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Chosun Ilbo Re-Runs Accounts of “On the Border” Refugees

If you haven’t seen “On the Border,” the Chosun Ilbo has re-posted the accounts of the refugees featured in the documentary:

– Young-Hwa, a 19 year-old girl crossing China and Laos with her family.

– Kim Soon-Ok, the young mother of a handicapped child, forced to leave him behind in China to earn money for his medical treatment and passage to South Korea.

– Mun Yun-Hee, a 26 year-old woman who allowed herself to be sold to escape starvation in her homeland.

– Kim Man-Soo, the almost indescribably tough logger who escaped from a camp in Siberia and spent the next ten years making his way though the wilderness.

– Choi Sung-Ryung, an 8 year-old orphan boy who found himself alone in Thailand and at the mercy of South Korean bureaucrats.

– The correspondents’ story of how Chinese guides are now conducting “human safaris” along the North Korean border.

I hope one day the Chosun Ilbo will tell us what ever happened to all these people. There are also video links at the end of each story. I presume they’re all in Korean, but they didn’t work for me. A segment of the BBC version is available here.

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  1. I hope one day the Chosun Ilbo will tell us what ever happened to all these people.

    Nope…just advertising PR campaign for the safari. They’re probably in on it.

  2. Senator Sam Brownback and President-elect Obama publicly stated that they support and will campaign for the Jericho initiative, a proposal that will force China to send refugees to third nations; furthermore, in a letter he wrote to the Korean Church Coalition for North Korean Freedom, Obama expressed his intention to enforce Article 14 and 33 (this SUPERCEDES any mere bilateral treaty which China may have with the DPRK), protecting these 300,000 defectors in hiding from forcible repatriation to the DPRK.

    I just learned about this through an article published this past summer in an ROK newspaper – again, our media in the US has done a “a poor job on reporting the wider North Korea story: its people and their suffering, the society in which they live, and what these things say about the failure of the international community to respond to a grave humanitarian crisis.” We need to find out why this is the case, as it hinders assurances that Obama will follow through on his promise to make this a priority in his administration.