Committee on International Relations
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515-0128

Testimony before
The House Committee on International Relations
Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific
Tim A. Peters
Founder/Director, Helping Hands Korea
Wednesday, April 28, 2004

I thank the Committee for its invitation to share my views on the plight of North Korean refugees in China. Helping Hands Korea has endeavored for the past six years to intervene for the protection of North Koreans in crisis after they have crossed the Tumen River to China. It is my earnest hope that the following observations, analysis and recommendations might constitute a small contribution to the solutions that are needed to bring the North Korean refugees out of their calamitously vulnerable existence in China.

Pathetique: A Symphony of Refugee Tears Unheeded

By Tim Peters
Founder/Director, Helping Hands Korea (NGO)

An estimated 300,000 North Korean refugees live in fear and hiding throughout China. Driven by famine and an oppressive social system, a growing stream of North Koreans drained from every current of North Korean society risk their lives to furtively cross the watery borders of the Tumen and Yalu Rivers to China. For the fortunate few who evade capture by border patrols on the adjoining riverbanks, the mirage of China as a safe haven quickly fades in the glare of enforcement policies of a security apparatus perpetually on high-alert for any uncontrolled population movements on its borders, particularly from impoverished North Korea. At best, the well-tilled and prosperous Yenbian region of Northeast China, home to over two million ethnic Korean-Chinese citizens, provides only a brief respite from the hunger and repression that haunt everyday life in Kim Jong-il’s ‘workers’ paradise.’ With their clothing still wet from the river crossing, refugees are typically dismayed to discover that China is far less a ‘light at the end of a dark tunnel’ than a ‘no-man’s land’ fraught with sudden new perils in the form of betrayal, capture, and rampant human trafficking. The dangers do not end there. Refugees dread interception by their nation’s own secret police who roam China freely, tracking down refugees—either to do away with them on the spot or drag them back to prisons in North Korea. Despite the extraordinary odds stacked against them, North Korean refugees in astonishing numbers continue to accept the risks of their fugitive existence in China in preference to the dismal conditions in North Korea. This paper will first explore conditions under which refugees currently live. It will then focus on the best-case and worst-case scenarios to address the current situation. The concluding section will recommend a specific set of international and regional initiatives for implementation, encompassing government, international institutions, the business community and non-governmental organizations-practical measures that are specifically focused on bringing this heart-rending symphony of tears to a conclusion that is woefully overdue.

Three Painful Snapshots of the Present

The Untimely Death of Yoo Chul Min

A 10 year-old North Korean refugee boy hiding in China swiftly assessed the dilemma before him, settling on a sobering course of action that was light years from the preoccupations of a normal elementary school child—a desperate life-and-death gamble to cross the arid Sino-Mongolian border under the cover of darkness. For a North Korean, reaching Mongolia safely means putting to rest the constant fear of being arrested in China and the specter of repatriation to North Korea.

His name was Yoo Chul Min and his fateful decision tailspinned into a heart-rending tragedy. Joining five other North Korean fugitives in China, also desperate for even a fleeting glimpse of freedom, Chul Min and his companions lost their bearings for 26 hours in the desert-like steppe of the Mongolian frontier. Chul Min’s chubby pink cheeks, the result of months of an improved diet in China, masked an actual weakened condition of his vital organs brought on by years of malnutrition in North Korea. Chronic food shortages in his home province of North Hamkyoung since 1995 had robbed Chul Min of the normal reserve of endurance and resistance to the elements one would expect of a healthy preteen boy. In the end, Chul Min’s heroic young life was pitifully snuffed out by the immediate causes of exhaustion and exposure. Upon greater scrutiny, he was yet another North Korean victim of the UN term “slow-motion famine.” His lifeless body was quickly thrown across the shoulder of an adult refugee and carried across the Sino-Mongolian border once the remaining members of the fugitive refugee team finally regained their bearings.

