Lee Jung-hoon, the new chief of the Unification Future Planning Committee, an advisory body to the unification minister, speaks during a roundtable discussion, titled "2023 Report on North Korean Human Rights," at the Press Center in Seoul, Tuesday. Newsis

Rights experts urge Seoul to work with like-minded states to pressure Beijing

By Jung Min-ho

The 2019 decision by the previous administration to repatriate two fishermen back to North Korea against their will ― in a clear violation of U.N. treaties ― shocked human rights experts around the world. Yet no one raised the issue, at least not openly, in China, a nation that has been doing the exact same thing for decades.

According to human rights organizations, more than 2,000 North Korean defectors will likely suffer the same fate once the remaining border restrictions that had been set up between the two countries during the COVID-19 pandemic are removed. What awaits them in North Korea is no secret ― years of incarceration in political prison camps, torture or worse.

This must be stopped, said Lee Jung-hoon, the new chief of the Unification Future Planning Committee, an advisory body to the unification minister.

"We have to continue to raise the issue (of compulsory repatriation) and try to align with likeminded governments throughout the world," Lee, former ambassador-at-large on North Korean human rights, said during a roundtable discussion, titled "2023 Report on North Korean Human Rights," at the Press Center in Seoul, Tuesday.

"This is an embarrassment to the leadership of Xi Jinping who hopes to be a global leader, alongside the United States."

Seoul has long asked Beijing to give these refugees the option of returning to the North or heading to the South. Despite its diplomatic efforts, however, Beijing has maintained the policy of treating North Koreans crossing into China as illegal migrants rather than refugees.

"The problem is that the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) has the right to have access to them and then determine whether their cases merit refugee status or not," Lee said. "But China's government has been preventing the U.N. agency from having any access to North Korean defectors despite their special agreement signed in 1995."

This issue must be addressed at every diplomatic opportunity until China, one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and a state often referred to as one of the G2, changes that policy to meet international standards, he added.

Former North Korean diplomat Ko Young-hwan, now a member of the South's Unification Future Planning Committee, an advisory body to the unification minister, speaks during a roundtable discussion on "2023 Report on North Korean Human Rights" at the Press Center in Seoul, Tuesday. Yonhap

Closing the human rights loophole will likely require more than international review and collaboration as it is the government, not individuals, that lies in its favor. North Korea often makes criminal accusations against escapees to catch and punish the people it sees as "traitors," according to Ko Young-hwan, a member of the committee and a former North Korean diplomat who escaped to the South.

"Border cities in North Korea and China have extradition agreements. So when the North wants someone to be deported from China, it accuses the person of embezzlement, murder or other charges in its official documents," he said, adding that this strategy poses legal challenges to China and other governments friendly to Pyongyang.

"What I'm suggesting is to establish a new system in China, where the people in question could go through a trial or some sort of other legal procedures to corroborate all the contrasting claims before a deportation decision."

China, a country that allows some degree of freedom of speech and outside information, is different from North Korea and may not be impossible to convince, Ko said. "But diplomats in South Korea would need to step up efforts to develop a good logic to persuade them," he added.

Welcoming the English-language publication of the report on North Korea's human rights situation, all the participants said it was a first meaningful step toward the betterment of the North Korean people. They also said making progress in the area is a prerequisite for peaceful unification.

Lee Han-byeol, a North Korean defector-turned non-standing commissioner at the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, said the publication gave her hope.

"This was meaningful because it shows that the government in South Korea recognizes the protection of North Koreans' human rights as its responsibility and that it will never forget them," she said.