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News Articles
White House Puts Face on North Korean Human Rights
by Peter Baker, Washington Post Staff
Writer
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[January 31, 2006]
She showed up at a school in a coastal city in China nearly five
months ago and begged for help. Instead, she was deported to her
native North Korea and never seen again.
Now the case of Kim Chun Hee has made its way to the desk of
President Bush, threatening to complicate the first White House
visit of China's leader tomorrow and further irritate an
irritable relationship.
Urged on by evangelical supporters from his home town and other
activists elsewhere, Bush has taken a personal interest in human
rights in North Korea and decided to make an example of Kim's
asylum case. Alerted to her situation by a South Korean
lawmaker, the White House issued a rare statement last month
pronouncing itself "gravely concerned" about her fate and
chastising China for sending her back.
The story of how an obscure instance of individual hardship came
to figure in a meeting between two of the world's most powerful
leaders sheds light on the crosscurrents of U.S. foreign policy
under Bush. The son of a former envoy to Beijing, Bush has
worked to build stable relations with China and wants its help
on urgent priorities such as curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Yet the same president has proclaimed expanding freedom to be
the guiding principle of his foreign policy, with the goal of
"ending tyranny in our world."
So as diplomats and bureaucrats throughout the U.S. government
in recent weeks assembled briefing books on the Chinese currency
and the trade deficit and other issues of importance to Bush's
business backers, another corner of government, much smaller,
has worked to put on the table China's treatment of desperate
North Koreans who slip across the border.
They have been aided in that quest by a growing movement of
Christian activists who lately have adopted North Korea as a
cause, much as they earlier did Sudan, and pushed Congress into
passing legislation intended to make human rights in Asia's last
Stalinist outpost a higher U.S. priority.
"We just feel this is what we're commanded to do," said Deborah
Fikes, executive director of the Midland Ministerial Alliance
from the president's Texas home town. "If you're a follower of
Christ, this should be one of your number one priorities,
speaking out for the oppressed, and I can't think of anybody
more oppressed than the North Koreans."
The case of Kim offered an opportunity to put their concern
front and center. Never before has the Bush White House singled
out a North Korean asylum seeker by name and held Beijing
responsible for her fate, according to U.S. officials and human
rights workers. The timing was especially pointed, coming just
before the arrival of Chinese President Hu Jintao, who will be
greeted tomorrow by a 21-gun salute on the South Lawn of the
White House.
Administration officials said Bush feels strongly about the
situation. "He's taken a very personal interest and a fairly
significant interest in the issue of human rights," said Jay
Lefkowitz, whom Bush appointed last year as a special envoy for
human rights in North Korea. "He fundamentally believes the
character of the North Korean regime is defined by its human
rights conduct."
The White House statement cheered many who have been working on
the issue even though they said it represents just a fraction of
what should be done. "I'm glad they did it, but it's not
enough," said Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), who wrote to Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice in February seeking more action by the
administration. (See Feb. letter to Condi Rice w/ Congress.
test.)
Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch said: "The real question is
whether the president's going to actually say anything to Hu.
I'm happy they did it. But do they see this as a signal of what
they're going to do or as a substitute?"
Not much is known about Kim beyond the bare bones of her
travails. An account pieced together from a South Korean
lawmaker, a U.S. diplomat in the region, South Korean media and
her sister suggests Kim's experience resembles those of many
seeking to escape the North.
Kim, 31, is popularly known by a pseudonym. Her real name has
been reported in South Korean newspapers as Lee Chun Sil. North
Korean authorities put her in prison for eight months after
other family members escaped to the South. Her 5-year-old son
died during her captivity. She managed to cross into China last
September and on Nov. 30 tried to enter a school for Koreans in
the Chinese city of Dalian on the Yellow Sea, hoping to win
asylum and be sent to Seoul to join relatives. But the school
kicked her out.
