Home  >  Refugees

Category: Refugees

November 27, 2006

CNN Reports from the Yalu River

The Daily NK provides this link to the video of the broadcast (which worked fine for me).  They show scenes from across the river and interview a refugee woman on the Chinese side. It’s nothing new, really, although it bears constant repetition that North Koreans aren’t brainwashed automatons.  Increasingly, they’re willing to say just what they think of the Dear Leader’s bounty … even to foreign journalists. On a related note, don’t miss the Daily NK’s follow-up to the protest...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Inside NK/Refugees/Resistance
November 19, 2006

‘The North Korea Refugee Relief and Reconstruction Act’

Several weeks ago, K-blogs were all aflutter with Robert Kaplan’s article on the prospects for destabilizing chaos when the North Korean regime collapses.  I argued in response that the United States should begin planning to fund reconstruction and organize an emergency humanitarian response, and that this ought to be one of the main contingencies  around which a U.S.-Korea alliance should be designed.  Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has now introduced a bill to address those issues.  Here’s the summary;...

Categories An Alliance?/Reconstruction/Refugees/Washington Views
October 27, 2006

Must Read: International Crisis Group on N. Korean Refugees

It’s probably the most comprehensive and detailed report I’ve yet seen on the subject, and from a non-partisan and balanced group.  The most  immediately relevant  point is that things could soon get much worse: Even without a strong response to the 9 October 2006 nuclear test that targets the North’s economy, the internal situation could soon get much worse. The perfect storm may be brewing for a return to famine in the North. Last year, Pyongyang reintroduced the same public...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/Refugees
October 25, 2006

Three More N. Korean Refugees Headed to U.S. from China

We’re about to see another test of that oddly arousing “lips and teeth” analogy. Two boys in their early teens without family and a man about 18 or 19 years old were taken without incident into the consulate in Shenyang with a member of Liberty in North Korea, according to a spokesman for the grass-roots group who asked not to be identified for security reasons. The group, also known as LiNK, operates orphanages in China that provide for North Koreans...

Categories China & Korea/Refugees/Uncategorized
October 21, 2006

Another MUST-READ: NYT on the Erosion of the Information Blockade

Many thanks to a reader for forwarding. The Times is on an absolute roll with its recent Korea reporting. Here, we learn more of the underground network that can sow dissent, and that could eventually form the foundation of a resistance movement. The increasing ease with which people are able to buy their way out of North Korea suggests that, beneath the images of goose-stepping soldiers in Pyongyang, the capital, the government’s still considerable ability to control its citizens is...

Categories Refugees/Religion/Resistance
October 19, 2006

Interview: L. Gordon Flake, Executive Director, Mansfield Foundation

Gordon Flake (bio)  is two things that make his opinions interesting and valuable to me.  First, he’s a fluent Korean speaker, and those of us who aren’t are always at some disadvantage to those who do when we are gathering the facts we process into our views.  Second — and Gordon may not agree with this characterization — his views  strike me as classically  liberal. His views are probably more independent and less jaundiced by partisan bias or  ambitions  than...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Blogs & Blogging/Famine & Food Aid/Google Earth/Human Rights/Korean Politics/Korean Society/Media Criticism/NK Economics/Proliferation/Refugees/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views
October 16, 2006

Alleged Chinese Documents Reveal Depth of N. Korean Refugees’ Suffering

I can’t verify the documents’ authenticity, of course. That’s the natural advantage that comes with being China, North Korea, or any other opaque dictatorship — you can deny anything without having to let anyone search for the truth. Deniability in the narrower sense is always plausible. In the greater sense, it isn’t. This Wall Street Journal report merely adds some detail, and expands some of the parameters, of what we already know. The Border Police document, dated Jan. 10, 2005,...

Categories China/China & Korea/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/Refugees
September 18, 2006

Two More Refugees Take Shelter in the U.S. Consulate in Shenyang

As with a similar incident at the same facility this year, these refugees first entered the South Korean Consulate next door and then jumped the wall separating the two facilities. The additional defections mean that nine North Koreans have defected today alone, with a striking number of refugees expressing a preference to go to the United States rather than South Korea. It may be time for those who predicted that the North Korean Human Rights Act would have no effect...

