A refugee's perilous odyssey from N. Korea

"Going to China is completely alien to us anyway. It is a shock to go. When we escaped the first time, we found Korean families. We had to be careful. But it was OK," Choi says. "This time there was fear all around. I was shown posters saying that Northerners should be informed on."

So for a while, Choi and his sister dug a hole at the foot of a hill outside one border town, where they could sleep. Choi soon felt he needed to move away from the border, deeper into China, but travel was difficult. "You need to travel, and you need to go by bus or train. But you get nervous when you go to buy a ticket. The number of checkpoints is higher. The police stop and search buses, and then there is nothing you can do. You are caught."

Before he could go, Choi got word that his father was impatient and wanted to leave North Korea. To this day, he hasn't seen them.

Eventually Choi met a railroad worker in China. Choi will say nothing about these contacts, other than that they took place through someone who knew his father.

Over the course of several "interviews," Choi says he was asked by railroad workers what he wanted. He said, "freedom." Did he want to escape? "Yes." He was then asked how he felt about a risky plan to go to South Korea by way of Beijing. He said, "I feel doomed anyway. I can sit here and be doomed, or I can go forward. I want to go forward."

Until Choi got to Beijing, he says, he didn't really understand the plan, did not realize that Norbert Vollertsen, part of an international group of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), had cased the German Embassy the night before and found the security too tight. Not until the Koreans rushed the Spanish Embassy, their alternate plan, did Choi grasp what he was part of.

Critics say the Spanish Embassy publicity is to blame for the intensified crackdown on Koreans in China. NGOs say the event was a symptom – not a cause – born of frustration with a crackdown that got little attention.

To Chinese authorities, most runaways are not classified as refugees or asylum-seekers, but as economic migrants.

"Sadly, I agree with China's position," says a South Korean expert at a leading university here. "Beijing doesn't have much choice, and there is an agreement to repatriate with Pyongyang. Most refugees are there for money. If China accepts them, that will create bad tension."

For South Korea, the issue of asylum-seekers runs squarely into President Kim Dae Jung's policy of engagement with the North. The South's policy hinges on a gradual improvement of relations, not provocation.

Refugee advocates say the South's policy ignores the pain of refugee families. "If you blur your eyes, so you can't see the suffering, and close your ears so you can't hear the cries – then you can look 20 years down the road to improved North-South relations," says aid worker Mr. Peters.

Page: 1 | 2 | 3