Bounty up 1600 percent for North Korean Defectors

China claims Tibetan protestors are being agitated by foreign religious elements, and so now is starting to suspect foreign connections behind any activities of which it disapproves.

Norbert Vollertsen tells us that LFNKR has received a report from staff in Jilin Province that any Christian church in Yanbien found to be involved with foreigners, including South Koreans, is being shut down. In addition, the punishment has been made more severe for extending help to North Korean defectors. Until recently, violators were fined, but they now face imprisonment.

The Yanbien Autonomous Korean Prefecture in Jilin Province is attempting to attract more informants to report North Korean defectors by raising the bounty by 1600 percent for each North Korean defector turned in.

LFNKR suggests that you send a letter of protest to the Chinese government. (To find the PRC embassy in your country.)

Brussels-based NGO helps 12 North Koreans find freedom

Yesterdayday at 11.55 am (local time), two senior leaders of Human Rights Without Frontiers Int'l (HRWF Int'l) from Brussels and Paris forced their way inside the Embassy of South Korea in Vientiane, Laos, with 12 refugees from North Korea who had travelled through China before getting stranded in Laos.

Nine of them had arrived 2 months ago and three more on 26 March.

At 1.40 pm, HRWF Int'l received the news that the South Korean Embassy was processing their requests for political asylum in South Korea.

Emotional airport welcome for North Korean activist Yoo Sang-joon

Freed activist, Yoo Sang-joon (center) is welcomed at airport by fellow activists fighting for the cause of North Korean refugees. Yoo Sang-joon, a former North Korean refugee himself before becoming an activist, and just released from a Chinese prison, was clearly overwhelmed by the welcome/protest at the Incheon Airport.

From left to right, Norbert Vollertsen, Tim Peters, Yoo Sang-joon, Choi Young-hoon, and Mr. Lee from Save North Korea.

China frees North Korea’s ‘Pimpernel’

A North Korean dissident who risked being sent home from China to certain execution has been released one month after The Sunday Times revealed his plight. Yoo Sang-joon, 36, was the key activist in an underground Christian network that smuggles North Korean refugees across China to safety in other countries.

He landed in Seoul after the Chinese authorities bowed to diplomatic pressure and freed him after four months in secret detention.

His arrival was greeted with joy among the Christian community in South Korea, who had feared for his life. “It’s a wonderful Christmas gift,” said Tim Peters, a pastor who works with the refugees.

North Korean agents were demanding his return under a treaty between the two communist allies, even though he held a passport from South Korea. Yoo is one of the most wanted men in Kim Jong-il’s North Korea. “He would have been executed,” said Peters.

Yoo’s wife and daughter died in the North Korean famine of the 1990s and his surviving son died, aged 10, on a trek across the Gobi desert to seek safety in Mongolia.

It was the second time this year that international publicity had saved refugees from deportation back to North Korea.

Three orphaned children held in jail in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, were threatened with a forced return home. They were released and handed over to the South Korean embassy a few days after The Sunday Times published a photograph and letters from them pleading for help.

Refugees who are sent back to North Korea face some of the worst human rights abuses in the world. They have reported beatings, abuse and harsh conditions in camps and prisons. Some have been executed. Pregnant women have suffered forced abortions and the murder of their babies.

[Excerpt of Sunday Times article, by Michael Sheridan]

North Korean activist Yoo Sang-joon released

Miraculously, Yoo Sang-joon was released and returned to Korea, in amazing accordance with our prayers, claiming that he would be returned by Christmas.

As you know, other activists like Choi Young-hoon and Steven Kim served four years, others over two years, etc. So only four months was amazing!

In November, a representative from our coalition here in Seoul to help Yoo attended a judicial proceeding in China dealing with Yoo's case.

We had heard beforehand that a penalty fee for Yoo's "crimes" had been decided upon by the court. So we coalition members contributed to this amount and a legal fee. Of course, no one here is so naive as to believe that some unpleasant roadblocks would not lie ahead, but there was genuine hope (and faith) that the combined effects of international advocacy from the US, Europe, UK, HK, etc. and the pre-Olympic timing might work.

And [as we put feet to our prayers], the Lord answered wonderfully!