This young boy’s story is of personal interest to me because our paths had crossed during my NGO work in China to shelter North Korean refugees. Our encounter had been brief, as are most meetings of activists with refugees in China. At the time, he was under the protection of courageous Korean Christian aid workers in the capital of the Yenbian region. Immediately evident was the fact that I was the first Caucasian Chul Min had ever met. From his expression, perhaps he saw in me a close resemblance to pictures and drawings of those hated devils from America that appeared in his hometown schoolbooks and propaganda posters. Therefore, our conversation by necessity had to be an indirect one. I chose a children’s book from the bookshelf and motioned for us to read it together. Chul Min warily agreed and was soon engrossed, reading aloud the Korean text in this illustrated children’s Bible. Savoring this tiny victory, I sat and listened. I fervently hoped that somehow this tiny episode would be the first plank in a bridge of understanding between us. Perhaps, I mused, Chul Min and my grandson might someday be friends in South Korea. It never dawned on me that I would never see him alive again.

In the days that followed the jarring news of Chul Min’s death, the magnitude of the tragedy grew. Government officials in Mongolia refused our entreaties to wait for Chul Min’s father, himself a recent arrival to the South from China, to travel to Mongolia to identify his son’s body and to be present at his burial. In a heart-rending fate that seems uniquely North Korean, endless weeks passed before Chul Min’s father was able to successfully navigate the maze of South Korean and Mongolian bureaucracies and gain permission to travel to Mongolia. At last, he was led to an unremarkable plot in the vast expanse of sand, distinguished only by a small wooden cross. He was left alone to his grief and bewilderment beside his son’s windswept grave.

Of Human Bondage

Yoo Chul Min’s story is poignant testament that even the tender age of elementary schoolchildren constitutes no barrier to tragedies that befall North Korean refugees. Children, teens, adults and even desperate grandparents in North Korea cast their own personal safety to the wind and plunge into the icy waters of the Tumen and Yalu Rivers. They do so to flee famine and tyranny in a once-beloved homeland that has been transformed into a Dante’s inferno of fear. In the bizarre parallel universe that has become reality for North Korean refugees in China, Yoo Chul Min would most likely be perceived as lucky to have traversed the 1,000 miles across China to the Mongolian border without capture. All too many of his countrymen encounter treacherous pitfalls only a few feet into Chinese territory. North Korean women who venture into China know this bitter truth better than anyone else. From 70 to 90% of them fall into the hands of human traffickers of the sex trade.

Although a victim of such depravity, Lee Mi-ja considers herself providentially protected to have survived to tell the following story. Lee Mi-ja’s father died when she was still very young, leaving her mother to grapple alone with the hardships of a famine-racked North Korea. Unending work, privation and shrinking government distributions combined to take a fatal toll. Three years ago, Mi-ja’s mother, a victim of utter fatigue and despair, surrendered in her daily life-and-death battle for survival in the hardscrabble economy of Hamkyoungpukto, “the Siberia of North Korea.” In her 20’s, Mi-ja suddenly found herself unshielded from the economic facts of provincial life in the wake of eight years of man-made famine. A middle-aged woman from a nearby town, aware of Mi-ja’s condition, approached her with the mien of an aunt-like ajumma so pervasive in Korean society. The woman spoke directly to Mi-ja’s fear and uncertainty. She confided in whispered tones that her relatives lived in China. Furthermore, she had decided to take pity on Mi-ja’s family tragedy expressing a willingness to accompany her personally to China and arrange for Mi-ja to live with relatives described as prosperous. The grieving young woman accepted readily, never suspecting anything but goodwill from her elder.

The harrowing river crossing of the Tumen River went undetected by both North Korean and Chinese border guards. However, Mi-ja’s elation was short-lived. In a matter of only a few hours, she watched with disbelief as a coarse Chinese farmer stuffed a wad of Chinese bills into the ajumma’s fist and glared at the young woman as if he’d struck a bargain for a fattened pig. Mi-ja’s heart sank yet again upon discovering she would not even attain the dubious status of a ‘mail order bride.’ Instead she was relegated to a ‘concubine’ for a violent married man, who would burst into a rage and rain blows on her face and arms at the slightest sign of protest to his advances, leaving her face bleeding and swollen. To endure such dehumanizing treatment would scar the life of even strong individuals. However, Mi-ja is quick to point out that she counts herself fortunate. She escaped her sexual servitude in less than a year. She explains ruefully that many North Korean girls, as young as 15 and 16, have been bought and sold in China up to four times.

