Lefkowitz: N.Korean Refugees Welcome in America
Look at this baby’s face. Then try to comprehend what will happen to her if she is sent back to North Korea.
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With somewhere around 175 North Korean refugees in a state of limbo in Thailand, the South Korean government is sending the right signals, yet no one is landing at Incheon Airport yet. President Roh and UniFiction Minister Lee Jong Seok must not be looking forward to more scenes like this, perhaps believing that they have some rational relationship to tensions with the North, but also because it would mean a reversal of former UniFiction Minister Chung Dong Young’s die-in-place / rot-in-hell policy. They seem to be debating whether to filter them in in small groups or load them onto one plane and be done with it.
One is entitled to suspect that they may hope for some other way out, but yesterday’s statement from Jay Lefkowitz, extending America’s welcome to Korea’s least-wanted citizens, has made that option unpalatable for Korea’s pride:
The United States will keep its door open for North Korean people wanting to flee oppression in their homeland and continue to serve as a “safe haven,” a U.S. government-funded broadcaster reported Saturday, quoting a senior U.S. diplomat in Washington.
“We are looking to help facilitate the passage of North Korean refugees into freedom. And to the extent that North Korean refugees would like to come to the United States, that is something that we want to make available,” Jay Lefkowitz, Washington’s special envoy for North Korean human rights, told Radio Free Asia (RFA).
“Obviously, as long as there are millions of North Koreans who are suffering under really a most brutal dictatorship, it can’t be said that we have succeeded in our efforts entirely,”he said, referring to the regime of leader Kim Jong-il and the U.S.’s North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004.
Effective public pressure is cause for optimism. Yonhap has covered the North Korean Freedom Coalition’s letter to the Thai Ambassador (based on my draft) prominently, and printed several excerpts. Human Rights Without Frontiers, the only major international human rights organization with any consistent and measurable concern for the North Korean people, also issued an e-mail appeal. Life Funds for North Korean Refugees, a group with substantial influence in Japan, has added its voice. Even the UNHCR, which for so many years struggled valiantly to do absolutely nothing, seems to have been dragged into some sort of productive role:
The UNHCR spokeswoman in Bangkok, Kitty McKinsey, says her agency hopes to send all the refugees to a third country.
“Yes, all the North Koreans who have been arrested are people of concern to UNHCR, and we are in consultations with the Thai Government to make sure that their rights are protected and to try to find a human solution,” she said. “We hope that very soon, all of these people will be allowed to depart to a third country.”
Finally, with South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun headed for the United States to serve President Bush with divorce papers despite ferocious domestic opposition (President Bush is reportedly quite happy to accept them), he must hope that the meeting will be free of public acrimony. The timing of the arrests is thus fortunate, for a South Korean failure to accept these refugees, most of them women and children, before that meeting would likely provoke a rebuke from President Bush. Such a rebuke that would likely become public and add fuel to charges that Roh has alienated its greatest ally.
For the coming months, there is less cause for optimism. Recent reports suggests that hunger will worsen dramatically in North Korea this year, due to recent floods, North Korea’s rejection of international aid, and a degree of donor fatigue brought on by North Korea’s belligerence and refusal to allow aid monitoring. The number of refugees defecting from North to South has already increased by 60% over this time last year. If the North Koreans foresee another famine, they may try to flee before they grow too weak to make the journey. Refugee accounts that more outside information is reaching into North Korea will add to that incentive. Finally, even before these arrests, there had been persistent reports of other (?) refugees in hiding in “third countries,” waiting to enter South Korea.
China will continue its unlawful repatriations — abetting murder, really — of any North Koreans it catches, and it will catch more this year than last. Its decision to permit three refugees who had taken shelter in the U.S. Consulate in Shenyang to leave for America should not be taken as a sign of a greater policy shift. China simply doesn’t want North Koreans crossing into its territory, and probably doesn’t want instability in North Korea, either. That means that more North Koreans will continue to suffer and perish, whether in their homes or as they flee them.
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