April 24th, 2013 at 6:05 pm » Comments (6)

Good luck with this: WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States will press China over its forcible repatriation of refugees to North Korea, a U.S. human rights envoy said Monday. He likened the North’s vast gulag to that operated by the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Robert King is among U.S. officials meeting in Washington this week with China’s envoy on Korean affairs, Wu Dawei. The Obama administration is looking for Beijing to use its leverage over its North Korean ally to tamp down its provocative behavior and move toward abandoning
Read the Rest…

January 26th, 2013 at 3:00 am » Comments (3)

This is something that is a new trend that is causing me to wonder if the North Korean regime is making an effort to pressure the families of defectors within North Korea to get the defectors to return home? Four more North Koreans have returned to their communist homeland after living in South Korea where they had to endure unbearable hardships, the North’s media reported Thursday. The North Korean Central Broadcasting Station said a couple and their daughter as well as a woman came back home and held a press
Read the Rest…

November 13th, 2012 at 6:37 pm » Comments (1)

The Chosun Ilbo is reporting that many North Korean defectors eventually turn to crime to make ends meet in South Korea: The number of crimes committed by North Korean defectors in South Korea is rising dramatically. The offenses range from real estate and insurance fraud to drug dealing and the sex trade, and the victims are often other North Korean defectors. The number of defectors is expected to reach 25,000 by the end of the year. According to the [South] Korean Institute of Criminology, 899 defectors were nabbed between 1998
Read the Rest…

November 9th, 2012 at 6:14 pm » Comments (11)

This makes me wonder if the North Korean regime isn’t putting increased pressure on families of defectors back home in order to lure some of them back to North Korea?: In a rare publicity coup for the North Korean regime, a couple who defected to South Korea have apparently returned to the North. The North’s official KCNA news agency on Thursday said Kim Kwang-hyok (27) from North Hamgyong Province fled to China in March 2008, while his wife Ko Jong-nam (29) followed him in September that year. The two met
Read the Rest…

September 24th, 2012 at 5:30 pm » Comments (7)

Via a reader tip comes this unsurprising, but still interesting read about the propaganda play the North Koreans were able execute by likely using the son of a North Korea defector as blackmail: This summer, a 66-year-old woman surfaced at a news conference in North Korea to tell of her jubilant homecoming after six years in the “miserable” South. As a private citizen and a defector, the woman, Pak Jong Suk, made for an unlikely national symbol. But she also had the pitch-perfect tale for an authoritarian North Korea straining
Read the Rest…

August 23rd, 2012 at 1:00 pm » Comments (5)

June 11th, 2012 at 5:59 pm » Comments (82)

The TV show producers are obviously using the good looks of these women to attract viewers, but this is actually a pretty good way to raise awareness of the North Korean refugee issue in South Korea: Lee Seo-youn rehearses a dance routine she’ll perform in a couple of hours in a TV studio. Slender, graceful and dressed in a form-fitting hot pink maxi-skirt, Lee looks like a South Korean celebrity. Appearances can be deceiving. As a regular panelist on South Korean television’s “Eje Mannareo Gapnida,” which airs on cable’s Channel
Read the Rest…

June 5th, 2012 at 3:30 am » Comments (19)

Here is an example of what some of these North Korea apologist lawmakers in South Korea think: Lawmaker Lim Soo-kyung of the opposition Democratic United Party yesterday made a second apology for calling North Korean defectors “traitors” in an alcohol-fueled tirade at a Seoul restaurant Friday night. Appearing at a party workshop in Yangjae-dong, Lim, who was jailed for three and a half years for making an unapproved trip to North Korea in 1989, said: “The whole controversy was prompted by my lack of virtue and I sincerely apologize to
Read the Rest…

May 31st, 2012 at 5:35 pm » Comments (52)

Another US Congress person has taken up the cause of advocating for North Korean refugees: Chairwoman of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee Ileana Ros-Lehtinen took part in a rally held in front of the Chinese embassy in South Korea on Thursday, calling for a halt to the forced repatriation of North Korean escapees by the Chinese government. Ros-Lehtinen also demanded the release of Kim Young-hwan and three other human rights activists from South Korea who have been detained in China for the past two months. Civic groups that have
Read the Rest…

May 16th, 2012 at 3:28 am » Comments (2)

It looks like the Chinese are continuing with their crackdown on groups assisting North Korean refugees within China: South Korea’s foreign ministry says China has been holding four of its citizens in Dandong, activists linked to North Korean refugees, since their arrest March 29 in Dalian. Spokesman Cho Byung-je says Seoul is asking Beijing to handle the case in a fair and swift manner. “South Korea understands that the investigation is proceeding based on procedures under Chinese law,” said Cho, who did not comment on specific accusations because formal charges
Read the Rest…