Going Home… to Die

The Commission to Help North Korean Refugees (CNKR) reported in December of 2003 that over 850 North Korean refugees were being held after capture by Chinese security forces in five separate Chinese detention centers in the Yenbian region. Well-informed sources also reported that the refugees were being repatriated from the five camps to North Korea at a rate of roughly 100 per week (50-100 more North Koreans are reportedly repatriated from Dandong, China to Sinuiju, North Korea at similar intervals).

Why does the prospect of repatriation incite terror within North Korean refugees, to such a degree that many testify to carrying a small cylinder of poison as a contingency for suicide in the event of capture by Chinese security patrols or North Korean secret police operating in China? For those refugees who convert to the Christian faith during their fugitive life in China, forced repatriation to their own home country constitutes a particularly grim fate. Such was the case of a family of four refugees whose faith flourished for over a year in the care of an undercover missionary in China. In May of 2002 the family was discovered and detained by Chinese police; shortly thereafter they were sent back to the North Korean border town of Namyang. The repatriated family members’ attempt to keep some portions of their religious reading hidden in their clothing was discovered by investigators from the North Korean State Security Agency. Countless refugees have testified that the very first question asked repatriated refugees by interrogators is, “Have you had any contact with Christians in China?” or “Do you believe in Jesus?” Although many newly converted refugees choose discretion as the better part of valor, this family was firm and forthright in their profession of faith. Following their bold declaration to authorities, a number of eyewitnesses testified that the four were led to so-called “Hepatitis Street,” a small courtyard adjacent to the liver ward of a hospital in Namyang City. As a five-soldier firing squad was hurriedly assembled, the residents of the neighborhood were summoned to observe the execution. Gunshots rang out and all four fell with mortal wounds to the head. The message to the stunned cluster of neighbors was unmistakably clear: anyone who attempts to exercise a religious belief other than the worship of the Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il, would meet the same fate.

Best Case Scenarios: Seeking a Pinpoint of Light at the Tunnel’s End

An assessment of recent refugee testimonies as well as political developments in Northeast Asia provide precious little room for optimism that a large-scale positive resolution of this depressing human tragedy can be reached any time soon. Granted, heroic efforts of human rights activists to rescue individual refugees from their plight in China are beacons of hope on an individual basis. But the occasional refugee who flees to safety inside an embassy compound in Beijing constitutes a rare grace note in an otherwise depressing national dirge. It is all too clear that the Chinese government is unimpressed by the passion for freedom expressed by both North Korean refugees and the aid workers who voluntarily help them. Beijing has taken an increasingly hard line in dealing with such activists in the past two years. At the time of this writing, at least five humanitarian aid workers languish in Chinese prisons for the “crime” of assisting North Korean refugees, serving prison sentences from two to seven years. (The release on March 19, 2004 of South Korean New York Times photojournalist, Seok Jae-hyun, following 14 months of strident international protest, only underscores the difficulty.) Less than one week after Seok’s release, over 100 North Korean refugees detained in the Tumen and Rongjing Detention Camps of Northeast China launched a desperate and unprecedented hunger strike to protest the Chinese-North Korean treaty of forced repatriation. On April 2nd, 2004 a new and ominous threshold was crossed: a refugee was shot dead by a Chinese border guard in his desperate to cross the Mongolian frontier, a chilling echo of the Chul Min’s fate.

Such troubling events notwithstanding, it is imperative to explore conceivable improvements, no matter how remote they may seem. It is necessary to remind ourselves that channels do exist within the governments of both China and North Korea to ease the plight of North Korean refugees, if only such mechanisms would be utilized.

Possible, though not probable, scenarios can be summed up as follows:

1. China’s leaders could come to the realization that continued flouting of its international treaty obligations with the United Nations in general, and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in particular, stands to seriously jeopardize China’s quest for greater prominence on the world stage.

