Government Cracking Down on Refugee Brokers

The New York Times today is reporting that the Korean government has begun a crackdown on brokers for North Korean refugees. The government believes the brokers located in China are extorting money from the desperate North Korean refugees.

South Korea says it plans to crack down on people who demand money for organizing mass defections of North Koreans desperate to leave their country. But human rights groups worry that the move is aimed at appeasing North Korea and China – North Korea’s last major ally and the way-station for many North Korean intending to defect.

These so-called brokers – often ethnic Koreans in China, South Korean entrepreneurs or North Korean defectors in the South – select defectors from the tens of thousands of North Koreans who flee North Korea and hide in northeastern China. They then help the North Koreans to force their way into foreign embassies in Beijing and other Asian capitals, in the hopes that they will eventually be allowed to travel to South Korea.

Nearly 83 percent of the 1,850 North Koreans who reached South Korea this year came with the help of these brokers, who received an average of $3,800 per person, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said. As the trickle of defectors from North Korea has swelled into a torrent in recent years, the debate over the brokers has intensified.

They say that their motives are to promote human rights, helping people escape North Korea’s totalitarian government. But some critics say that they appear to be driven by profit rather than compassion. China calls them human traffickers and sentences them to prison, while North Korea accuses South Korea and the United States of kidnapping its people.

Some defectors have complained that the brokers charge too much for their services – and in some cases hold their families for ransom. Some of the brokers also abandon the escapees after being paid.

To stop the brokers the Korean government is planning on preventing the brokers from being allowed to leave Korea and also reduce the amount of relocation compensation that is paid to North Korean refugees from $26,600 per person to $9,500. Many brokers use the relocation money to pay for their fees. I cannot say I am an expert in regards to these brokers but I’m sure some of them probably are dirty, but for some reason I feel the Korean government is probably just using this as a convenient excuse to stop the flow of refugees from North Korea.

If the South Korean government cared for human rights at all, they would try to assist these people themselves. This would eliminate the need for brokers or NGO’s to fill this current need. I won’t hold my breath waiting for this to happen though. Plus reducing the relocation allowance will not stop people from wanting to come to South Korea. $9,500 is still going to sound like a fortune to someone who is starving.

I think the best way to get any action out of the Korean government would be to shame them into action. I hope people will keep publishing stories from the defectors. The Chosun Ilbo recently ran this story about some North Korean defectors trying to make their way to a Southeastern Asian country in order to get to South Korea. This group of North Koreans traveled 8000 kilometers over the course of a month to make it to the country which is presumably Vietnam to get passage to Korea. Isn’t something that countries like Mongolia and Vietnam are doing more for North Korean human rights than South Korea?