Plight of North Korean Defectors Featured in NY Times
I admit it I read the NY Times regularly. While in college I had a professor that got me in the habit of reading the paper daily. I actually bought a subscription to it while in college. If you just ignore the left wing propaganda opinion pieces unless it is by Thomas Friedman, and read the hard news columns it is really a great paper. In a great column today the NY Times has really put some media attention on South Korea for ignoring the plight of North Korean refugees in Russia.
VLADIVOSTOK, Russia – The Russian woman in the cafe was in tears, her tea cooling, her potato salad untouched. She had just endured an hourlong interrogation by a South Korean investigator about her role in sheltering a North Korean defector.
“I had no idea they could talk like that to a Russian citizen,” said the woman, who asked only to be identified by her first name, Katia, the gold cross on her sweater flashing as she trembled from her ordeal at the South Korean Consulate here.
In a new twist, diplomats from South Korea now work to discourage defectors from North Korea.
I’m sure Russian President Vladimir Putin probably reads the NY Times and I’m willing to bet he would not be to happy to see one of his citizens being mistreated by South Korean consulate officials. I bet the South Korean embassy in Russia gets a phone call tonight.
Now why was this Russian women being screamed and interrogated by South Korean officials? Well she did something as horrible as aiding a desperate North Korean refugee. Here is his story:
North Korea’s determination to prevent defections by its contract workers in Russia could be seen in the drama surrounding the escape of Hwang Dae Soo, a 28-year-old translator, from confinement in a North Korean apartment here. In November 2003, he avoided forced repatriation by tearing the photograph off his passport just before he was to be placed on a North Korean plane here.
Held in a third-floor apartment, he managed to make a call to his friend Katia, who had worked in a nearby office, said Douglas E. Shin, a Korean-American pastor, who also assisted Mr. Hwang when he was in hiding for a year here.
When Mr. Hwang’s Russian friends came to the apartment to demand his release, he broke a window and jumped three stories to the ground, breaking both ankles. Two North Korean guards jumped after him, suffering injuries to their legs.
Katia said she helped her injured friend into the back seat of her brother’s car. But one North Korean guard tossed the Russians aside and led a group “yelling at him, trying to beat him, trying to drag him out of the car.”
After the Russian police arrived, Katia and her brother drove Mr. Hwang to a hospital and then helped shelter him for a year. Her fears that North Koreans would discover his hiding place increased when Mr. Hwang’s North Korean foreman appeared at her office, asking for her.
Fear of discovery prompted Mr. Hwang to have a friend ask South Korean officials about asylum.
“The South Koreans received a direct order not to take care of this issue any more,” Mr. Hwang said in a telephone interview in early November. “After I heard this, I was in shock. They did not offer any help, nothing monetary, no advice.”
On Nov. 15, though, he gambled and sought asylum at the South Korean Consulate here. When he asked for help, he carried a cellphone, surreptitiously keeping a line open to Mr. Shin, who recorded the encounter. On the tape, Mr. Hwang can be heard arguing that South Korea’s Constitution guarantees North Koreans the right to asylum. A consulate official can be heard responding with curses.
When consular officials realized that the exchange had been taped for possible broadcast on South Korean radio, they relented and allowed him to stay, Mr. Shin said. He was finally allowed to fly to Seoul on Dec. 18.
But with security tightening at the South Korean Consulate, the message is clear in Vladivostok: North Korean defectors are not wanted.
I hope he broadcasts his tape anyway on South Korean radio. It is truly a shame that now even Russians are doing more for North Korean refugees than the South Korean government is. Hopefully the NY Times can keep attention on this issue with more columns in the future exposing this current South Korean policy against North Korean refugees. The Russian woman in the article sums this situation up the best:
“For one year, I feared the North Koreans would try to kill me,” said Katia, still distraught after one hour of talking in the cafe. “It never occurred to me that I would have the South Koreans against me.”