If the official statements of its senior officials are any indication, one might conclude that China actually takes such obligations seriously. As recently as 2001, during China’s 50th anniversary celebration of adding its signature to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, China’s Vice Minister Wang Guangya waxed eloquent in describing this landmark instrument of international law as the “…Magna Carta of International Refugee Law… the Convention is a candlelight of hope in the dark to the helpless refugees… (and) serves as a guide to action to people who are engaged in humanitarian work of protecting and assisting refugees.”

Such eloquence, unfortunately, is impossible to square with actual Chinese domestic policy. Despite ample evidence provided by hundreds of North Korean refugees themselves (as well as exhaustive reporting by such organizations as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea) of their “well founded fear of persecution” if returned to their home country, tens of thousands of North Korean defectors have been systematically repatriated to North Korea by the government of China. The fates of the repatriated are grim indeed, ranging from several months of detention, to torture, even to summary execution.

If China were to allow UNHCR staff to visit the Sino-North Korean border area freely for the purpose of interviewing North Korean defectors, a proper determination could be made as to which defectors are bona fide refugees, In so doing, China would accomplish two enormously strategic victories:

1. China’s prestige within the international community vis a vis human rights would take a quantum leap forward. The stigma of heavy-handedness would be lifted… and not a minute too soon, with the 2008 Olympics just on the horizon.
    
2. An objective determination of which North Korean defectors are authentic refugees would be made based on international law (not Chinese national law, as is the case presently). Refugee camps could conceivably be set up in the Northeast China area to accommodate actual North Korean refugees. Once in place, Chinese anxieties concerning the financial burdens from the inflow of North Koreans across the border would prove essentially unfounded. The UN is mandated to underwrite the costs of such a camp or camps, e.g., refugee camps in former Yugoslavia and Thailand (in the case of Cambodian refugees).

2. In the event the Chinese leadership fails to see the wisdom of embracing international human rights standards by allowing the UNHCR to carry out its mandate, the network of humanitarian aid workers would be well-advised to upgrade their operations, improve their internal security standards, find synergies in their separate activities, avoid duplication of effort, and seek new allies in the diplomatic community to protect as many refugees as possible.

Serious consideration should be given to independently setting up refugee camps in such places as Far East Russia and/or Mongolia. The governor of Russia’s Far East Region raised eyebrows in December of 2003 by openly embracing the idea of resettling North Korean refugees in his province. One should not be rash in imputing such a recommendation to sheer humanitarianism. It is a well-known demographic fact that this province is steadily losing its population. Such resettlement of North Korean refugees would undoubtedly help the district’s economy. Even so, any constructive measure of protection and assurance of safety for refugees would be a vast improvement over their current plight in China. Regional historical realities remain, however. It is far from clear that Moscow would jeopardize its leverage with Pyongyang by going along with such an open-door policy in its Far East Region. Moreover, without a clear acceptance by Russian authorities of North Korean refugee status, they would remain in legal limbo.

3. North Korean leaders themselves could stun the international community by seeing the eminently practical advantages of finally reading the human rights ‘handwriting on the wall.’ Kim Jong il may be forced, by virtue of a shrinking number of policy choices, to allow longstanding international human rights concerns to be included in future six-party and other multilateral negotiations.
    
4. Indeed, if the current American administration is re-elected in November of 2004, the leadership in North Korea will almost certainly be faced with an unrelenting emphasis on human rights concerns as an integral part of any multilateral negotiations with the U.S, perhaps not unlike the full-court press on similar issues that the former Soviet leaders confronted in the forging of the Helsinki Accords. Any State Department negotiating team should seriously consider the human rights issue as its trump card, instead of the WMD issue. (Lesson review: Iraq)
    
5. In the current leadership vacuum in the South Korean government regarding the North Korean refugee crisis, (for the second year running South Korea, in April of 2004, bewildered the world by remaining deafeningly silent on a U.N. resolution condemning North Korean human rights conditions), a golden opportunity exists for the South Korean as well as international, business communities to step into the gap and use economic means to bring some measure of a solution to the North Korean refugee crisis.

