At least 13 refugees from North Korea have been arrested in Kunming, Yunnan province trying to escape to South Korea, media reports said Monday.
Chinese police on Friday arrested the 13 while they were trying to board a bus bound for an unidentified Southeast Asian nation. "Most North Korean defectors travel in a group of five at most when crossing the Chinese border to a Southeast Asian nation," an activist told South Korea's Yonhap news agency. "It appears that they were trying to save money for hiring brokers who could help them cross the border."
Around 25,000 North Koreans have fled the famine and repression at home to settle in the capitalist South over the past six decades. Almost all cross the North's border into China. Many of them then secretly travel through China to a third nation, typically Vietnam, where they arrange to fly on to South Korea for resettlement.
China, the North's only major ally, categorises the fugitives as illegal economic migrants rather than refugees, and repatriates those detained. This policy has been widely criticised by activists who say fugitives can face severe punishment upon return to North Korea including being sent to one of the country's gulags, or even execution.
Asked about the South Korean reports at a regular briefing, China's foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said: "These people that you have mentioned are not defectors from the DPRK (North Korea), they are illegal border crossers. In dealing with relevant issues we have always abided by domestic law, international law and humanitarian spirit."
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un is believed to have tightened border controls since he took power in late 2011. The number of refugees arriving in South Korea plunged more than 40 percent to 1,508 last year.
[Image: North Koreans walk past a propaganda poster in Wosan. Via Flickr]
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