By Dan Wooding
Founder of ASSIST MinistriesSEOUL, SOUTH KOREA (ANS) – Some 400 North Korean refugees have ended their hunger strike at a Thai immigration detention centre after receiving a promise to fly 25 of them to South Korea for asylum last week, a humanitarian worker said on Friday, April 27.
Some 400 North Korean refugees have ended their hunger strike at a Thai immigration detention centre after receiving a promise to fly 25 of them to South Korea for asylum last week, a humanitarian worker said on Friday, April 27.According to a story by Jack Kim for Reuters, Thai authorities said last Thursday (April 26) that the strike was over after they reached a deal with South Korea. They gave no details. The refugees had refused food since Tuesday to protest against processing delays and harsh conditions. “They ended the hunger strike early Thursday night,” Seoul-based humanitarian worker Peter Jung, of Justice for North Korea, told Reuters by telephone.
The story went on to say, “South Korea’s Foreign Ministry, which typically refrains from speaking on North Korean refugees, declined to comment.
“North Korean refugees are almost always granted citizenship after arriving in South Korea.
Ten of them were flown to the South on Friday, followed by another 15 on Saturday.
The processing would then slow to about 20 each month under the agreement, said Jung.
“But that is not nearly fast enough. They are dying a slow death inside.”
The Reuters story went on to say that Jung and a U.N. worker have said the refugees, most of whom are women, were crammed into a space for a far smaller number.
Thai immigration police admitted last year that North Koreans were entering from China via Myanmar and Laos at a rate of about 50 a month, suggesting Seoul’s offer to admit only 20 a month would not resolve the issue.
However, another humanitarian worker said that, unofficially, Seoul appeared ready to accept far more.
“There is some room for the numbers to increase,” the humanitarian worker told Reuters.
The swelling ranks of refugees fleeing Kim Jong-il’s hermit regime is a major headache for President Roh Moo-hyun, who is under pressure to admit them but loathe to antagonize Pyongyang.
Seoul’s airlift of 468 North Koreans from Vietnam in 2004 infuriated Pyongyang. Six months later, South Korea announced it would never attempt a large scale refugee rescue again.
The conservative Chosun Ilbo, South Korea’s largest circulation newspaper, accused the government of having its head in the sand.
“Large-scale facilities need to be built to prepare for a possible mass defection, but the South Korean government appears afraid to bring it up, fearful of offending North Korean leader Kim Jong-il,” it said in an editorial.
“If South Korea is a nation with pride and a sense of responsibility, and if South Korea does not deny the fact that North Koreans are part of the same group of people, then it must not ignore the cries of the 400 North Korean defectors in faraway Thailand.”
(Additional reporting by Ed Cropley)
Editor’s Note: The U.S. State Department has again named North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism in its “Country Reports” for 2006 published Monday. The Stalinist country is one of five alleged state sponsors of terrorism along with Cuba, Iran, Syria and Sudan. Under a Feb.13 six-nation agreement, the U.S. examined if it should eliminate North Korea from the list, but it seems to feel Pyongyang has not done enough to fulfill its part of the deal. Japan also apparently urged Washington to keep the North on the list due to the unresolved issue of Japanese nationals abducted by the North Korean regime.
It is believed that tens of thousands of Christians are currently suffering in North Korean prison camps. North Korea is suspected of detaining more political and religious prisoners than any other country in the world.
The communist country is characterized by a complete lack of religious freedom and of many human rights violations. For the fifth year in a row, Open Doors’ World Watch List ranks North Korea as the worst violator of religious rights in the world. Christianity is observed as one of the greatest threats to the regime’s power. The government will arrest not only the suspected dissident but also three generations of his family to root out the bad influence. Kim Jong-il is the “Great Leader” and has been exalted and revered as a god to be followed with unquestioned obedience.