Worst Case Scenarios: Sliding Yet Deeper into Dante’s Inferno

One shudders to contemplate a scenario wherein conditions for North Korean refugees in China would take on even harsher dimensions. Some argue that conditions couldn’t deteriorate beyond their current deplorable state. Unsettling facts argue otherwise.

1. China could follow its worst instincts and stiffen its policy and penalties vis a vis the refugees and aid workers who help them.

Recent refugee reports from China in the first three months of 2004 indicate a troubling trend: food shortages are again approaching, or even surpassing, the extreme hardships widely reported in 1996 and 1997. Severe shortages that were commonly reported in North and South Hamkyoung have now spread to Hwanghae and Kangwan Provinces. China clearly indicated its grave concern in the autumn of 2003 by ordering a significant troop movement of over 150,000 PLA army regulars from a base near Shenyang to areas closer to the North Korean border. Despite a conspicuous absence of public explanation for the troop movement, anyone familiar with the refugee crisis could easily read the message in the marching orders: Beijing would countenance no disorder at its borders, the matter of a massive humanitarian crisis in North Korea appearing to be quite beside the point. By continuing to stubbornly adhere to its longstanding mutual repatriation treaty with North Korea, while systematically barring UNHCR staff from interviewing those who cross the border, China would intensify the suffering of uncounted desperate North Koreans who cross the border, not to mention rendering irreparable damage to its own image in the international community.

2. By allowing an estimated three million people to starve from 1996 to the present as it simultaneously poured its national treasure into maintaining the fifth largest army in the world, the leadership in Pyongyang has brazenly made its ‘army first’ priorities crystal-clear to the region and the world.

As the net tightens on Pyongyang’s illicit arms and narcotics sales worldwide, a large share of its operating income will be in jeopardy. There is every reason to believe that the 22 million North Koreans who have somehow managed to survive so far will be the very ones to further tighten their belts if and when missile and heroin sales decline.

3. Based on its conduct and responses in China to the plight of North Korean refugees, the UNHCR fits the oft-cited caricature of United Nations agencies as impotent and ineffective.

Cowed by Beijing’s prohibitions of its staff to visit the China-North Korean border area to interview North Koreans who cross the border, the single instance in which the UNHCR found itself thrust into the international spotlight was in June 2001, when a family of refugees actually stormed the gates of the UNHCR compound in Beijing in a desperate bid for protection. The South Korean volunteer who translated for the refugee family and the UNHCR staff later declared that the refugee protection agency treated the Jang Gil Su family as “unwanted pests.” When given the perfect opportunity on the world stage to reassert its mandate by setting an irreversible precedent by declaring the North Koreans eligible for refugee status, the UNHCR instead did Beijing’s bidding, danced the diplomatic two-step and shuffled the family off to the Philippines, then to South Korea, with the limp-wristed explanation that they could get better medical care there.

If the UNHCR office in China persists in shunning its only true international mandate, to protect refugees, and prefers to dance through its ceremonial role with the Chinese, we can expect only amplified North Korean refugee suffering in China.

4. If the UN’s World Food Program (WFP) extends its current method of delivering food aid despite North Korea’s continued unacceptable restrictions on its monitoring of distribution, the flow of refugees into China is very likely to persist.

As it has deftly done for 10 years, the Stalinist regime in Pyongyang will once again have seized disproportionate control over enormous amounts of humanitarian aid, thus guaranteeing that distribution to its citizens will not be based on the universally accepted basis of vulnerability, but strictly along lines of loyalty to North Korea’s ‘Dear Leader.’ Refugees who come from the bottom rung of the social ladder often report they’ve never even seen foreign food aid, except being sold in local markets.

5. In the event China’s trade partners continue to fall over one another to gain an even larger share of China’s huge market, an established pattern of prioritizing trade deals at the cost of ignoring, or at the very least minimizing, human rights violations will be perpetuated.

