Small-scale forced repatriations of North Korean defectors have taken place even after about 200 detectors who were locked up in Chinese prisons were sent back against their will last October. Such forced repatriations are likely to grow more frequent, with cooperation between North Korean and Chinese police and security agencies expected to intensify.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a high-ranking Daily NK source in North Korea said Wednesday that defectors forcibly repatriated from China were recently handed over to local branches of the Ministry of State Security and detained in ministry lockups. North Korea frequently takes forcibly repatriated nationals as soon as China hands them over.
In the case of the forced repatriation of about 200 defectors immediately after the close of the Asian Games in Hangzhou, China, in October, the returnees were sent all at once through the Chinese cities of Dandong and Tumen. Hundreds were sent back together because forced repatriations had been impossible due to North Korea’s closure of the border due to COVID-19. However, defectors are now regularly being repatriated against their will per the system in place before the pandemic, the source said.
However, with the Chinese government intensifying punishments of human trafficking, drugs, burglaries, religious proselytizing and other crimes since the country’s amended counterespionage law went into effect on July 1 of last year, it takes longer than before to repatriate individuals who receive criminal punishments in China.
North Korea and China have recently been searching for ways to cooperate to swiftly send defectors caught illegally residing or engaging in criminal activity in China back to North Korea.
China and North Korea appear to be working closely to streamline forced repatriations
According to another high-ranking source in North Korea, the Ministry of State Security and the Ministry of Social Security are preparing to send dozens of officials to China. In North Korea, people say this is quite extraordinary.
Both ministries claim they are sending the officials to study administrative and organizational systems in cooperation with China’s counterintelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security, and its chief police agency, the Ministry of Public Security. However, the source said that they will build a working-level cooperative system for handing over criminals and illegal residents.
“They also aim to [create a system] for prompt forced repatriations, with North Korea immediately cooperating when China’s Ministry of Public Security asks the North to confirm the identities of defectors it has taken possession of after they’ve been arrested,” he said.
Zhao Leji, the chairman of China’s Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress and the third-ranking member of the Communist Party of China, met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during a recent visit to Pyongyang. During the meeting, Zhao mentioned “substantive and reciprocal cooperation” and “protecting joint interests.” This has sparked speculation that the two countries will also strengthen cooperation on transferring criminals and illegal residents. Accordingly, measures to forcibly repatriate defectors will likely grow faster and simpler.
At a seminar hosted by the Korea Society on April 9, Julie Turner, the U.S. Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights Issues, said China is demonstrating no significant changes regarding its forced repatriations, with Beijing arguing that defectors are economic migrants and that no evidence proves that they are tortured upon their return to the North. She said the United States would continue to demand that China and other U.N. member states comply with the ban on forced repatriations.
International law must be used to put pressure on China, experts say
Critics say that with China showing no signs of improvement despite international efforts to stop the forced repatriation of North Korean defectors, the issue must be approached using international law and China’s domestic law.
Professor Won Jae-chun, an international law professor at Handong Global University, said in a telephone conversation with Daily NK that the Chinese government’s forced repatriations of North Korean defectors violated international agreements on the state of refugees and the prevention of torture and China’s own laws against human trafficking.
“Pressure needs to be put on China using international law by imputing responsibility on Beijing for its forced repatriations, suing China in the International Criminal Court and filing injunctions to suspend the forced repatriations,” he said. “Only if international law is binding by organizing the facts about the forced repatriations as a public record and creating an international legal basis for protecting defectors, among other things, can we make a ban on forced repatriations of defectors substantively effective.”
Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.
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