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North Korean students perform during the country's famed Arirang Mass Games at the May Day stadium in central Pyongyang October 10, 2005. The Arirang Mass Games involved 100,000 performers, including 20,000 students who organised a massive mosaic by turning pages of books that composed the back-cloth. Picture taken October 10, 2005. REUTERS/Lee Jae-Won
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South Korean Government neglects defectors from North Korea.
It has been discovered that last August, seven North Korean defectors who wished to go to South Korea ran into a South Korean International School located in Yentai, Sandoong, China, but were arrested and sent back to North Korea by Chinese authorities. Since 2004, almost 100 North Korean defectors, in about ten incidents, have broken into International Schools located in China. It is shocking that China's sending defectors back to North Korea was the first time. According to authorities concerned with foreign affairs, "China's measures were out of the customary practice."
In this case, with defectors sent back to North Korea, their pain will be enormous. Most defectors are classified as traitors. It is said that they have been oppressed. Some testified to the fact that a defector was handcuffed, ankle-chained, interrogated for nearly 20 days, beaten, and then conscripted to forced labor. A third of the ten thousand North Korean defectors were asserted to receive a capital sentence or be beaten to death.
It is inhumane and immoral that although China knows the tragedy of defectors, they transported the defectors, including a four-member family, to North Korea. On the 12th of last month nine defectors who were requesting that they go to South Korea, were evicted from the South Korean International School. They are now at large. The international School, located in China, has been often used as a route for some North Korean defectors to go to South Korea, but now can't use that route any more. It is assumed that the Chinese government takes strong measures to stop North Korean defectors.
The South Korean government made a strong protest to China against its action and demanded that Chinese authorities prevent a recurrence, but it was too late. Some South Koreans blame the South Korean government for not having done anything about it. The government should take active steps to deal with the problem of North Korean defectors. The United Nations Human Rights Committee has already defined North Korean defectors not as economic refugees but as refugees. The South Korean government should not neglect North Korean defectors who are standing at the crossroads of life or death.
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 / 입력시간: 2005. 10.12. 09:33
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