Ironically, the message from developed nations to North Korean refugees will be eerily similar to Pyongyang’s own message to them: “You are an unnecessary eater; your lives and those of your children do not tip the balances away from our more important commercial concerns.” In so doing, developed countries shamefully forfeit one of their most potential instruments of persuasion, that is, making clear by their actions, even occasional sacrifice, that decency and business should go hand in hand in any ethical conduct of international commerce

Untying the Gordian Knot: Implementing Real Solutions to the Refugee Crisis

The simple fact that the North Korean refugee crisis is now approaching the 10 year-mark bears witness to the daunting prospect of finding real solutions in this complex region. Despite the intransigent nature of the challenge, strong arguments can be made for incremental, yet significant, breakthroughs in reducing the refugees’ suffering.

1. Regarding the possibility of a voluntary shift toward a more humane approach to the North Korean refugee issue on the part of China’s leadership, the next few years may be particularly critical for such an epiphany.

With Beijing in full stride in its preparations to host the 2008 Olympics, President Hu Jintao will no doubt be eager to present the world not only with a China that is undergoing extraordinary economic growth, but also with a society and leadership that reflect the noble goals of the Olympic Games. Indeed, the official Olympic slogan, “Celebrate Humanity,” provides Beijing with a golden opportunity to showcase a tectonic shift in human rights improvements, including a landmark shift in its treatment of North Korean refugees. Such a bold action would surely gain the universal admiration of the billions who will witness the Beijing Olympics.

Conversely, the absence of such a change might augur a public relations nightmare for the host country with human rights and religious groups joining forces in enormous numbers to remind the world that “Celebrate Humanity’s” host routinely forcibly repatriates 100 or more North Korean refugees per week to barbaric political and religious persecution in flagrant violation of international law. Undoubtedly, the 2008 Olympic organizers would dread such an image of hypocrisy just as much as it would dread the prospect of a well-synchronized boycott of its sports extravaganza. Perhaps the very awareness that such a boycott is waiting in the wings may provide added impetus for China’s leaders to re-think national policies that are seriously out of sync with international norms.

4. If a major Chinese policy shift, motivated by and reflecting a new appreciation of human rights concerns, might be labeled in baseball parlance as a ‘grand slam home run,’ and a grudging lessening of the crackdown on North Korean refugees in the face of an embarrassing Olympic boycott classified as a ‘triple,’ what measures would constitute modest but meaningful progress, say, a ‘single’ or a ‘double?’ Like most East Asian bureaucrats, the Chinese tend to be thoroughly pragmatic. It’s an open secret that ideological considerations increasingly take a back seat to various power plays and simple reward/punishment scenarios. In such an atmosphere, one is compelled to ask: how difficult would it be for a loose coalition of investors in Northeast China, interested NGO’s, and a few conscientious former South Korean officials with good connections in China, to forge an understanding with provincial officials and/or the Chinese security apparatus to open a small, narrow corridor between the China/North Korean border and the China-Mongolian border through which North Korean refugees could pass, escorted by humanitarian aid workers? Alternatively, an annual or semiannual ‘amnesty on illegal aliens’ could provide another face-saving measure for China to allow the North Korean defectors to board planes with illegal workers of other countries and leave China with impunity. Significantly, on a small, localized scale, such agreements have already been made by members of the so-called ‘underground railroad,’ who assist refugees in their passage to safe havens in countries surrounding China, e.g., Mongolia, Vietnam, Myanmar, etc. Once again, such consummately practical arrangements, whether official or unofficial in nature, would avert untold suffering and the Chinese would also ‘save face’ in its regional alliances.
    
5. In terms of the UNHCR’s dismal track record thus far, one might conclude that, in terms of treaty provisions, the organization stands in great disadvantage to its host country. Surprisingly, this is not at all the case. Two potent provisions have been identified in the UNHCR’s own 1995 bilateral agreement with China. First, this agreement empowers the UNHCR’s staff in China to have unimpeded access to refugees within China. However, the only means available to determine who is a refugee, and who is not, is to interview them. As mentioned above, China has never allowed the UNHCR to have free movement near the North Korean border. In addition, China has also “foreclosed even the possibility of individual grants of asylum among them. [China] declares all of them to be conclusively non-refugees, and makes no provision for individual adjudication to the contrary.”
   
