Home  >  Refugees

Category: Refugees

June 1, 2008

LiNK: S. Korea Is Speeding Up Admissions of Refugees in Thailand

This came to me  by e-mail a few days ago,  not from LiNK, but from Human Rights Without Frontiers,  another NGO that works with them  to assist North Korean refugees: Dear Friends, Thank you all for stepping up and voicing your concern for the welfare of North Korean refugees in Thailand. Last month, on April 23, I traveled to Bangkok and met with officials at the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs, expressing all of our concern over the treatment and...
Categories Refugees/Southeast Asia
May 31, 2008

MUST SEE: BBC / Chosun Ilbo Video on North Korean Refugees in China

In the brilliant sunlight of an icy February day, the camera takes us onto the frozen river.  A female figure lies, face down, hip raised in the classic pose of a reclining beauty, a North Korean woman – fully dressed – who fell while crossing. Like a sculpture cast in bronze, nameless, iconic, she is a monument to all the fallen who went unfilmed, their deaths unremarked. The Chinese guide who has brought the crew to see her has seen...
Categories China & Korea/Human Rights/Refugees
May 27, 2008

Guest Post: Dan Bielefeld Goes to a Screening of “Crossing” at the National Assembly

[Update:   Apologies — I had Dan’s name misspelled before.]   I met Dan Bielefeld at a LiNK event in Washington two years ago, and he has been living in Seoul since shortly thereafter.  After Dan’s excellent photography of the Chinese riot in Seoul last month, I invited him to guest-post here.  He was recently invited to a screening of “Crossing” at the Korean National Assembly, and here is review.  Since this is Dan’s first post, I’ll introduce him this...
Categories Korean Society/Refugees
May 27, 2008

Documentary: Escape from North Korea

This will be the first of two documentaries from Journeyman Pictures I’ll be featuring this week. “Escape from North Korea” follows an entire North Korean family all the way from their relatively privileged life in Pyongyang to the end of their long journey to escape the North, starting with clandestine camera phone images. For both of these documentaries, a big hat tip to commenter and blogger usinkorea.
Categories Activism/Defectors/Refugees
May 24, 2008

Murder, Plain and Simple: North Korean Snipers Killing Refugees Along the Chinese Border

[Updated below with photographs; Digg it here.] Helping Hands Korea, one of the most intrepid and trustworthy organizations that assists North Korean refugees escape from their repressive, famine-plagued homeland, has written to me with a detailed account of how the North Korean and Chinese militaries have joined forces to prevent North Koreans from escaping their homeland, one where large numbers are people are now starving to death once again because the government won’t feed them and won’t let them fend...
Categories Activism/Border Control/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/Refugees
May 16, 2008

Korean Church Coalition Launches Ad Campaign on Behalf of N.K. Refugees

I’ve been encouraged about the direction of the movement to publicize the plight of the North Korean people since the KCC and its leader, Sam Kim, threw their weight behind it. They’re bringing much-needed money, manpower, organization, and clout to the fight, and now they’ve launched a modest ad campaign in Korean-language media: I can’t wait to see how the Chinese netizens react to this. It’s probably true — though not necessarily helpful to their cause — that the image...
Categories Activism/Human Rights/Refugees
May 6, 2008

Trailer for New South Korean Film, “Crossing”

Update: LiNK’s Joseph Hong sends: LiNK WILL ALSO HOST a private screening of “Crossing” in NYC on Thursday, May 8 at the ImaginAsian Theater, 239 E 59th St (Btwn 2nd & 3rd Ave.) New York, NY 10022. There are only a limited number of seats, but if you would like to attend, please RSVP to joseph@linkglobal. Shin Dong Hyuk will also be speaking in other locations, and I hope to get you more information on that soon. [End update] Over...
Categories Korean Society/Refugees
May 2, 2008

Pick Up ROK, Drop On Foot

[Scroll down for updates.] The Korean Church Coalition passes along this press release on Chinese efforts to stop  a North Korean human rights  demonstration in Seoul, how those efforts backfired, and how the Chinese response since then has exacerbated the reaction.  kcc-press-release.pdf Officially, the best China can offer is something that’s not widely perceived as an apology by South Koreans (who can be fairly reluctant to interpret apologies as such  once offended).  Unofficially, Chinese “netizens” continue to propagate asinine denials...
Categories Activism/China & Korea/Human Rights/Refugees
May 1, 2008

Must Read: Marcus Noland Reports N. Korea “Headed Toward Outright Famine”

This is from a new paper released by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and one of OFK’s all-time favorite North Korea experts (and have you read his book yet?): North Korea is once again headed toward widespread food shortage, hunger, and risk of outright famine. According to Peterson Institute Senior Fellow Marcus Noland, “The country is in its most precarious situation since the end of the famine a decade ago. Calculations by Noland and Stephan Haggard, University of California,...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/Refugees
April 27, 2008

