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If South Korea had passed a law protecting the rights of North Korean defectors then the recent case of nine young North Koreans who were deported from Laos and returned to an uncertain fate in North Korea would never have happened, according to Saenuri Party lawmaker Ha Tae Kyung.
“We would have been able to prevent this incident if the North Korea Human Rights Act had been passed,” Ha told a press conference in Seoul earlier today. Therefore, he went on, “We absolutely must take the opportunity presented by this incident to pass the Act.”
“Defectors must not suffer any more harm as a result of the insincere, inadequate treatment of South Korean embassies,” he went on, declaring that a core problem that led to the Laos scandal was an absence of communication between human rights NGOs and the South Korean embassy in the Laotian capital, Vientiane.
“Communications between the North Korean human rights group and the embassy were not smooth,” he said. “If the North Korean Human Rights Act had been passed so there was a North Korean Human Rights Foundation, then it would have been able to adequately play the role of communication bridge between the NGO and government servants, and we would have been able to prevent this incident.”
Ha was also critical of the personnel limitations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stating, “The manpower of the Laos embassy is not even half that of the North Korean one there. Notably, there is only one press attache, meaning that their information gathering capacity is extremely low.”
“One of the difficulties that North Korean human rights groups plead is the payment of fines,” he added. “The $300 fine demanded in Laos is a lot of money for a defector. If those who cannot pay it are detained for an extended period of time it increases their risk of being deported.”
“One of the provisions of the Act is support for North Korean human rights groups,” he pointed out. “Fines would have ceased to be a problem (if it had been passed).”
