Underground Railroad Update
“From next year, we will fortify the screening procedure to weed out murderers, criminals sought by international police and people disguising themselves as asylum seekers,” Vice Unification Minister Rhee Bong-jo said at a news conference. “Even after their entry, those with criminal records will be punished according to domestic law.”
By “domestic law,” I can only hope he means South Korean law. So would South Korea deny refuge to a North Korean it suspects of killing a policeman or a camp guard in self-defense? Or for encouraging insurrection? Or stealing food to feed his hungry family? Suddenly–and remarkably–South Korea’s own compliance with the 1951 U.N. Convention on Refugees is brought into question. Article I(F) would only permit South Korea to deny refugee status because of past criminal acts in three limited circumstances:
(a) He has committed a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity, as defined in the international instruments drawn up to make provision in respect of such crimes;
(b) He has committed a serious non-political crime outside the country of refuge prior to his admission to that country as a refugee;
(c) He has been guilty of acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Emphasis mine. Also, note that the Convention states, “[h]e has committed,” not “he is suspectedof committing.” That raises the question of a refugee’s right to a hearing before a competent tribunal, something that the United States affords asylum-seekers through its immigration courts. Even Seoul understands that this raises some evidentiary challenges–even with Korea’s anything-goes standards for evidence in criminal trials–but the government has an answer for that, too:
Seoul’s strengthened measures will require diplomatic missions to carry out thorough background checks on all asylum seekers. “It will not be easy to secure evidence because they will have to depend on the statements (of each defector),” Rhee said. “But I think these measures could have a deterrent effect.”
In other words, he’s admitting that the new policy probably won’t get us to the truth of any individual refugee’s criminal past; it will simply subject all would-be asylum-seekers to the third degree to deter them from seeking asylum in the first place. The ministry also came armed with statistics:
The ministry said 10.7 percent of the 1,866 North Korean defectors who entered South Korea this year had criminal records. During the first six months of this year, 40 fraudulent defections have been detected–24 ethnic Koreans from China who disguised themselves as North Korean defectors to come to South Korea and 16 North Koreans who posed as Korean-Chinese.
. . . which is somewhat reminiscent of the supposed “G.I. crime wave” in Korea we heard so much about, and which turned out to consist mostly of traffic offenses. Color me skeptical until I see a breakdown of just what the crimes were, what evidence supports the conclusion of guilt, and whether the crimes would constitute “serious nonpolitical offenses.” He also made this fairly astonishing statement:
The government will also strengthen the monitoring of “brokers” who have been involved in arranging the defections of North Koreans as 83 percent of the 1,866 asylum seekers had been required to give brokers an average of 4 million won ($3,800) as commission, Rhee said. Brokers sometimes employ violence to extort money, ministry officials said.
This is a deliberate and dishonest blurring of a key distinction. There is a serious human trafficking problem with North Korean refugees, mainly women sold into slavery by other North Koreans and Chinese. But since those people are clearly not subject to South Korean criminal jurisdiction, Rhee must not be talking about them. Clearly, he’s talking about investigating people who reside in South Korea and who help North Koreans at great person risk and expense. He’s talking about denying visas to–or jailing–pastors and activists of the underground railroad, who he actually has the balls to compare to white slavers. He’d better have some evidence for that charge. If not, it sounds a lot like he’s simply parroting the Chinese party line that underground railroad workers and the journalists who document their activities are “human traffickers.” What none of this acknowledges, of course, is that there would be no human smuggling problem if China and South Korea acted according to their legal and moral obligations under the 1951 Convention.
Did I mention that there will also be a time limit to claim asylum?
Rhee said the government will not give North Koreans tickets to the South if they had resettled in a third country more than 10 years ago.
Once again, Rhee needs to scurry back to his lawyers and ask them about Article I(A)(2) of the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention, which doesn’t seem to make room for this 10-year business:
In the case of a person who has more than one nationality, the term “the country of his nationality” shall mean each of the countries of which he is a national, and a person shall not be deemed to be lacking the protection of the country of his nationality if, without any valid reason based on well-founded fear, he has not availed himself of the protection of one of the countries of which he is a national.
The Convention also states that residence in a third country by itself is insufficient to deny a person refugee eligibility. The refugee must acquire the third country’s nationality and protection, which is unlikely for most of the North Koreans.
And finally, since it’s almost Christmas, let’s be sure to add injury to insult:
The vice minister also announced the Seoul government will slash financial subsidies for North Korean defectors by two-thirds to 10 million won ($9,100), while using the remaining 18 million won ($16,400) as incentives to encourage job training. . . . “We’ve changed our focus in policy from protection to education for self-reliance,” Rhee said. “We’ve concluded that providing money has not been successful in helping them resettle here.”
How fitting. One of the few words of Korean many foreigners do know is their word for “self-reliance.”