Seoul Invaded by “The Ugly Chinese”

The most disastrous Olympic torch run in history  has ended with a new low: On Sunday, clashes broke out in Seoul near the relay start between a group of 500 Chinese supporters and about 50 demonstrators criticizing Beijing‘s policies, carrying a banner reading, “Free North Korean refugees in China.” The students threw stones and water bottles as some 2,500 police tried to keep the two sides apart.  [AP] And so we add another excellent reason, if any more were needed...
Categories Activism/China/China & Korea/Refugees
April 22, 2008

House Foreign Affairs Committee Leaders Co-Sponsor Bi-Partisan N.K. Human Rights Bill

[Updated and bumped  4/22:   The GPO has published the full text; it’s here:  hr-5834.pdf It mainly reauthorizes the existing Act, tightens State’s reporting requirements, and adds more power and prestige to the post of Special Envoy.  It also demands quick action from State on increasing radio broadcasting and “facilitating the submission of applications” for asylum at our consular facilities in Asia.]   I don’t have a link to the bill or this press release yet, but it’s from a...
Categories Human Rights/Refugees/U.S. Politics
April 15, 2008

Keeping the Pressure on Beijing

South Korean and American  are pushing the issue of North Korean refugees as the Olympics approach, as as other issues focus intense pressure on China.  Here’s what’s happening in Seoul: Onlookers watch as a man tied up in ropes is led down a crowded pedestrian street by a woman holding a plastic assault rifle. Another man holding a megaphone explains that the re-enactment depicts a scene that has become an everyday occurrence in China. A multinational coalition of activists, calling...
Categories Activism/China & Korea/Human Rights/Refugees
April 1, 2008

A North Korean Runs in a Real Election

The Daily NK introduces us to North Korean defector Lee Ae Ran, who represents another step forward in the development of a class of post-Kim Jong Il leaders for North Korea. “I know it is laughable that a North Korean defector is running for a seat in the South Korean National Assembly,” the candidate admitted during a phone interview with Daily NK on March 28. She added, “In North Korea, if you come from a bad family background, there is...
Categories Defectors/Democracy/Korean Politics
March 31, 2008

LiNK: Project Real Sunshine

[Update:  LiNK reports that they’ve extended the deadline to sign up for Project Real Sunshine through April 7th.]   [Correction:   A reader points out that I’ve confused two LiNK projects, “Project  Real Sunshine” and  the “Chollima Leadership Program.”  My apologies.  The Chollima  Leadership Program  is  actually the  one I  described in the post below; Project True Sunshine is an advocacy project,  which I should have remembered.  Fortunately, Andy Jackson didn’t get confused and put up a perfectly fine post.]...
Categories Activism/Reconstruction/Refugees/Regime Change
March 30, 2008

Human Rights Activists Help 12 North Koreans Enter S. Korean Embassy in Laos

A group of six  human rights activists from Europe,  Asia, and Oceania was  in Vientiane, Laos, recently to coordinate efforts on behalf of North Korean refugees when they  decided to move beyond mere words.  Here is an excerpt from  the letter one of them e-mailed me recently: It has come to our attention that twelve North Korean defectors have recently arrived in Laos after traveling through China.  They were on their way to freedom in South Korea, but have since...
Categories Activism/Refugees
March 25, 2008

S. Korean Human Rights Commission Will Investigate Atrocities in N. Korea

South Korea’s human rights agency said yesterday it would launch a probe into abuses in North Korea by interviewing defectors from the communist state.  The National Human Rights Commission has included investigating its neighbor ¡ ¯s record as one of its major tasks this year. “We will conduct a survey on the overall human rights conditions in North Korea this year by hearing from defectors, said commission spokesman Lee Myung-jae.  The number of defectors to be interviewed could be in...
Categories Appeasement/Defectors/Human Rights/Refugees/The Camps
March 22, 2008

China Arrests 40 More North Korean Refugees (Updated: Threatens UNHCR, Too; More Refugees Leave China and Thailand)

And the gold medal in brutality goes to … Chinese police have arrested some 40 North Koreans in a series of raids on a border area in Liaoning province, with others detained as they tried to cross the Tumen River into China, according to authoritative Korean sources.  [….] Plainclothes Chinese security agents conducted a large-scale raid March 17 on North Korean defectors in Shenyang, Liaoning province, arresting about 40 people, sources in China who spoke to RFA’s Korean service on...
Categories China/China & Korea/Refugees
March 19, 2008

“Most of the film had to be kept secret for the past years.”

So says the director of a new South Korean film about a North Korean orphan living secretly in China. “Crossing,” a story directed by Kim Tae-gyun and starring Korean TV star Cha In-pyo, depicts an 8,000 km arduous and lonely journey made by an 11-year-old North Korean boy in search of his coal-miner father who ended up defecting to South Korea. [….] “I had to be very cautious in making this film because of the political sensitivity of the defector...
Categories Censorship/Refugees