Government Allows North Korean Refugees to Travel Directly to the United States

The Chinese government allowed three North Korean refugees to travel directly from China to the United States in July to seek asylum, according to an August 4 Wall Street Journal report (subscription required). The three refugees entered the U.S. Consulate General in Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning province, in May by scaling a wall that separates the U.S. facility from the South Korean Consulate, according to a May 20 Associated Press report. The Chinese government's action was the first time North Korean refugees have been allowed to travel directly to the United States to seek resettlement or asylum. In the past, North Korean refugees hiding in China who wished to seek resettlement as refugees or asylum in the United States had to travel to a third country to present their cases to U.S. authorities. In May 2006, for example, six refugees arrived in the United States after traveling secretly through China to seek refuge in the U.S. Embassy in a Southeast Asian country, according to a May 12 Wall Street Journal report. The six refugees were the first North Koreans to be granted asylum in the United States under the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004.

The Chinese government for many years has forcibly repatriated North Korean refugees facing starvation and political persecution in their homeland, contravening its obligations under the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol. The government classifies all North Koreans who enter China without valid travel documents as illegal economic migrants and claims it must return them to North Korea. The North Korean Penal Code criminalizes defection and crossing the border without government authorization. According to a November 2005 report released by Anti-Slavery International, Article 233 of the amended Penal Code states that any citizen "who crosses a frontier of the Republic without permission shall be committed to a detention labor facility for up to two years," and Article 62 says that any citizen "who defects to a foreign country or to the enemy in betrayal of the country and the people shall be committed to a reform institution for not less than five years. In cases where the person commits an extremely grave offense, he or she shall be given life imprisonment in a reform institution, the death penalty, or have their property confiscated."

Vitit Muntarbhorn, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in North Korea recognized in a 2005 report that North Koreans who have crossed the border into other countries for reasons of livelihood are refugees sur place, or those who may not have met the definition of a refugee when they left their country of origin, but can be categorized as refugees at a later date. According to Muntarbhorn, those fleeing from North Korea are those "who did not leave their country of origin for fear of persecution, but who fear persecution upon return." The Chinese government refuses the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) access to North Korean refugees, and Chinese security forces who guard foreign embassies in Beijing drive away North Koreans who try to present refugee petitions or seek asylum, according to a July 27, 2005, Reuters report posted on the Crossing Borders Web site.

For more information on North Korean Refugees in China, see Section VII of the CECC's 2005 Annual Report.