North Korean defectors

North Korean defectors (탈북자/脫北者, 북한이탈주민/北韓離脫住民, 새터민) are North Koreans who escaped North Korea for various reasons and are staying in China or neighboring countries.

During the great famine of the late 1990s, hundreds of thousands of North Korean defectors swarmed across the border to Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin Province. North Korean boys became beggars at markets in the Chinese cities, and North Korean women were even sold off to sxual slavery.

In 1997, Hwang Jang-yop, a former secretary of the Workers Party (조선노동당), defected to South Korea in safety, It was possible because China allowed him to come to the South despite threats and urgent pleas by North Korea to send him back to Pyongyang. The Korean government took efforts to bring back most South Korean abduction victims and prisoners of war to the South if they were captured in China after escaping.

On the other hand, the government makes efforts to help North Korean defectors to settle down and make an independent living in a short period of time by implementing the Act for Assisting North Korean Defectors Settlement (북한이탈주민의 보호 및 정착지원에 관한 법률).

Key words
defector, refugee, repatriation, human rights, diplomatic issue, Sunshine Policy

Repatriation of North Korean defectors at issue
In the early 2012, North Korean defectors made newsheadlines when South Koreans led by Liberty Forward Party lawmaker Park Sun-young rallied in front of the Chinese Embassy in Seoul to protest the repatriation of scores or hundreds of North Korean defectors in detention centers in China's Liaoning and Jilin provinces to North Korea.

It was reported that Pyongyang sent 30 security officials to China in February 2012 to demand the repatriation of arrested defectors. As North Korean leader Kim Jong-un recently ordered security forces to "wipe out three generations of those who betrayed their homeland," the defectors would certainly face heavy punishment if they are repatriated.

China's tough position on N. Korean defectors
From the late 1990s to early 2000s, when the mass exodus of North Korean defectors began, Korean consulates and other diplomatic missions were the favored places for them to seek refuge. China allowed them to head to South Korea when they had spent a certain time in diplomatic missions. At one time, there were apparently more than 50 North Koreans being housed at the Embassy in Beijing.

But Beijing's approach changed when North Koreans tried to use almost all overseas diplomatic missions in Beijing as refuges. Around the mid-2000s, China began to stop North Koreans hiding out in diplomatic missions in Beijing from heading to Seoul. Experts say this was largely due to protests from Pyongyang.

Former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il apparently demanded Beijing deal sternly with the defectors. Activists supporting defectors say Pyongyang began to view them as the biggest threat to the regime after Kim collapsed with a massive stroke in August 2008, and China agreed.

Different voices
Journalist Kang Chol-hwan, who is also a defecor, argues that South Korean government is not in a position to blame China on the repatriation issue. He said in a column as follows:
 * The South Korean Embassy and consulates in China should have been at the forefront of protecting North Korean defectors. But during the left-leaning administrations of presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, South Korean diplomats did nothing even as North Korean defectors were dragged away by Chinese police right in front of the embassy in Beijing.
 * Today the trafficking of North Korean women is as serious a problem as the repatriation of defectors. North Korean women who cross the Duman and Apnok rivers into China have no choice but to seek the help of people smugglers. If a woman pays between 1,000 and 2,000 yuan to a broker, she can avoid being captured and sold off as a prostitute and find her way to South Korea.
 * Human rights groups and other activists helping North Korean defectors have turned to women's rights groups in South Korea for aid, but none of them have been willing to raise funds to prevent the trafficking of North Korean women. The Unification Ministry sets aside huge sums of money to aid the North Korean regime but considers it virtually impossible to use that money to help North Korean defectors.

Human rights issue in North Korea
North Korean defectors witness the human rights in the North have been deteriorated to a terrible state. All of them are fearful of repatriation to their homeland. It means that they are, without exception, subject to torture and forced labor at internment camps or reeducation camps.

In reality, the Pyongyang regime controls virtually all activities within the nation. Citizens are not allowed to freely speak their minds and the government detains those who criticize the regime. The only radio, television, and news organizations operated by the government. The media universally praise the administration of Kim Jong-Il and Kim Jong-un.

A number of human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, and governments have condemned North Korea's human rights issue. In its 2006 country report on North Korea, Freedom House described the country as a "totalitarian dictatorship" and categorized it as "Not Free." In 2004, the United States government adopted the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004, which criticised North Korea and outlined steps the United States should take towards North Korea. The United Nations passed a General Assembly resolution on the North Korean human rights every year since 2005.

To the disappointment of most human rights proponents and activists, the National Assembly of the South would not willingly adopt any resolution or bill on the human rights in the North because opposition lawmakers blocked its passage due to fears of agitating the Pyongyang regime and thus undermining the Inter-Korean relations established in the name of the "Sunshine Policy".

Aggravating Situation in the South
The total number of North Korean defectors is estimated to amount to 25 thousand people by the end of 2012. Brave North Korean defectors who made a die-hard escape from the North Korea increasingly fall victim to various crimes in the South. They are apt to be involved in real estate fake, insurance fraud, trading methamphetamine (Philopon), sale and purchase of sex, etc. A significant number of defectors are target of other defectors.

Some of them are engaged in voice phishing, counterfeit U.S. dollar notes, and illegal foreign exchange transactions in relation to China. The recent survey conducted by the Korean Institute of Criminology (형사정책연구원) and the Korea National Police University Poice Science Institute (치안정책연구소) showed that 10 percent of the North Korean defectors during the period from 1998 to 2007 committed crimes, two times of the criminal ratio 4.3 percent on average of the Korean society. They are also exposed to crimes as victim five times more than the average figure in the South.

The reason why the North Korean defectors are vulnerable to crimes is that most of them helplessly join the poorest class of the society. The average income of 80 percent of defectors is more or less 1,500 thousand won, and the unemployed amount to 12 percent of the total defectors compared to 3.7 percent on average of the Korean economy. Insufficient money and unfamiliarity with the Korean way of life drive them to the wide road of crimes. It is necessary to provide them with vocational education and training to enhance the competitiveness required to survive the Korean society.