lest anyone accuse me of giving my own government an undeserved break, I’d like to remind all of my American readers–particularly those in the State Department–of what our own law, 22 U.S.C. sec. 7843 says:

The Secretary of State shall undertake to facilitate the submission of applications under section 207 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1157) by citizens of North Korea seeking protection as refugees (as defined in section 101(a)(42) of such Act (8 U.S.C.1101(a)(42)).

Here is a link to the dictionary definition of “facilitate.” Any official of the executive branch who knowingly defies the law, including any ambassador or consul, should be held accountable for that defiance. Perhaps it is time for one of our human rights NGO’s to sue in the U.S. District Court for the D.C. Circuit to seek an injunction ordering the State Department and its embassies to follow the law. I continue to invite someone in the State Department–or anyone else–to tell me how I’m off-base here.