Save the North Korean Refugees Day

 

Today is Save the North Korean Refugees Day:

Everything the defectors told us during North Korean Freedom Week 2017 is proving true. The situation for North Korean refugees is worse than ever before.  There is nothing that Kim Jong Un fears more than the PEOPLE of North Korea who are the ones who have educated us about the horrible suffering in the DPRK.  Kim will do everything in his power to prevent their escape and China's communist government will comply with his wishes despite China's international treaty obligations.  Just recently, a family of five committed suicide rather than face repatriation to North Korea   In this case, a senior member of the North Korea's Worker's Party with his wife, son and two daughters begged the Chinese security forces not to force them back to North Korea.  The World Tribune reported: the Chinese police instead followed an order from Beijing to escort them with heavily armed security guards thousands of miles away to the northeastern province of Liaoning which borders North Korea.   Fearing certain torture and imprisonment and possible execution, the family committed suicide by taking poison.

The defectors have repeatedly told us about the close cooperation between the Chinese and the North Korea security forces.

 
China has been backing the communist dictatorship of North Korea since 1950. Since then, both China and Russia have backed North Korea in any way possible, even using their permanent seats on the UN security council to aid or veto actions against it.


China's more pernicious actions against the North Korean people have been using them as cheap labour, sexually exploiting women and forcibly returning defectors who will then face death for fleeing:

The number of North Korean defectors successfully completing escapes to South Korea has fallen by 12.7 percent in the first eight months of the year.

In a report, South Korea's Ministry of Unification said 780 people managed to reach safety in the South between January and August, but that figure was a significant decline on the same period one year previously as Pyongyang has stepped up its efforts to halt defections.

China has also increased security along its border with the North, Yonhap news reported, and is increasingly repatriating defectors who manage to get into China.

Rights groups believe that China detained at least 41 refugees in July and August and, despite requests from Seoul that they be permitted to travel on to South Korea, they are expected to be repatriated.

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When Kim Jong Un came to power at the end of 2011, at the age of only 27, many North Koreans hoped he would usher in a new era of modernity and openness for the totalitarian state.

That didn’t turn out to be the case.

Kim has ordered a merciless crackdown on the long border with China, and Beijing has stepped up its own vigilance. The flow of people has dropped markedly – but not altogether.

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Eight North Korean defectors in China face involuntary repatriation after being detained by Chinese police last month, the Human Rights Watch group and a pastor who has been assisting them said on Monday. 

Human Rights Watch said Chinese government authorities detained the eight North Koreans in mid-March during what appeared to be a random road check in northeastern China.

Even hiding in South Korea has its risks:

More than 800 North Korean defectors are missing, or their whereabouts are unknown, according to Seoul.

The latest collection of data from South Korea's unification ministry indicates of the more than 30,000 North Koreans who have resettled in the South, a total of 886 defectors have disappeared, News 1 reported Tuesday.

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Moon started with the left-wing lawyers’ guild Minbyun (which once resisted right-wing dictators in the courts, and which has since become Pyongyang’s instrument for waging lawfare against North Korean refugees). He was legal advisor to the Korea Teachers’ and Educational Workers’ Union, whose members were often exposed for propagating pro-North Korean views to their pupils. He managed Roh Moon-Hyun’s presidential campaign, which rode to power on a wave of sometimes-violent anti-Americanism, and served at the highest levels in the Roh administration, where Moon made the decision to solicit Pyongyang’s views before Seoul abstained from a U.N. vote to condemn the North’s crimes against humanity (and later lied about it).

Thus, President Moon entered office with a collection of ideas and advisors whose moment came in 2002 and went in 2008, when South Korea’s electorate regressed back to the mean. As Moon entered office, he knew very well that he had no mandate for a return to a policy of appeasing North Korea called Sunshine, a policy that was a demonstrable failure, that had undermined international sanctions, and that probably helped Pyongyang pay for its nuclear arsenal.

Even as the US rattles its sabre at China, it does not give it pause to cease what are obviously human rights violations.


Everyone is focussed on what some regard as bluster on Trump's part and many direct their anger against the North Koreans who have had no part in instituting the Kim dynasty, nor do they wish to keep it.


If the North Koreans cannot stay, they should at least be allowed to leave.


If possible, do what one can to get involved (please see here).



(Kamsahamnida)