Beijing (AsiaNews) - The Chinese government has arrested 29 refugees from North Korea and 5 Chinese and South Koreans who were helping them to escape. The arrests took place July 15 and 17 in Qingdao (Shandong Province) and Kunming (Yunnan): both cities are on the "route" of North Korean refugees who want to seek refuge in South-East Asia. Beijing must now decide whether to deport them. If they go ahead with this the refugees face lifetime in a gulag or even death for treason.
Kwon Na-hyun, South Korean activist who works for the rights of refugees in the North, confirmed the arrest and said that 20 refugees were arrested in Qingdao, while the other 9 in Kunming: "It would have been too dangerous to travel together, and so they had separated. Those who helped them and are also in prison including Na Su-hyun, a former North Korean exile who is now a South Korean citizen". At the moment the group is in a prison in the city of Tumen, on the border between China and North Korea.
The Seoul government claims to be working to secure the release of all those arrested, but some sources state that the Chinese authorities will go ahead with the repatriation because they want to avoid a flood of refugees - poor and unable to speak the language - from North Korea.
In addition, Beijing's official policy is to always return citizens back to the Pyongyang regime. For its part, the Kim government sees exiles as traitors and - if not prominent figures - most often condemns them to death in public as an "example" for the rest of the population.
Yoon Yeo-sang, the Centre for Human Rights in North Korea, said: "Despite relations between Beijing and Seoul having improved, while those with Pyongyang have worsened, China has never stopped sending defectors back to the North and isn't going to: it fears the economic burden of a possible mass exodus. "