DPR KOREA 19 February 2000
>
> 1. N. Korean Refugees Insecure In China. West Silent Despite Forced
> Repatriations. Washington Post. 19 Feb 2000
>
> For information, to show current reporting. Forwarding of this item by
> WFP
> does not imply endorsement by the UN of the contents of the article.
>
> *************************************************
>
> 1. N. Korean Refugees Insecure In China
> West Silent Despite Forced Repatriations
>
> By John Pomfret
> Washington Post Foreign Service
> Saturday, February 19, 2000; Page A01
>
> RENMING, China - By the time his brothers brought him the holiday meal
> that
> would save his life, Kim Jae Sung had spent 23 days in a North Korean
> cell
> the size of an upright coffin. His solitary confinement followed a
> death
> sentence for sneaking 11 relatives out of the world's most isolated
> country
> and into China.
>
> Inside the meal package was a spoon that his guards had not seen. Kim
> used
> the handle to open the lock of his cell. He cracked the locks on two
> other
> gates and emerged outside for the first time in three months. It was
> nighttime, he recalled, and on wobbly legs he began the two-mile sprint
> to
> the Tumen River and the Chinese border.
>
> Nearly a year later, Kim, 34, is certain what would await him if he
> were
> returned to North Korea. "If the Chinese arrest and send me back, my
> government will kill me," said the former railway worker, speaking in
> an
> isolated Chinese farmhouse guarded by dogs and surrounded by snowy
> mountains.
>
> But like tens of thousands of other undocumented North Korean refugees,
> Kim
> and his relatives face growing uncertainty about their future here. In
> the
> past year, the situation of an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 refugees in
> this
> part of China has become increasingly precarious as the Chinese
> government--and those in the West--have seen a thawing in their
> relationship
> with the North Korean government.
>
> Last month, Russia and China cooperated to forcibly repatriate seven
> North
> Koreans in what the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees called a direct
> violation of international law. U.N. refugee protection officers had
> interviewed the seven in the Russian port city Vladivostok, determined
> that
> the refugees faced "grave consequences" if they returned home and
> committed
> to sending them to South Korea, U.N. officials said.
>
> Despite a record of handing 340 North Koreans over to U.N. protection
> officers for transit to South Korea in recent years, Russia sent the
> seven to
> China, and China sent them home. "Total silence" was how one U.N.
> official
> described the Western response to the forced repatriation. "This was a
> direct
> and clear violation of international law. In most parts of the world,
> the
> Americans would be outraged."
>
> Aid officials said the silence fits a pattern that started last year
> when
> North Korea indicated that it was suspending its development of weapons
> of
> mass destruction. Foreign governments grateful for the easing of
> tension over
> North Korea's weapons programs have been less energetic about opposing
> Pyongyang on refugees or pressuring North Korea's leaders to distribute
> foreign food aid equitably to its famished population, aid officials
> say.
>
> Last December, 21 Western aid agencies issued a joint statement
> blasting
> North Korea's government for blocking their efforts to reach the most
> vulnerable segment of North Korea's population and to monitor the aid
> they
> distribute. Oxfam became the third major aid agency to leave North
> Korea
> because it was not allowed to oversee aid shipments. No Western
> government
> joined the call for more access to monitor aid, even though it is their
> food
> and assistance at stake.
>
> Since 1995, North Korea has received $580 million in food and other
> assistance, mostly from the United States, to ease the suffering of
> millions
> of North Koreans. Refugees and aid workers said that misuse of aid as a
> political weapon and its sale on the black market have forced tens of
> thousands of North Koreans to face starvation or to flee. Attempting to
> leave
> North Korea has its own risks--beatings, deprivation and even death for
> those
> who are caught.
>
> South Korean intelligence officials said North Korea's population has
> fallen
> from 25 million to 22 million during the famine. Western aid officials
> operating in North Korea said they have seen evidence of a growing
> underclass
> of homeless children and vagabonds who are ignored by the state.
>
> In some areas, refugees estimate that the death toll from the famine
> has
> reached 15 percent of the population. In addition, Western experts said
> the
> government of Kim Jong Il, bolstered by Western aid, appears to be
> stronger
> than it was when the famine began in 1995.
>
> The North Korean government has received international dividends for
> its
> apparent decision to suspend its weapons programs, which include work
> on a
> ballistic missile capable of reaching much of Asia. The United States
> announced last month that a high-ranking North Korean official would
> conduct
> talks in Washington later this year. Washington already has lifted some
> economic sanctions against Pyongyang. Other countries are following
> suit. And
> Japan recently announced that it would resume aid deliveries.
>
> Meanwhile, more than a dozen North Korean refugees from different parts
> of
> the country who were interviewed here painted a portrait of a food
> situation
> growing worse, with foreign aid going to bolster the government and
> international monitors kept at a distance from the corrupt practices or
> bleak
> realities of daily life.
