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News Articles
Great escape
NORTH KOREA: As U.S.
policy shifts, refugees find a place in America
by Priya Abraham
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[May 27, 2006]
With some 53,000 refugees a year finding new homes in the United
States, one group of six in the crowd hardly seems worth
noticing. But when they are North Koreans bearing fresh accounts
of abuses committed by their communist state and the horrors
undergone to escape them, they quickly grab attention.
The six, reportedly four women and two men, touched down on
American soil May 5, the first time in more than 50 years the
United States has taken North Koreans as refugees. Protection
surrounding them and their useful escape route was tight: no
names, no identifying the Southeast Asian nation they came
through, and no clues to their whereabouts in the United States.
Disclosing those details could endanger the refugees' families
remaining in North Korea.
Nonetheless, they have told other parts of their stories. The
group's path to freedom began when some members contacted South
Korean pastor Chun Ki Won in 2003. Rev. Chun is a well-known
activist on the underground railroad, which smuggles North
Korean refugees to safety, often first through hostile territory
such as China and then Southeast Asia.
At least two of the women crossed the peril-fraught border with
China in 1998 and 2003 and then found themselves sold into
forced marriages with Chinese men. According to The Wall Street
Journal, one endured severe beatings from her husband. The other
suffered farm labor so excruciating she injured her back and
could not walk for almost a year. China later repatriated her
and as punishment for absconding, North Korea cycled her through
its network of prison camps, thought to hold some 200,000
inmates. She later escaped back into China.
Such harrowing stories are typical, by activist accounts. Tim
Peters, another ardent underground railroader, heads the
Seoul-based nonprofit Helping Hands Korea. He estimates almost
three-quarters of women refugees fall prey to traffickers in
China. His group focuses on aiding North Koreans in worst crisis
in China, which repatriates captured North Koreans despite their
almost certain risk of punishment and even execution.
Conditions for the railroad are getting tougher too: In March,
Mr. Peters heard that bounties for captured North Koreans had
tripled in China. Refugees are now bypassing urban Chinese areas
altogether in favor of safer rural routes. So being able to seek
asylum easily in the United States is an important safety valve,
though it has been hard to use until now.
The group of six represents a months-long political shift toward
helping refugees. Until now the Bush administration has focused
unsuccessfully on lackluster six-party talks, aimed at disarming
North Korea's nuclear threat. When the latest round last
November yielded few gains, activists who had been arguing that
human rights should be top priority in U.S. policy began gaining
traction.
"Our side is in the ascendancy now," said Suzanne Scholte,
president of the Defense Forum Foundation, a Virginia-based
group that promotes human rights and democracy. "What happened
is the people that were in the Bush administration who favored
six-party talks—they've lost that argument."
Adding steam about the same time last October was Mr. Peters'
congressional testimony about how U.S. embassy workers in
Vietnam, China, and Thailand were refusing to help North Korean
refugees in danger, despite a 2004 law making it easier to do
so. Lawmakers wrote Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in
February to complain, pointing out that "not one North Korean
(had) been offered asylum or refugee status in the 16 months
since the unanimous passage of the legislation."
Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) was an author of the 2004 law. After
speaking to the refugees May 10, he told reporters they were in
"good spirits." He said if North Korea does not negotiate in the
six-party talks, "we are going to take these forms of unilateral
actions, not about a nuclear issue but about the human rights of
your own people."
More North Korean refugees are expected in the United States
now, though Mr. Peters remains cautious about the good news.
"I'm happy that the six came through, and let's just hope we can
make up for lost time."
Copyright © 2006 WORLD Magazine
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