The United States will continue to press Beijing on the subject of North Korean refugees detained in China, a senior U.S. official said Tuesday, adding however that Washington’s influence over China on the issue is “limited” due to complex bilateral relations.
Responding to a question about China’s controversial repatriation of the refugees who could be persecuted on their return to North Korea, U.S. Human Rights Envoy to North Korea Robert King said that Washington would continue to “press them at very high levels.”
China views North Korean refugees as “economic migrants” and often repatriates them across the border where they are likely to face torture and even death without judicial process, according to a new report released Tuesday.
“We continue to press the Chinese and to let them know that we are concerned about those issues and that we see these people as refugees, and that on humanitarian grounds we think they should be released,” King told the conference in Washington on North Korea’s prison camp system.
But the rights envoy acknowledged difficulties in convincing Beijing to release detained North Korean refugees, saying the U.S. “[doesn’t] have control over the people who are there” and that “our ability to influence the Chinese is limited.”
“Our relationship with China is complex,” he said.
“We want Chinese support in the U.N. Security Council on a whole range of issues, ranging from Africa to the Middle East to North Korea. We want Chinese support in a lot of other areas, and we’re trying to develop a more positive relationship with China.”
Last month, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said after a meeting with South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan in Washington that “refugees should not be repatriated and subjected once again to the dangers that they fled from.”
“The treatment of North Korean refugees is an issue on which we have ongoing engagement with our partners, both in Korea and in China,” she said, adding that the U.S. had raised concerns over North Korean refugees with senior Chinese officials in February.
China last month repatriated 31 North Korean refugees it arrested in February, despite public appeals and international protests against the move, and rights groups fear they could face severe punishment.
Brutal camp system
King’s statement came amidst the release of a new report entitled “The Hidden Guglag” by the U.S.-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, which organized Tuesday’s conference.
The report details the conditions of North Korean prison camps, including the jailing of whole families for “political crimes” carried out by other family members, as well as forced abortions of North Korean women who were impregnated by Chinese men across the border before being forcibly repatriated.
Based on interviews with 60 former prisoners and guards, the report points to the Soviet gulag as the model for the North Korean camps, which were established in the 1950s to punish those exhibiting “wrong thought.”
North Korean state security agency officials who defected to South Korea estimate that the camp system holds between 150,000 and 200,000 people.
The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea says the report's findings contradict a 2009 statement by North Korea to the United Nations Human Rights Council that the political prisoner camps do not exist. It called on Pyongyang to allow the International Committee of the Red Cross access to the prison camps, and to dismantle them.
The committee also called on China to allow the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees immediate access to North Koreans seeking protection and asylum in China, and that all forced repatriations of pregnant Korean women “be halted immediately and unconditionally.”
More than 30,000 North Korean defectors have fled the country, up from just 3,000 a decade ago, the committee said.
Rights abuses are widespread in nuclear-armed North Korea, which announced last month that it would launch a weather satellite into orbit between April 12 and 16 in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of founder Kim Il Sung’s birth.
North Korean space officials said Tuesday that preparations are set for the satellite launch, which the U.S. and its allies insist is a ballistic missile test in disguise—in blatant violation of United Nations resolutions and a February U.S.-North Korean food aid agreement.
Reported by Joshua Lipes.