Five Years in Hell
SEOUL: In 1999, a group of seven North Koreans fleeing their country was intercepted in Russia. The Russian authorities, rejecting appeals from the United Nations and human rights groups, sent them to China. China returned them to North Korea.
In the ensuing uproar in South Korea over the government’s failure to rescue them, the foreign minister had to step down. And then, the seven were largely forgotten. Those who remember them may have recalled their frightened faces on Russian television, where they said they feared death if sent back to their Communist homeland.
Now, two of them have escaped again and arrived in South Korea, contradicting what the North Korean government told United Nations officials about the group’s fate - that most had been returned to their homes and jobs. One brought with him accounts of life and death at North Korea’s infamous prison camp No. 15, known to the outside world as Yodok.
One reads this story and wonders, are things better now than it was in 1999? I’d say yes, but change has been glacial at best.
DPRK Refugee Repatriation: An Example We Know About
The 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the supplemental Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees of 1967 has been ignored for years by both China and Russia. This is just one specific example of the consequences (h…
Trackback by DPRK Studies — June 1, 2007 @ 2:18 pm