In the capital city of a certain country in Southeast Asia, the office for the Korean community living there added a new file to its register this summer. The file is a list of North Korean refugees coming to the country through China and seeking assistance in defecting. The chairman of the office said they had translated letters from the refugees into English and sent them to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and six of them were given UNHCR refugee status. He said that he believed the six had gone to Seoul.
They are just a few of the many North Korean refugees who venture on the "death march" of 10,000 miles from China as it is impossible to defect from China. The chairman said that scores of people come to Southeast Asia every year.
In the capital of another country which has 500 Korean residents, a restaurant owner named Kim said, "Early this year when I was preparing lunch a man in his thirties entered my restaurant and asked for food an kimchi in a North Korean dialect. I was surprised that he had made it this far. He said that he had ate bananas in the jungle and slept under the leaves of the trees."
Most North Korean defectors coming to Southeast Asia are men in there twenties and thirties, as without strong bodies it is impossible to cross the Yalu and Tumen rivers, the harsh mountain ranges and wide tundra.
A thirty-five year old North Korean refugee told this reporter of his journey. "As soon as I crossed the border from China, I was arrested. In order to escape I jumped from a cliff into a river. There was heavy jungle which I crossed, and despite pain in both legs, an injured body and torn clothes I carried on driven by the fact that I wanted to get to South Korea." However, this is just the start of his journey as many refugees are rebuffed by South Korean diplomats. A man named Pak who arrived here at the end of last year was told to wait by the embassy. He kept calling the embassy and eventually was caught by police on the street. He has been in prison for six months and only his insistence that he is South Korean has prevented him from being sent back to North Korea.
North Korean refugees are full of despair at the cold treatment given them by the South Korean government. A successful defector, now in Seoul wrote in his book, "I escaped from China and arrived in Saigon (Ho Chi Min City) and cried when I saw the South Korean national flag at a crossroads there. I went to the embassy, but was horrified when they refused to give any help. How many more miles had I got to travel to get to South Korea? I would go to the ends of the earth and die before giving up getting to the South."
Some South Korean diplomatic missions in one Southeast Asian country do give help and assistance for North Korean refugees to reach Seoul.
(December 14, 1999)
