The son of a Chinese man and a North Korean female defector recently died in a car accident after being abandoned by his father and neglected by the government. The boy’s tragic death has reportedly aroused considerable sympathy in his home of Changbai County, Jilin Province.
“The accident occurred after the 12-year-old boy left home. He said in a letter that he’d gone off to find his mother, who had been repatriated to the North,” a source in China told Daily NK on June 1, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
The boy was a stateless individual whose birth had not been registered in China. After his defector mother was arrested and repatriated to North Korea in 2019, the boy was placed in the care of his Chinese grandmother since there was nobody else to look after him.
While trying to find her grandson, the grandmother explained the situation to the village head and the local police station. But the police showed little interest in the missing person report and did not even bother confirming the boy’s identity until after the accident occurred, the source said.
Villagers have criticized the police for not following up on the disappearance of the boy, who was the son of a Chinese man even though he was not a Chinese national. Police apathy led to his death, some say.
One issue was that the boy’s indigent father, his sole legal guardian, neglected his responsibility to care for the boy. But some say that incidents of this sort occur because the Chinese police basically ignore stateless children, the source explained.
China bestows nationality and household registration on the children of North Korean women defectors provided that the father is Chinese and paternity can be established through a DNA test. But most of those children are left stateless and neglected, like the deceased boy, trapped in a legal gray area.
“Since the accident, the villagers have been talking about the pitiful situation of children born to defector mothers and Chinese fathers. They’re also remarking that the boy wouldn’t have died there on the street if his mother hadn’t been sent back to North Korea,” the source said.
However, the Chinese police reportedly maintain that defector women who do not have legal permission to be in China are subject to repatriation even if they have had a child with a Chinese man and are living together as a family.
“Amid growing public calls for taking care of the stateless children of defector women and Chinese men, the local police station instructed village heads to provide nationality and household registration to any children in that situation as long as documents can be submitted to establish paternity,” the source said.
Translated by David Carruth. Edited by Robert Lauler.
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