Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide

The Tumen river divides North Korea and China along more than 500 km, rushing through broad valleys dotted with ramshackle farming villages and soaring mountain slopes of pine, fir and birch. In some places it pinches into a stream so narrow you can toss a stone to the other bank or wade across, at least before the summer rains start. Kim Kyung Sun has been back and forth so many times he has lost count. Last week he crossed into China from the North Korean side once again—he hopes for the last time.

Since famine first started driving North Koreans across the border in the mid-'90s, they have been the world's invisible refugees. They live in hiding with relatives, in clandestine safe house in border towns or in remote mountain hideouts, trying to stay a step ahead of the Chinese police—and the dreaded North Korean agents. In recent months, however, their situation has grown more desperate. China has launched a broad crackdown on the North Koreans, who are considered refugees by the rest of the world but illegal aliens by Beijing. In Yanji, in eastern Jilin province, North Korean families last week were scrambling to avoid getting caught up in house-to-house searches. Police have posted notices urging people to report a long list of undesirables, including murderers, rapists and people giving jobs to illegal aliens—and offering rewards for tips. This spring, four members of Good Friends, a Seoul-based refugee aid group working in the area, were held, along with a local translator, in detention for 50 days. They say they were beaten and accused of spying. "The tension is very high right now," says Erica Kang, a spokeswoman for the group.

Dark and intense with close-cropped black hair, Kim spent a year roaming around North Korea stealing to stay alive before escaping to China. (As with all of the other North Koreans mentioned in this story, Kim's name has been changed to protect his identity.) An orphan, his slight, wiry frame makes him look much younger than his 18 years. The Chinese have already arrested him on several occasions and sent him back: the last time he was put in a North Korean labor camp for repeat offenders. He and his older brother overpowered the guard and ran away, Kim says, a serious crime in the rigidly controlled country. He is on another blacklist, too. Through contacts with South Korean missionaries, Kim has become a Christian, which increases his problems. Pyongyang forbids citizens from freely practicing any religion. "This time I would have no chance of getting out of jail," he says.

This is the refugee crisis China doesn't want the world to see, especially ahead of next month's International Olympic Committee vote on which city will host the 2008 Summer Games (Beijing is a front-runner). Fearful of destabilizing ally North Korea, China is refusing to allow the men, women and children crossing the border even to apply for refugee status. There are no United Nations camps, no international aid workers, no help except for the missionaries and small humanitarian aid groups running clandestine operations. It's illegal to try to count the refugees. Locals who help them face fines and jail terms. Says Kim Sang Chul, secretary general of the Seoul-based Commission to Help North Korean Refugees: "There is no comparable situation anywhere else in the world."

Kim, the orphan, isn't the only one living in fear along this border, where China's ethnic Koreans are concentrated and Korean is as much the lingua franca as Chinese. Unlike the heavily guarded demilitarized zone that delineates North Korea's border with the South, this is a porous, Wild West frontier, teeming with traders, smugglers, government agents and bride traffickers. More than 300,000 North Koreans were in the area in 1999, according to a clandestine survey carried out by Good Friends. The lucky ones live with relatives or find their way to an underground missionary shelter. The others are often at the mercy of unscrupulous farmers and factory owners who give them jobs but pay a pittance. Han Dong Jun and his older brother Dong Shik raise herbs and medicinal plants on a patch of cleared forest land for a Chinese farmer in a remote stretch of mountainside frontier. They say he won't pay them until the the crop is ready or commit to how much he'll give them. As illegal immigrants, they have nowhere to turn.

That's what Oh Chang Shik has discovered. He lost his right to reside in China when he moved from there to the more prosperous North Korea in the '60s. After two of his eight children died of hunger, he returned to Yanji in 1998. Last week, as part of the crackdown, Oh was taken away by police but managed to escape when their car had a flat tire. He is now in hiding again. In the border towns, too, North Koreans are living on the edge. Park Hye Sook crossed the frozen Tumen in January. At first life got better. She had the luxury of going to the hairdresser; her shiny black hair now sweeps across her forehead in short, neatly trimmed bangs. Her five-year-old daughter sitting beside her smiles shyly. But Park now feels unsafe. She worries she is a danger to the local Chinese who are hiding her in their sparsely furnished apartment. Police have begun checking identity cards; in May, authorities posted a notice on her very door about illegal aliens. Before Park first came to China she had heard horror stories—probably Pyongyang propaganda—about Chinese arresting North Koreans, then draining their blood until they were dead. Unable to feed herself and her daughter, she came anyway. After a year, she crossed back to North Korea and was arrested when someone informed on her. Back in her hometown she was considered a spy because she had spent a year in China. Nobody wanted anything to do with her, and the police pressured her to leave town. She fled again to China. Last week, she learned from a television program that taxi drivers had been given a number to call police if they see "strangers." Fearful, she wants to try to make it to Seoul: "Staying here is very dangerous. I want to try one time even if I fail."

Many do make the attempt. But trips through China to neighboring countries, where refugees can seek asylum in a South Korean embassy, are arduous and fraught with danger: most refugees lack papers and don't speak Chinese. In Yanji on a recent night, a group of eight refugees were preparing to make a run for it anyway. In a safe house on the top floor of a concrete apartment building, they huddled on the linoleum floor, pouring over a map of Mongolia while a missionary went over the route they would take, explaining where to make the crossing under the concertina wire at the frontier, urging them to keep walking until they are able to surrender to Mongolian border troops. The missionary is tense, jumpy. He tells them he has heard that the Mongolians, under pressure from China, are starting to close their border to refugees.

Sitting on the floor beside his fiance, Lee Do Hun says he wanted to stay in China when he first arrived a few years ago. Now, he is about to embark on a journey to South Korea with his future wife and says the perils are greater than ever. "We might be put in prison, we might be killed. If North Korea finds out you got to Seoul, they will find your relatives and kill them." The map is put away and another missionary leads the group in a brief prayer. One of the women preparing to leave is crying quietly. It is pouring outside, and soon the river will be rising. But the refugees won't stop coming.

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