--Tim Peters

Urgent appeal for North Korean activist facing trial in China

A brief of an urgent appeal for North Korean activist facing trial in China, from Norbert Vollertsen:

A very brave Nth Korean man, Mr Yoo Sang-joon, tragically lost his young son as he tried to escape from China and has since been trying to rescue other North Korean refugees from danger in China.. Sadly he was arrested near the Mongolian border and we have just heard that Mr Yoo is due to be tried in China on 26th November 2007.

Activists in South Korea consider this a unique case, highlighting both the tragic background and the redemptive sacrificial motivation of Mr Yoo. Clearly his own loss has motivated immense humanitarian concern for others at risk and we sincerely hope that China will not punish Mr Yoo for simply seeking to implement the protection which China should be providing as a party to the UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its Protocol.

The trial date has come unusually quickly and it is felt that the Chinese may be seeking to deal with the issue swiftly before further international attention is attracted, especially in the light of
the forthcoming Beijing Olympics.

We would be most grateful if you could write to the Chinese authorities to convey your concern for Mr Yoo as a matter of urgency before the trial on Monday. Addresses are provided below.

Lobbying addresses:

Her Excellency Ms Fu Ying,
Ambassador,
Embassy of the People's Republic of China to the UK,
49-51 Portland Place,
London W1N 1JL
> (Salutation: Your Excellency)
> Fax: +44 (0)20 7636 2981 / 5578
> E-mail: chinaemb_uk@mfa.gov.cn
> Tel: +44 (0)20 7299 4049, 07970 292561 (24 hours)
>
> If you are writing from outside the UK please refer
> to the following
> link for the relevant embassy address:
> http://www.china.org.cn/english/Embassies/197333.htm

How North Koreans-turned-South Korean stand out

China can verify whether a South Korean citizen is a North Korean defector by checking a social-security number, the last four digits of the social-security number indicate where the identification was issued. North Korean refugees are issued a code that indicates they are from Ansung city, the locale of a training center called Hanawon where all North Korean refugees go through a few months of settlement training to adapt to their new life in the South.

Based on this peculiar ID pattern, many North Korean settlers are often denied a Chinese entry visa. At the same time, they are also subject to employment discrimination from South Korean companies that avoid hiring them because of their lack of job skills and cultural differences.

The South Korean government abolished the problematic system in June and initiated a new one in which North Koreans receive social-security numbers that show the place of their choice of residence, not Ansung.

The remedy, however, is still not perfect. Those who received their social-security numbers before the launch of the new system still have to use their old ID, and it's impossible for them to change their ID numbers because doing so would require a change of the relevant law and parliamentary approval.

[Excerpt of an article by Sunny Lee, The Asian Times]

And what of North Korean refugees?

In South Korea, one can spot the North Koreans by their stunted stature, the result of growing up on inadequate diets. They often seem befuddled in banks and restaurants, and they speak Korean with a noticeable accent.

They risked their lives to get here, but even when they're assimilated they earn half of what their South Korean brethren do — for drudge work. There are 11,000 of them in South Korea, trickling in at the rate of only 2,000 a year, but increasingly they're the unwanted relatives at the doorstep.

Earlier this year, South Korea cut the initial stipend that refugees receive, with an additional [amount] for housing, adding payments at the back end if immigrants hold jobs for more than a year.

The South Korean government, which fears that any crisis with Pyongyang could unleash a flood of North Korean migrants, seems to be pulling up the welcome mat. Experts say South Korea is seeking to slow the stream of refugees, in order to avert a mass exodus from North Korea and ease tensions with its unpredictable neighbor.

That will leave thousands of North Koreans stranded en route in China, Mongolia and Southeast Asia.

[Excerpt of article by Tim Johnson, McClatchy Newspapers]

North Korean defector’s death raising concern in South Korea

A North Korean defector who had entered South Korea early this year ended her life by throwing herself from a window of a 10th-floor apartment in downtown Seoul this past month.

Kim Young-sil, 36, committed suicide in the early hours, South Korea's Yonhap said, adding that her death came as a cold shock to some 1,000 North Korean settlers who live in the same apartment complex.

Kim had been previously repatriated back to North Korea from China at least four times in her attempt to flee the starving country before she finally made it to South Korea. She was known to suffer from depression due to her post-traumatic stress from repatriation.

North Korean refugee groups in the South, however, vehemently point out that behind her death lie more fundamental problems such as the cold attitude and indifference as well as a lack of accommodative policy in South Korea for North Korean settlers, all of them acting as a trigger for her death.

[Excerpt of an article by Sunny Lee, The Asian Times]