Lawmaker: Laos 20 Heading for South Korea

Ruling Saenuri Party lawmaker Kim Jae Won revealed on the 12th that a group of North Korean refugees now being housed in South Korea’s embassy in the Laotian capital Vientiane may soon be sent on to South Korea.

“I expect the more than twenty defectors now being looked after at the Korean Embassy in Laos to be repatriated to South Korea shortly,” Kim explained in a press release.

Kim went on to say that during his recent trip to Laos at the head of a parliamentary delegation he urged a number of Laotian officials to return to a more conciliatory approach to defection and defectors from North Korea. “I requested that Laos hereafter actively cooperate on the repatriation of persons defecting from North Korea,” he noted.

However, “It has emerged that, in a recent National Assembly session, Laos said it felt a sense of burden at being seen as a soft touch on illegal immigration, and adopted the hardline position of returning illegal entrants to their countries of origin once ascertained,” Kim noted. “There are also signs that last year a number of high-ranking North Korean officials visited Laos to enhance their (bilateral) solidarity,” he added.

Nevertheless, he declared, “Defecting persons, as citizens of the Republic of Korea from the moment they escape North Korea, should not be treated as criminals. We will revise our manual on how to deal with defectors and prepare effective policies in order to solve the problem of defectors, who are not losing hope even as they live inhuman lives of fear and pain.”