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Human-rights network to target US missions

"We would like to create a diplomatic mess for the US, Japanese and German players."

Norbert Vollertsen, member of the clandestine network

Ten North Koreans seeking asylum at the Japanese Embassy in Thailand were helped by a clandestine human-rights network that also plans to target German and US missions in the region, an activist said.

Norbert Vollertsen, a German doctor in South Korea who is a member of the informal network, said Friday his group wants to publicize the plight of the North Koreans and focus on human rights issues by arranging similar intrusions elsewhere.

"We would like to create a diplomatic mess for the US, Japanese and German players," said Vollertsen in a telephone interview from Seoul.

"Our next target is a German institution nearby," he said, refusing to elaborate. "We will also focus on the US to guarantee asylum," said Vollertsen, who spent 18 months in North Korea as a doctor with a German nonprofit organization until the end of 2000.

The US and Japan have focused on the nuclear threat posed by Pyongyang's government but have given little attention to the refugee problem.

Vollertsen said he hoped that a refugee crisis would trigger the peaceful collapse of the communist government, similar to the way in which growing numbers of East German refugees led to the peaceful reunification of Germany after the Berlin Wall was razed in 1989.

Vollertsen said a South Korean activist, whom he would not name, had returned Thursday from Bangkok after helping the North Koreans rush into the Japanese Embassy the same day. He described the man as a veteran activist who had previously been kicked out of China for his refugee work.

Vollertsen became the public face of the network after he helped arrange a series of high-profile intrusions by asylum-seekers last year at diplomatic missions in China.

He described the people he works with as "a loose movement of several nationalities," mostly South Korean but also Americans and Europeans, including former diplomats, former journalists and missionaries. The network has no name, budget or formal organization.

Vollertsen said the network helped the 10 asylum-seekers make their way from the Tumen River -- marking the border between North Korea and China -- down to Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam.

He estimated that "several hundred" North Korean refugees had made their way to South Korea via Bangkok in the past few years.

In the past, the North Koreans had targeted diplomatic missions in China for asylum bids. But Beijing -- Pyongyang's chief ally -- is not sympathetic to their cause, branding them economic migrants rather than political refugees.

"There was no more possibility to do something in Beijing" after Chinese police began closely guarding diplomatic missions there following last year's high-profile incidents, Vollertsen said.

Vollertsen said the network's plans include sending messages by balloon into North Korea, smuggling in radios, and even a boat-people project to encourage people to flee by sea to South Korea.
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