   Secondly, the treaty stipulates that, in the event a dispute arises between the two parties, such as China’s refusal to allow the UNHCR access to North Korean defectors, the UNHCR can invoke binding arbitration of such a dispute. Under the terms of the agreement, an arbitrator who is acceptable to both parties must be named within a 45-day period. If both parties are unable to agree upon an arbitrator, then the UN must appoint one. The arbitrator’s determination of the dispute, whether or not the UNHCR should be allowed access to North Korean defectors in China, could be expected within a matter of days or weeks. Inexplicably, in a 10-year period, officials of the UNHCR in China have never invoked the principles of unimpeded access nor binding arbitration, in its dealings with China concerning North Korean defectors. The recommended remedy to this part of the problem is embarrassingly uncomplicated:
    
   1. The UNHCR simply needs to make use of the instruments already in its toolbox to make its voice heard, and insist with genuine conviction upon carrying out its mandate to protect refugees. In this regard, the newly introduced (3/24/2004) U.S. Congressional Bill, The North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004, urges the UNHCR to do the obvious: assert its right to binding arbitration with China.
       
   2. A top-to-bottom review of UNHCR staff performance and procedures in Beijing is also in order.
       
   3. Finally, it is imperative to educate UN member donors to the UNHCR that they have the power to designate how their contributions are spent. Specifically, it is possible for member countries to stipulate that little or none of their donations should go to support a deficient or nonexistent programme to protect North Korean refugees under the auspices of the Beijing UNHCR office.
      

4. NGO’s that actively assist North Korean refugees in China, both to shelter and provide logistical support along the ‘underground railroad,’ should be supported in these humanitarian labors. Tireless advocacy should be undertaken for those sent to Chinese prisons for merely helping refugees.

Activists who continue to languish in Chinese prisons for assisting North Korean refugees, some serving sentences up to seven years, already have given rise to a grassroots movement for their release. This should be expanded to a formal, sustained and coordinated campaign to expose this grave injustice. In the past two years, only two have been released (Pastor Chun Ki-won and New York Times photojournalist, Seok Jae-hyun).

5. A new Tripartite Initiative is needed and should take the form of a task force. Participants would include:(a)South Korean business people with strong corporate governance and ethical resumes in partnership with(b) relevant South Korean government officials; and(c)civil and religious NGO’s leaders/communities with a demonstrated track record and expertise in North Korean refugees matters. Such teamwork is essential to break the current logjam in dealing with refugees. Its actions could accelerate the inflow of tens of thousands of stranded refugees in China to South Korea and facilitate an orderly large-scale resettlement. A bold and innovative step is long overdue, one that would address a gravely serious bottleneck: the South Korean government’s woefully limited capacity to process a mere handful of refugees per year through its Hanawon facility, thereby leaving hundreds of thousands of North Korean refugees in China ‘hung out to dry’ and pathetically vulnerable to frequent Chinese security dragnets on their urban and mountainside shelters.
   
   Their mission could very well include the deliberate phasing out of approximately 100,000 illegal workers in South Korean factories that hail from Southeast Asia, Central Asia and Africa. These workers would be replaced with an equivalent number of resettled North Korean refugees brought in from China, hopefully with the latter’s cooperation, on a new ‘fast track.’ The task force would be well advised to consider the ‘company town’ concept to quickly construct the necessary facilities (dormitories, training facilities, etc.) to absorb the inflow. This would obviously play to the strong suit of the Korean business community that has an enviable reputation of getting things done ppali ppali(quickly)—in sharp contrast to the government, which has dragged its feet in building but a single resettlement facility in an entire decade.

   Such a proposal should also be of intrinsic interest to South Korean business leaders, who are currently rushing, lemming-like, into China to take advantage of low labor costs, leaving in their wake an alarming swath of disillusioned and unemployed (854,000 in January) South Korean citizens, especially the young. Far-sighted South Korean businessmen are likely to see the distinct and enduring advantages of embracing workers of their same language and culture instead of the myopic practice of hiring illegal foreign short-term workers and the inevitable social problems (e.g., company owners’ exploitation of illegal workers; higher crime rates among transient workers, etc.) that result. Employing newly resettled refugees principally in manufacturing jobs would have a beneficial secondary effect of generating executive and technical jobs that would be commensurate with the training of many newly unemployed university graduates in South Korea, thereby reducing unemployment.

