[imText1]Changchun, China – Even before U.S. journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were arrested in March, the number of refugees in China was drastically decreasing, even though the number of North Korean people entering South Korea was annually increasing. In 2008 that number reached a record 2809.
The scale of refugees is difficult to accurately estimate, but field activists working with refugees in China say that nowadays it is impossible to meet a refugee who has just crossed the border for the first time.
The Tumen Detention House is where most repatriation in China is dealt with. Over half of refugees due to be repatriated to North Korea across the Tumen River are interrogated in this detention house and sent to North Korea through the Namyang Custom House on the other side, and finally to the National Security Agency in Onsung. However, according to an NGO working for refugees in Yanbian, there was no one repatriated into North Korea through the Tumen Detention House in the month of February this year.
Why is this? Mr. Choi explained the reason: “In fact, Korean-Chinese society has embraced North Korean refugees for more than a decade, but now they have started feeling frustrated. This is because the Chinese government has continued to harass refugees, and because there has been no change in North Korean society at all. Korean-Chinese people say that they will not be able to prop them up forever. Therefore, from the refugees’ point of view, it is not easy to get food, emergency aid, clothes or medicines, and it is even harder to get a stable residence and part time work. Chinese and Korean-Chinese society do not sympathize with North Korean refugees anymore. They are just a headache.”
Stronger punishment by the North Korean authorities is also making people think twice about crossing the border.
The North Korean penal code states that a person suspected of illegal border crossing is sentenced to more than three-years in a reeducation camp, but if they try to head for South Korea or contact a religious organization then they will be sentenced to five to ten years in a reeducation camp. Some can be released using bribes provided by relatives, but most of them are doomed to exist in appalling conditions, just because they crossed the border after giving up all their possessions to earn the money to try and escape.
Regulation of the border is also getting tough. On the border in Sambong-gu, Onsung, North Hamkyung Province, the authorities have dug pitfalls everywhere and arranged guard posts every 50 meters.
The North Korean authorities have been using the Anti-Socialist group to check whether the border observation is working effectively. The main target of the inspection is instances of bribery, which is generally required to get past the guards. Since the inspections were strengthened, the required bribe has also skyrocketed. In 2005, the bribe to cross the Tumen River safely was 500-1,000 Yuan, but now it has reached 3,000 Yuan.
The final reason why less people defect now originates in the food shortages. This has become a chronic phenomenon since the 1990s’ famine, giving the people time to work out the best way to make do in times of hardship, meaning that escape is no longer the only, or the best, option. Field activists unanimously agree that a famine as serious as that of the 1990s will not reappear because of the North Korean people’s capacity to survive.
