Category: Southeast Asia

Two Thais have been arrested for allegedly helping 14 North Koreans to illegally enter Thailand’s northern border town Chiang Saen, local police said Monday. Nikom Chaikul, 36, was arrested last Thursday when he was driving a minibus carrying eight North Koreans — four men and four women aged 19 to 66 — heading to Chiang Saen, according to marine police in Chiang Saen. [Kyodo] The fourteen North Koreans were charged with illegal entry. President Lee’s rhetoric about refugees and human...

Roughly 80% of the refugees — 314 to be exact — are women. The refugees, arrested by Thai police over the last three months, face almost certain death if sent back to North Korea. They are demanding that they be allowed to travel to South Korea.  An NGO representative accuses South Korea of failing to help them: However, “For whatever the reason, the South Korean government is not bringing these refugees who have been waiting for release even though the...

Thailand is annoyed, and has just sentenced dozens more to short jail terms for illegal border crossing.  This from Reuters and the Bangkok Post, dated November 30, 2006. The Foreign Ministry complained yesterday that local and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) were hampering Thailand ‘s efforts to prevent illegal entry by North Korean defectors. The ministry’s complaint came after police rounded up 59 North Koreans in Pathum Thani province on Tuesday, the third mass arrest in four months. The UNHCR, which...

Update:   Kyoto says the number is 91. They are in Thailand, a country that is unlikely to send them to North Korea.  The same article also reports that 159 of the most recent defectors have been allowed to move on, probably to South Korea and the United States.  If they’ve arrived here, then it’s a pretty well-kept secret.  It looks like this could be another record year for defections. 

[Update:   Grant Montgomery has more on the underground railroad’s recent activities. ] Twenty of them have arrived in South Korea.  Of the remainder, most are still mulling over whether to ask for asylum in the United States or South Korea.

Update: Much more information below, courtesy of Human Rights Without Frontiers. Warning: it’s pretty disturbing stuff. Seven North Korean women have turned themselves in to Thai authorities in the Nong Khai of Northeastern Thailand (map). By my count, there are at least 289 North Koreans, almost all women and children, in Thai custody now. Thailand does not seem likely to deport them to China or North Korea, but you have to wonder what’s going on after all this time. Life...