Comments on: 22 Returned North Korean Defectors Executed

By: Two North Koreans Defect Across Yellow Sea Border

Two North Koreans Defect Across Yellow Sea Border — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 23:30:16 +0000

[...] Two more North Koreans have defected across the Yellow Sea maritime border between North and South Korea. It will be interesting to see how Lee Myung-bak treats this case since his predecessor Roh Moo-hyun didn’t mind sending refugees back to North Korea to be shot for defecting. [...]

By: North Korean Man Executed for Making Phone Call

North Korean Man Executed for Making Phone Call — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 01:39:00 +0000

[...] the North Korean authorities are not busy shooting repatriated defectors, they are busy shooting people who had the nerve to make a phone [...]

By: Build it and they will come

Build it and they will come — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 15:33:46 +0000

Who’s to say they weren’t trying to infiltrate???? Who interrogated them? Then again, maybe their boat did sink and they were rescued and they just wanted to go back to their families.

We all read a couple of newspaper articles (which are controlled by the NIS) and think we know what happened/

By: John McCain: The war on terror and North Korea | DPRK Forum

John McCain: The war on terror and North Korea | DPRK Forum — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 04:17:37 +0000

[...] Bear PopulationChung Dong-young to be InvestigatedJapan Advocates for “Peace Tunnel” to Korea22 Returned North Korean Defectors ExecutedNot a Good [...]

By: GI Korea

GI Korea — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 01:40:30 +0000

Yes it is on Roh’s tab and that is why I’m saying that is why I find this incident odd because I dont’ think Roh would send these people back if they were clearly defectors that wanted to stay.

Roh has accepted boat people before from North Korea so why stop now and take this huge PR hit before leaving office? That is why I’m wondering if there is more to the story we don’t know about.

By: Baltimoron

Baltimoron — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 01:16:56 +0000

That is what I find odd about the story because I don’t think even Roh would have sent these people back.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this incident still on Roh’s tab?

By: Cedar Bristol

Cedar Bristol — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 19:45:54 +0000

I have trouble understanding how anyone feels tempted to go back after making an escape like that. It doesn’t make sense at me either. But I do know that it happens.

Some more detail on Belenko: He had been in the US for some time and had repeatedly commented on how good life was here. As far as convictions go, he was 100% anti-communist, but he still had an episode where he came close to going back to a Soviet Embassy and turning himself in.

I think it’s probably related to Stockholm syndrome in some way. Also, childhood victims of abuse–even people who are generally rational– sometimes also have trouble accepting the fact that they are victims and aren’t in any way responsible for what happened to them. I think growing up under dictatorship is similar to both these situations in some ways. One big difference is the duration. The Stockholm embassy hostages were only held for a little while, and yet some of them wound up bonding with their captors and justifying their actions. Childhood abuse victims generally live in a world that recognizes what was done to them as wrong, yet they often have trouble making the same judgement. People born in a dictatorship are hostages from birth surrounded by affirmations of the justice and righteousness of the system that holds them.

This isn’t to disagree with you that there’s a lot of oddness to the story, it’s just meant to indicate a way that it might be less than completely incomprehensible, which it was to me until I thought back to the Belenko story.

Going back to the hypothetical situation of defectors who change their mind after escaping (which may or may not be the case here), I don’t think that if I was the ROK president, or a US official back in the day dealing with East German or Soviet defectors that I would hold them on our side against their will if they decided to go back to get killed. Letting them go might be hard, but holding them would pose all kinds of other problems, and I think it would be wrong.

Sorry to fill up your comments with bad repetitive grammar and all, but defectors stories really get to me.

By: GI Korea

GI Korea — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 18:59:26 +0000

That is what I find odd about the story because I don’t think even Roh would have sent these people back. However, you would think these people would have made a psychological escape when they first boarded the rubber raft. Even if some them had second thoughts you would think that not all 22 of them would agree to go back.

By: Cedar Bristol

Cedar Bristol — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 18:48:19 +0000

The point of that was that I think it’s possible that the South Korean government didn’t decide to return these 22 defectors. The defectors may have changed their minds. It’s been known to happen even after very successful and deliberate escapes. The ROK govt’s decision may have been to let them go voluntarily back to their deaths the alternative being at least as bad.

By: Cedar Bristol

Cedar Bristol — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 18:43:15 +0000

There’s an amazing book called MIG Pilot. It’s the story of Victor Belenko, the Soviet Mig-25 pilot who flew his plane into Japan and defected in 1976. It’s an amazing story and it deals with the things he goes through mentally. The relevance is that even this guy who decided he didn’t believe in communism at a young age and planned an extremely ballsy escape over a long period of time, then carried it off–even he had moments of doubting his ability to live outside Russia and seriously contemplated going to the Soviet embassy to be returned where the same thing would almost certainly have happened to him. I’m sure these North Koreans aren’t the first to make the physical escape, but then fail to make the psychological escape. And, they won’t be the last.