Usually a North Korean asylum seeker who manages to get into a
South Korean school or diplomatic facility in China is allowed
to go to South Korea after several months of waiting, while
those captured on the outside are often sent back. So Kim made
her way to Beijing, where she tried to enter another Korean
school on Dec. 2, but Chinese authorities arrested her. Her
sister in Seoul began faxing letters of appeal to politicians
and human rights workers around the world.
A week later, Lefkowitz attended a conference in Seoul dedicated
to North Korean human rights. A lawmaker he met there, Kim Moon
Soo, sent him a letter dated Dec. 16 asking him to help Kim. "Do
you think it would be possible for you to use any influence you
can to free the North Korean woman?" he wrote.
What happened next soured U.S. officials on China. U.S., South
Korean and U.N. officials all began pressing China not to deport
Kim to North Korea, noting Beijing's obligations under the U.N.
convention on refugees of 1951 and its 1967 protocol. The
Chinese responded that the case was under review and told U.N.
officials that she would probably be released on the occasion of
the visit of Antonio Guterres, the U.N. high commissioner for
refugees, who visited China from March 19 to 23.
But according to the U.S. diplomat, who spoke on the condition
of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, Beijing
had already sent Kim back to North Korea even as it was
promising her release and informed the U.S. Embassy of her
deportation on March 24, the day after Guterres left. "The
Chinese basically misled us," the diplomat said.
Now no one is sure what has happened to Kim. Many defectors who
are returned to North Korea face prison or death, according to
human rights groups. "I don't know whether she is alive or
dead," her sister said by telephone, asking not to be identified
for security reasons.
Fikes said Kim's case became an important example for activists,
who made their concern known to the White House and State
Department. Six days after the embassy was informed of her fate,
the White House issued its statement. "The United States is
gravely concerned about China's treatment of Kim Chun-Hee," it
said, reminding Beijing of "China's obligations as a party" to
U.N. conventions.
Lefkowitz said the White House highlighted Kim's case because
she offered a rare face to a broader problem. "A lot of what
goes on over there is shrouded in such secrecy," he said. "The
North Koreans have made it very, very hard to get out. Over the
years, a lot of people have been sent back over the border. In
this instance, we had a name. It was very appropriate for the
international community to call it out."
Bush has expressed visceral distaste for North Korea's
autocratic leader, Kim Jong Il, calling him a "tyrant" who runs
"concentration camps" and saying he "loathes" him for the way he
treats his people. Last year, Bush invited to the White House
defector Kang Chol Hwan after reading his memoir, "The Aquariums
of Pyongyang," recounting 10 years of eating rats in a North
Korean prison.
"This is a topic he raises frequently, not just with leaders
from Asia but around the world," said Michael Green, the
president's former Asia adviser. "He cares deeply about it. It's
not just about Kim Jong Il. It's the fact that these kinds of
horrors happen on this kind of scale in our day and age."
But Wolf and others complain that personal commitment is not
translated into enough action. In 2004, Congress passed the
North Korean Human Rights Act, which created Lefkowitz's
position. But the administration has not designated money to
implement the law or offered asylum to any North Korean,
according to a Feb. 21 letter to Rice signed by Wolf and eight
other lawmakers.
Some administration officials said the State Department is more
focused on North Korea's nuclear arms and has not made human
rights a priority. "He is completely right," one official said
of Wolf's criticism. Another official said "it's been a
struggle" to get the administration to pay attention. During a
White House briefing on Monday discussing issues at tomorrow's
Bush-Hu summit, no official mentioned North Korean refugees.
Human rights groups and evangelical activists vowed to press
until they do. "We intend to carry through on this," said
Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs at the
National Association of Evangelicals. "The forthcoming coalition
is going to be stronger than ever and we don't intend to lose.
This is a major movement. . . . We have a left-right coalition
that bar none will move Washington, and it's got China in the
headlights."
Special correspondent Joohee Cho in Seoul contributed to this
report.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
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