   In reality, a number of potential political roadblocks to such a sweeping programme do exist; particularly in light of the Uri Party’s landmark parliamentary victory on April 15th, 2004. Therefore, a corollary to the above plan merits consideration. Korean business leaders with factories in Southeast Asia and Central Asia (especially Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan) may be better positioned to employ North Korean refugees and do so without the visibility and political fallout that might occur in the South. Remarkably, perhaps providentially, refugees are already fleeing from China to some of these very nations with Korean business interests, e.g. Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, etc.

   The South Korean government would also appear to have much to gain from either of these initiatives. South Korean bureaucrats are well aware that the current resettlement allowance given to each newly resettled North Korean refugee in South Korea ($25,000) is unrealistic once the floodgates have been opened, which would more than likely follow either a convulsive event in the North or any normalization of relations between South and North Korea. In addition, bitter experience has already demonstrated that many a resettled refugee has precious little experience in handling amounts of money of this magnitude. All too frequent is the sad tale of newcomers bilked by unscrupulous brokers in Northeast China, promising to help bring remaining family members stranded in North Korea to safety, only to disappear with their ill-gotten gain.

   By acting now, the South Korean government could begin an inevitable transformation of the current lump-sum handout concept into a far more practical one of partial direct allowance, added to indirect subsidies that would provide funding, largely through tax credits, for the construction of a large number of dormitories, training centers, social welfare institutions, that, in fact, were needed years ago. An historical note is relevant here. All preparations for a substantial inflow of refugees were essentially paralyzed at the beginning of the Kim Dae Jung administration in 1998, predicated on a questionable tenet of the “Sunshine Policy,” viz., that such preparations would signal to the North Korean regime that the South sought its overthrow.

   The scope of this paper prevents a detailed examination of every facet of such a sweeping programme. However, a brief summary of advantages includes:
   
   

   1. A far greater number of North Korean refugees realizing their dream: escape from life-threatening dangers in North Korea and China.
       
   2. South Korean companies would gain roughly the same significant labor cost savings that prompted them to consider moving to China in the first place. The crucial difference would be that the savings would be incurred by employing Korean labor, not Chinese. Such a programme also has a very real chance of reversing the current worrying tide of unemployment in South Korea once a growing number of companies reconsider their flight to China and decide to remain in South Korea, taking advantage of tax credits to lower their labor costs. Korean businessmen with facilities in Southeast and Central Asia could also play a key part in this plan.
       
   3. The South Korean government would have a surprisingly good start toward solving the dilemma of a prudent distribution of resettlement allowances to refugees once the inevitable current of North Korean refugees begins to swell to major proportions. Put simply: instead of a direct transfer of the lion’s share of the settlement money to the refugees, these funds would be used for an X period of time as a type of cost of living allowance, or add-on to their salaries provided to employers. To prevent undue temptation to corrupt practices by the business community, these subsidies perhaps would be best administered as tax credits collected at the end of the fiscal year, not as front-loaded subsidies.
       
   4. NGO and religious leaders should act in the role of an important ‘check and balance’ to both business and government through their proven concern for the welfare of the resettled North Koreans and valuable experience gained through years interacting and assisting North Korean refugees.

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Let us hope, and indeed pray, that practical efforts, such as those described above, will become reality; that they will generate a genuine light at the tunnel’s end for hundreds of thousands of North Korean refugees like Yoo Chul Min and his father—an ever-swelling human tide that remains stranded between the oppressive ‘rock’ of North Korea and its famine and the very ‘hard place’ of sudden fear and countless hidden dangers lurking in China. A self-respecting world community can only “Celebrate Humanity” in truth and with a clear conscience when we have brought these refugees under the protection of a permanent safe haven and provided them the opportunity of a life without fear.

Helping Hands Korea (HHK), is an NGO that has endeavored since 1996 to provide famine relief inside North Korea, particularly to schools and orphanages. From 1998, HHK has concentrated on sheltering refugees in China and coordinating logistical support for their escape to third countries.