Baek Yeong-ok, center, poses with son Lee Gang-min, left, and daughter Lee Il-sim in this photo provided by Comebackhome, an association of families of South Koreans abducted by the North and South Korean prisoners of war. Provided by the association

Four North Korean defectors trapped in the South Korean Embassy in Beijing for nearly three years arrived in South Korea Sunday after China allowed them to leave, sources told the JoongAng Ilbo Tuesday.

Seven other defectors taking refuge in Korean consulates in Shanghai and Shenyang for the past two years will soon follow.

“The other North Korean defectors will be able to return to South Korea with the passing of time,” a source in Beijing said.

Those defectors are a different group from the unknown number China has arrested in several places since early February, and their plight is attracting worldwide attention. If sent back to North Korea, they could be executed or sent to political prisons.

The four who arrived Sunday include 47-year-old Baek Yeong-ok, who is the daughter of a South Korean prisoner of war, and her two children, Lee Gang-min and Lee Il-sim, the sources said.

Baek Yeong-ok’s elder sister successfully defected to the South in 2004, bringing the remains of her prisoner-of-war father, who died in 1997. Baek tried to follow with her two children in 2009 and took refuge in the South Korean Embassy in Beijing.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

A North Korean woman documents her harrowing account of escaping from North Korea in her autobiography, which she has released in French.

“We were forced to endure harsh labor when we were sent back to North Korea after being captured in China,” author Kim Eun-sun told reporters at the Korean Cultural Center in Paris on Tuesday (local time).

“My mother fell ill and we had no choice but to escape the North again or risk losing her under such harsh living conditions.”

The autobiography, which was co-written with the Seoul correspondent for the French daily Le Figaro, Sebastien Falletti, is entitled “North Korea: The Nine-Year Escape from Hell.”

The book records the 26-year-old and her mother’s three attempts to flee the Stalinist state starting in 1998, and continuing on to their eventual arrival in South Korea in 2006. Her father went missing during their nine-year ordeal.

“In North Korea, even elementary school kids are forced to watch public executions in order to instill a sense of fear in them,” said Kim, who visited Paris to mark the publication of her book. “You cannot have hopes or dreams in the North.”

She shuddered as she recalled the conditions she had to suffer after being repatriated back to the North. “We had to experience things that were simply unbearable,” she said. “We had to suffer humiliations that we couldn’t even imagine being put through in China or in another country.”

Kim said she decided to publish her story because she wanted to make more people aware of the atrocities taking place in the North.

“But students in South Korea are either not interested in North Korean defectors, or they have misconceptions about them,” she said.   [Chosun Ilbo]

Racing models take part in a rally in front of the Chinese Embassy in Seoul on March 5, 2012, to demand Beijing scrap plans to repatriate detained North Korean defectors. (Yonhap)

Let me ask a hypothetical question: if the United States, with malice aforethought, abetted the murder of nine Korean civilians, how long do you suppose it would take for the streets to fill with angry mobs with candles and red headbands? Is there any question that that would be the principal issue in the next South Korean election? If that happened, I wouldn’t even rule out the possibility that our embassy would be ransacked. I don’t think race explains this double standard, because Koreans would have the same reaction if Japan did this. There probably isn’t just one explanation, but one of them is the inner conviction of the mobs that they have nothing to fear from America or Japan. In spite of this, I suppose protesting at the U.S. Embassy can make you feel very brave. But an angry protest against China? Why, that would take actual courage.  [One Free Korea]

You can read the rest at the link, but here are some people in South Korea who do have courage.

China has already sent back several of the North Korean defectors who were recently arrested there, despite pleas from Seoul and international human rights groups, sources said Thursday.

The source said nine defectors who had crossed the Duman (or Tumen) River into China in early February were repatriated last weekend and have since been under investigation by security forces in Onsong, North Hamgyong Province. They were reportedly while traveling to Changchun from Yanji headed for South Korea.  [Chosun Ilbo]

The Chinese do not want a flood of refugees into their northeastern provinces that would occur if they began to allow North Korean defectors to defect to South Korea.  Additionally the flood of people exiting North Korea could potentially destabilize the Kim regime if enough people are flooding across the border.  This is why China continues to send the defectors back where they face often sentenced to gulags and even some reportedly executed.

A group of 10 North Korean defectors detained in China are hoping for South Korean intervention to avoid repatriation to their communist homeland, South Korea’s human rights watchdog said Monday.

The defectors were arrested by Chinese police at a bus terminal in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang on Wednesday, according to the National Human Rights Commission of Korea.  [Yonhap News]

The Japanese government has submitted a written pledge to the Chinese government that its missions in China will not try to protect North Korean refugees, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported on Thursday. Tokyo pledged the missions will respect Chinese laws and refrain from taking North Koreans into their compound.

Beijing had asked Tokyo for the written pledge in negotiations over the transfer of five North Koreans who had been living in the Japanese consulate in Shenyang since they sought refuge there in 2008.

China is North Korea’s closest ally and has to contend with ever-growing numbers of refugees from the reclusive country.

China said the five North Koreans were illegal immigrants and refused to let them go to Japan. Beijing late last year said Japan must stop protecting North Korean defectors, and Japan promised to take the request under consideration. But eventually China insisted on a written pledge as a condition for letting the five go, the daily said. They were then taken to Japan with Beijing’s tacit approval.  [Chosun Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but I would have to say that their three year house arrest was ultimately worth it since they have now been sent to Japan to start a new life.

It has to be tough to be one of the defectors from North Korea and try to make a new life in such a completely different and highly competitive South Korean society.

A group of 21 North Koreans was found drifting aboard a boat off South Korea’s west coast earlier this week, officials said Saturday, the latest in a string of defections by North Koreans.

The boat carrying the North Korean family members, including children, was spotted by sailors on a South Korean Navy vessel in the Yellow Sea on Tuesday, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The North Koreans expressed their wish to defect to officers from the Korea Coast Guard, and were led to a nearby dock in Incheon, west of Seoul, for questioning by South Korean officials.  [Korea Herald]