Tweet
North Korean Refugees, South Korean Journalism, and Chinese Justice
THE REAL WORLD
Chinese 'Justice'
A journalist gets two years in prison for telling the truth.
BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
Wednesday, May 28, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT
Enthralling though the Jayson Blair saga may be, let's spare a moment for a journalist who has landed in far worse trouble--not by telling lies, but for his brave and honorable efforts to document firsthand the truth about one of the most terrible stories of our time. He's a South Korean photographer, 33-year-old Seok Jae-Hyun, who over the past few years did freelance work for the New York Times, among others.
Since January, Mr. Seok has been in jail in China, where last Friday he was handed a two-year prison sentence for "trafficking in persons." Translated from the lingo of that perversity known as China's "judicial" system, this means Mr. Seok was detained in Yantai, China, while trying to photograph the efforts of a group of North Korean refugees to flee China, aboard two fishing boats. Their hope was to reach asylum in South Korea and Japan, achieving not only safety for themselves but world attention for the plight of North Korean refugees still hiding and hunted by authorities inside China.
The plan failed. On Jan. 18, Chinese security agents rounded up the aspiring North Korean boat people, the private relief workers helping them and Mr. Seok. Reports vary on the fate of the Koreans; China's policy is to return them to North Korea, which harshly punishes such would-be escapees. But this much is clear: While China's President Hu Jintao is traipsing the globe right now, buffing up China's image following the SARS coverup, Mr. Hu's regime, by imprisoning Mr. Seok, has just tidily arranged to hide another of its gross misdeeds--Beijing's cruel mistreatment of North Korean refugees. Returning them to North Korea not only violates human decency but makes a mockery of China's obligations as party to the United Nations Convention on Refugees. Mr. Seok's two-year sentence will go far to deter further reporting inside China, making it much easier for Beijing, unobserved, to shove refugees back into North Korea.
For this reason alone, Mr. Seok's case deserves world attention. But there are other reasons, too. Mr. Seok is that rare sort of South Korean who, despite the craven national brand of appeasement called the "sunshine policy," had the courage to tackle the true predicament of North Koreans fleeing the world's most repressive state. Most of Mr. Seok's countrymen, as well as their newly elected president, Roh Moo-Hyun, pay lip service to the idea that their kin in the North deserve better lives. But Seoul's real effort over the past decade has been to help preserve the regime with which Kim Jong Il keeps North Koreans enslaved--lest South Korea's quality of life be compromised by 23 million or so famished, ragged countrymen suddenly set free.
The numbers tell the tale: Last year a total of 1,141 North Korean refugees arrived in South Korea. That's more than twice the number in 2001. But the grand total to date is estimated at a mere 2,000. This is utterly trivial in face of 200,000 to 300,000 thought to be hiding out in China (though Beijing's illicit policy of forced repatriation has been whittling that number down). As Western diplomats and North Korean defectors have confirmed to me over the years, South Korean practice is to quietly deflect refugees whenever possible, lest the generous welcome of a few encourage an exodus of many.
If you believe that a country has a soul, or at least some sort of animating set of beliefs, then South Korea's habit of discreetly locking out their hunted, desperate kin to the North has got to be deeply corrosive to the South Korean spirit. A great measure of dignity and relief might well come of a national effort in South Korea to stop behaving like kids and cowards, and instead start actively helping North Korea's refugees, while calling on the world, especially China, to do the same.
However, South Korea's government directs its efforts toward stifling the testimony of defectors and stymieing their attempts to speak to the world---and, specifically, to visit and testify in the U.S. The South Korean government has asked for Mr. Seok's release, but the decibels have been too low even to rise above the clink of wine glasses at the banquets attended by President Roh during his maiden visit to the U.S. earlier this month. Far more telling was Seoul's decision last month to oh-so-delicately abstain from a vote by the U.N. Human Rights Commission condemning North Korea for "widespread and grave abuses."
Not that all blame should go to South Korea. Plenty belongs to the U.S., which has done little to press the refugee issue or welcome North Korean defectors to America's own shores. And most directly culpable is the U.N. While it is specifically charged with aiding refugees, the U.N. has been stunningly silent about the North Koreans (in contrast to its vocal efforts last month to hold onto its lucrative oil-funded aid programs in Iraq).
If the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, Ruud Lubbers, possessed the courage and convictions of a Mr. Seok, he would have used his agency's ample resources to make a crusade of helping the human beings fleeing the holocaust that is North Korea. But as it has played out, while Mr. Seok was awaiting his sentence in China last week, Mr. Lubbers was in Washington pocketing a fresh U.S. pledge of $85 million for his refugee agency, which doesn't even list the North Koreans among the clients of its official rescue operations.
In all the international grappling over how to handle North Korea, with its famine, repression and policy of nuclear extortion, the most safely and easily addressed problem--and the most chronically dismissed--is the issue of providing asylum for the refugees. Along with the towering moral argument summed up by the phrase "never again," help for North Korean refugees carries some possibility of bringing down a regime that on any grounds--global security, regional stability and basic morality--must go. Whatever debate about the Pyongyang regime we are now hearing in Washington still translates into no help whatsoever for ordinary North Koreans. And Mr. Seok, who hoped to photograph refugees reaching freedom, is now in prison himself, in China. This is called the triumph of evil, and it is no small matter.
Ms. Rosett is a columnist for OpinionJournal.com and The Wall Street Journal Europe. Her column appears alternate Wednesdays.
Chinese 'Justice'
A journalist gets two years in prison for telling the truth.
BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
Wednesday, May 28, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT
Enthralling though the Jayson Blair saga may be, let's spare a moment for a journalist who has landed in far worse trouble--not by telling lies, but for his brave and honorable efforts to document firsthand the truth about one of the most terrible stories of our time. He's a South Korean photographer, 33-year-old Seok Jae-Hyun, who over the past few years did freelance work for the New York Times, among others.
Since January, Mr. Seok has been in jail in China, where last Friday he was handed a two-year prison sentence for "trafficking in persons." Translated from the lingo of that perversity known as China's "judicial" system, this means Mr. Seok was detained in Yantai, China, while trying to photograph the efforts of a group of North Korean refugees to flee China, aboard two fishing boats. Their hope was to reach asylum in South Korea and Japan, achieving not only safety for themselves but world attention for the plight of North Korean refugees still hiding and hunted by authorities inside China.
The plan failed. On Jan. 18, Chinese security agents rounded up the aspiring North Korean boat people, the private relief workers helping them and Mr. Seok. Reports vary on the fate of the Koreans; China's policy is to return them to North Korea, which harshly punishes such would-be escapees. But this much is clear: While China's President Hu Jintao is traipsing the globe right now, buffing up China's image following the SARS coverup, Mr. Hu's regime, by imprisoning Mr. Seok, has just tidily arranged to hide another of its gross misdeeds--Beijing's cruel mistreatment of North Korean refugees. Returning them to North Korea not only violates human decency but makes a mockery of China's obligations as party to the United Nations Convention on Refugees. Mr. Seok's two-year sentence will go far to deter further reporting inside China, making it much easier for Beijing, unobserved, to shove refugees back into North Korea.
For this reason alone, Mr. Seok's case deserves world attention. But there are other reasons, too. Mr. Seok is that rare sort of South Korean who, despite the craven national brand of appeasement called the "sunshine policy," had the courage to tackle the true predicament of North Koreans fleeing the world's most repressive state. Most of Mr. Seok's countrymen, as well as their newly elected president, Roh Moo-Hyun, pay lip service to the idea that their kin in the North deserve better lives. But Seoul's real effort over the past decade has been to help preserve the regime with which Kim Jong Il keeps North Koreans enslaved--lest South Korea's quality of life be compromised by 23 million or so famished, ragged countrymen suddenly set free.
The numbers tell the tale: Last year a total of 1,141 North Korean refugees arrived in South Korea. That's more than twice the number in 2001. But the grand total to date is estimated at a mere 2,000. This is utterly trivial in face of 200,000 to 300,000 thought to be hiding out in China (though Beijing's illicit policy of forced repatriation has been whittling that number down). As Western diplomats and North Korean defectors have confirmed to me over the years, South Korean practice is to quietly deflect refugees whenever possible, lest the generous welcome of a few encourage an exodus of many.
If you believe that a country has a soul, or at least some sort of animating set of beliefs, then South Korea's habit of discreetly locking out their hunted, desperate kin to the North has got to be deeply corrosive to the South Korean spirit. A great measure of dignity and relief might well come of a national effort in South Korea to stop behaving like kids and cowards, and instead start actively helping North Korea's refugees, while calling on the world, especially China, to do the same.
However, South Korea's government directs its efforts toward stifling the testimony of defectors and stymieing their attempts to speak to the world---and, specifically, to visit and testify in the U.S. The South Korean government has asked for Mr. Seok's release, but the decibels have been too low even to rise above the clink of wine glasses at the banquets attended by President Roh during his maiden visit to the U.S. earlier this month. Far more telling was Seoul's decision last month to oh-so-delicately abstain from a vote by the U.N. Human Rights Commission condemning North Korea for "widespread and grave abuses."
Not that all blame should go to South Korea. Plenty belongs to the U.S., which has done little to press the refugee issue or welcome North Korean defectors to America's own shores. And most directly culpable is the U.N. While it is specifically charged with aiding refugees, the U.N. has been stunningly silent about the North Koreans (in contrast to its vocal efforts last month to hold onto its lucrative oil-funded aid programs in Iraq).
If the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, Ruud Lubbers, possessed the courage and convictions of a Mr. Seok, he would have used his agency's ample resources to make a crusade of helping the human beings fleeing the holocaust that is North Korea. But as it has played out, while Mr. Seok was awaiting his sentence in China last week, Mr. Lubbers was in Washington pocketing a fresh U.S. pledge of $85 million for his refugee agency, which doesn't even list the North Koreans among the clients of its official rescue operations.
In all the international grappling over how to handle North Korea, with its famine, repression and policy of nuclear extortion, the most safely and easily addressed problem--and the most chronically dismissed--is the issue of providing asylum for the refugees. Along with the towering moral argument summed up by the phrase "never again," help for North Korean refugees carries some possibility of bringing down a regime that on any grounds--global security, regional stability and basic morality--must go. Whatever debate about the Pyongyang regime we are now hearing in Washington still translates into no help whatsoever for ordinary North Koreans. And Mr. Seok, who hoped to photograph refugees reaching freedom, is now in prison himself, in China. This is called the triumph of evil, and it is no small matter.
Ms. Rosett is a columnist for OpinionJournal.com and The Wall Street Journal Europe. Her column appears alternate Wednesdays.
I could have added a phrase on UN (and US) silence, but that would have been over doing it.
So, here we have a tradgedy in four parts -- the plight of North Korean refugees, the unwillingness of South Korea to help them, the persecution of those who are willing, and the silence of the world-at-large.
It make me sick.
Comment