>
> "Ten percent for war preparations, 10 percent for the people and 80
> percent
> for the officials" is how one North Korean doctor, who fled to China
> late
> last year, described the distribution of Western medicine in his
> hospital in
> Chongjin, the third biggest city in North Korea. "The United Nations
> came to
> my hospital once. It was very sad. We would have loved to have told
> them the
> truth, but that would have meant arrest for us. So we just smiled."
>
> Kim Jae Ru, 67, a member of the Korean Workers' Party, worked for
> decades at
> the vast mine in Kumdug in South Hamgyong province. As the only major
> mine
> operating in North Korea, it receives a healthy ration of donated food,
> a
> mixture of 80 percent corn and 20 percent rice.
>
> Workers who operate drills get a little under two pounds a day, drivers
> about
> a pound and a half, families that are not working get about nine
> ounces,
> students about 12 ounces, children 3 1/2 to 7 ounces. Kim, a retired
> party
> official at the mine, received a little more than a pound because he
> was
> considered patriotic. But workers at a food processing plant nearby
> received
> neither food nor electricity.
>
> "They would come over to our house to stay warm and watch TV," he said.
> "But
> we couldn't give them food. Sons and fathers are struggling among
> themselves
> for food, so how can we share it with others?"
>
> "I am not saying this is easy," he continued. "I have watched my
> friends'
> children die. After a while, I stopped seeing them. It was too much."
>
> Kim said his five sons all survived the famine, in part because he used
> his
> party connection to secure food and in part because one son was a
> member of
> an elite military unit that also had access to food and medicine.
>
> "Only the children of powerful or useful people get U.N. food all the
> time.
> The normal people get U.N. food only on special days, like the
> birthdays of
> [former leader] Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il," he said. "But in private
> markets, there is lots of U.N. food and medicine. The dealers say,
> 'This is
> very nice. This is U.N. food' or, 'This is very nice. This is U.N.
> medicine.'
> "
>
> North Korea allows the World Food Program to assign about 25 people to
> monitor a program that is supposed to feed more than 6 million people.
> All
> the monitors' movements must be approved by North Korean officials and
> they
> are accompanied wherever they go.
>
> "We supply food to schools, nurseries and kindergartens but we realize
> that
> not all children are in those institutions," said Peter Smerdon, a
> spokesman
> for the World Food Program. "We are very concerned about the children
> we are
> missing. . . . We know we are not reaching everyone who needs food."
>
> Fleeing the country is an option only for the swift and courageous.
> Refugees
> said people who have been arrested three times for illegally leaving
> the
> country risk execution, although the law is not carried out everywhere
> with
> the same vigilance. Regardless, returnees are placed in labor camps
> where
> conditions are poor and disease is rife.
>
> Nearly two years ago, Sun Haiyu, a former textile plant worker from
> North
> Hamgyong province, crossed into China by swimming the Tumen River.
> After
> scampering up a steep bank in darkness, she knocked on the doors of
> farmers'
> houses. A Korean-Chinese family took her in. Within a week, the family
> had
> decided that the slim North Korean woman would marry their son. Within
> another week, they were wed.
>
> Several months later, on Sept. 2, 1998, Chinese police barged into
> their
> house, looking for refugees. Sun was caught. Local police told family
> members
> they could buy Sun's freedom for a $100 bribe, big money in these
> parts. The
> family raised the money and Sun was released.
>
> But 10 days later, police came again and took her away to a Chinese
> detention
> center. She was one month pregnant.
>
> "The Chinese took the attractive women and said that if we had sex with
> them
> they would set us free," Sun recalled. "Some girls obeyed but they
> weren't
> freed. I saw insults written on my cell wall in Korean about the
> Chinese. I
> didn't give in to them."
>
> Sun was placed in the hands of North Korea's National Security Agency.
>
> "I was sent to a labor camp," she said. "We ate corn husks and cabbage
> roots
> in a milky soup, once a day, every day. We worked from 5 a.m. until
> past
> dark, on fields and building houses."
>
> Sun slept in a 20-by-20-foot room with 60 to 70 other women; almost all
> of
> them were refugees returned from China. About half were pregnant. Some
> were
> showing; others, like Sun, were not.
>
> "The ones who had big stomachs had a bad time," Sun said. "The Korean
> guards
> would beat them and say they were carrying a Chinese pig. I saw one
> officer
> take a stick and shove it into the stomach of one woman. She lost her
> child
> that way."
>
> As winter deepened, those arrested in the summer began to die. The
> labor camp
> did not issue new clothes. "Disease spread through the group rapidly,"
> she
> said. "We were continuously sick. People were dying away. I saw four
> women
> die myself."
>
> Sun was released on Dec. 9, 1998. Three weeks later she was back in
> China,
> reunited with her husband. Her daughter was born in April of last year.
>
> "At night, I hear cars and I get very nervous. I think the police will
> break
> into our home again," Sun said, speaking softly in a safe house run by
> South
> Korean ministers, plywood boards blocking the window. "If I'm arrested
> again
> I will pay any price. I don't want to be returned to North Korea again.
> I'd
> rather kill myself with poison."
>
> <>


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