Categories China/China & Korea/Refugees
September 18, 2006

Seven N. Korean Refugee Women Turn Themselves in to Thai Authorities

Update: Much more information below, courtesy of Human Rights Without Frontiers. Warning: it’s pretty disturbing stuff. Seven North Korean women have turned themselves in to Thai authorities in the Nong Khai of Northeastern Thailand (map). By my count, there are at least 289 North Koreans, almost all women and children, in Thai custody now. Thailand does not seem likely to deport them to China or North Korea, but you have to wonder what’s going on after all this time. Life...

Categories Refugees/Southeast Asia
September 8, 2006

Six More North Korean Refugees Caught at the Laos-Thailand Border

The refugees, including one child, were arrested on September 2nd at the village of Sri Chiangmai in the Nong Khai region of Northeastern Thailand, along with Kim Hee Tae, a South Korean humanitarian aid worker. Mr. Kim was able to make bail by paying a large amount of money to the authorities; the refugees remain jailed in Nong Khai. Norbert Vollertsen is with them, and provided the details for this post. The timing is fortuitous, with the new E.U. Resolution...

Categories Refugees/Southeast Asia
September 7, 2006

European Parliament Passes Resolution on N. Korean Refugees in Thailand

Let no one dispute the effectiveness of groups like Freedom House and Human Rights Without Frontiers. Their influence in Europe is growing, and that influence may preempt a source of cash, trade, and diplomatic support that has proven so useful to Iran. I agree with Nick Eberstadt and Jae Ku that Europe’s support for the North Korean people could shame South Koreans into action. Maybe there’s hope for Europe yet. Full text follows: ======================================== The Resolution was tabled by Hubert...

Categories Europe/Human Rights/Refugees
September 3, 2006

Breaking the Blockade

[Update: Andrei Lankov has a must-read piece on radio broadcasting in the Asia Times Online.] Where there is demand, there will be a supply, and the trickle of alternative information to North Korea, though small, shows signs of persistence and of having a receptive market. In addition to Radio Free NK and Open Radio for North Korea, there is now a Japan-based broadcaster, Shiokaze. The DailyNK interviews its director. Although their original focus is on sending messages to Japanese abductees,...

Categories Abductions/Activism/Appeasement/Censorship/Democracy/Japan & Korea/Reconstruction/Refugees/Resistance/Uncategorized
August 29, 2006

30 More N. Koreans Seek U.S. Asylum

From the Korea Herald: About 30 North Korean defectors are seeking asylum in the United States, Radio Free Asia quoted a mission leader working with refugees as saying yesterday. In an interview with the Wasington-based news channel, Rev. Cheon Ki-won of Durihana Mission said, “A second group of North Korean defectors will soon be entering the United States following the first six in May.” Cheon did not specify the identities of the defectors or their current whereabouts. “The number of...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Refugees
August 28, 2006

Welcome Home

A missionary who was imprisoned for 15 months after trying to aid North Korean refugees in China has returned home to a greeting of balloons and flowers from delighted relatives and friends. Wearing a baseball hat and dark sunglasses Monday night on his arrival at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, the Rev. Phillip Jun Buck, 68, said returning home was like being in a “dream state.” A son, Jamin Yoon, 35, holding flowers as his father was swarmed by reporters, said his...

Categories Activism/China/China & Korea/Human Rights/Refugees
August 26, 2006

Lefkowitz: N.Korean Refugees Welcome in America

Updates: This chatroom for English-speaking expats in Thailand has pictures of the refugees and pages of outraged, sympathic comments. One of them points to this BBC story. The Thai government’s reaction is to increase patrols on the Mekong to keep the refugees out. Look at this baby’s face. Then try to comprehend what will happen to her if she is sent back to North Korea. . . ====== (original post follows) ====== With somewhere around 175 North Korean refugees in...

Categories "United" Nations/Activism/Human Rights/Refugees/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views
August 23, 2006

An Open Letter to Ambassador Lee Tae-Shik on the 169 Refugees Held in Thailand

[Update: Foreign Minister Ban Ki Moon is promising to take “appropriate measures,” which is encouraging in a vague sort of way. Foreign diplomats also sound optimistic. I infer that this was an underground railroad operation, and get the distinct idea that it was betrayed from within, as I also suspect in the case of a previous operation in Laos. Note also that various reports count as many as 179 refugees, most of them women and kids. Separately, Yonhap reports a...

Categories "United" Nations/Activism/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/Refugees