Seoul Searching: Lucky Seven?

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The name of this column may have to be changed to "Pyongyang Searching," which wouldn't be catchy but it might be more accurate. Believe me, I wanted to write something about Seoul today, maybe poke some fun at the government for falling so far behind Japan on preparations for the World Cup or reveal the inside scoop on President Kim Dae Jung's dogs. But on the front page of the newspaper this morning is a picture of a North Korean family that has taken refuge at the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Beijing. One of them, a teenage son, is known in Seoul-see, there is a Seoul connection-from his drawings. After his family escaped to China from North Korea, he drew pictures of some of the things he had witnessed, including public executions and starving people eating human flesh.

Now Beijing, and Seoul, have a "situation." China's normal course of action with North Korean refugees is to ship them back to North Korea - Beijing calls them illegal aliens, not refugees, implicitly arguing that they don't face any danger of persecution in their home country. But the story of another young man that surfaced last week showed what nonsense that claim is.

Park Choong Il was one of a group of 7 refugees who in 1999 made it to Russia, where the UNHCR managed to interview them and declared them legitimate refugees. The Russian authorities sent them back to China anyway and the Chinese sent them back to North Korea. Recently a North Korean refugee claiming to be Park surfaced in Bangkok. A human rights investigator who investigated the case and took reams of testimony from the man says he is convinced this is the same Park Choong Il who was declared a refugee by the UNHCR back in 1999.

He doesn't look quite the same as he did in photos and video taken in Russia. But a doctor who examined him in Bangkok as well says that may be the result of torture. Park says that following his repatriation, he was held in a large underground interrogation cell and beaten repeatedly with rubber belts, whips and wooden clubs while a guard shone a spotlight on him. When guards complained that he was grinding his teeth at night, they made him clean the toilet hole in his cell with his tongue. He thought of refusing, assuming that he'd then get beaten to death, but he chose instead to live. He was punished the same way for two other missteps. Thanks to family connections, he got released from prison. But the experience left him close to death. After trying several times to kill himself -- by drinking bird poison, swallowing a broken safety pin and jumping out a window with a rope around his neck - he decided to flee to China again. Eventually he made his way to Bangkok.

So we know what happens when refugees get sent back to North Korea. In regards to the family holed up in the UNHCR office, the ball is in China's court now. Probably Beijing will quietly send to a third country. Seoul, which doesn't want to upset Beijing or Pyongyang, will quietly pick them up. But maybe it will be just a little harder for the world to ignore Beijing's blatant violations of international agreements guaranteeing protection to refugees -- which China signed. Maybe. And then I can get back to writing about DJ's dogs.