The North Korean’s note, scrawled in pen, was simple: “I want to go to South Korea. Why? To find freedom. Freedom of religion, freedom of life.”
The ex-logger, on the run from North Korean authorities, handed the note over to a South Korean missionary in the Russian city of Vladivostok last week in hopes it would lead to political asylum.
Just before he was to meet Thursday with the International Organization for Migrants, a team of men grabbed him, slapped handcuffs on him and drove off, rights activists in Moscow said Friday. He was spirited away to the eastern port city of Nakhodka, where he is sure to be handed back over to North Korean officials and repatriated to his communist homeland, activists said in Seoul.
Police in Vladivostok refused to comment. A senior South Korean diplomat in Vladivostok said he had no information. Officials from the US consulate in Vladivostok could not be reached for comment.
The 51-year-old would be the third North Korean logger in Russia in a week to make a bid for asylum. On March 9, two other North Koreans who had fled their jobs as loggers managed to get into the South Korean consulate in Vladivostok.
Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency reported last week that two North Koreans climbed a fence, ran past the guards and entered the consulate, saying they wanted political asylum. ITAR-TASS carried a similar report.
The incidents focused attention on the precarious existence of tens of thousands of North Koreans sent by the impoverished regime to work in neighboring Russia.
Russian government figures from 2007 put the number of North Korean laborers at 32,600, most of them working in logging in the remote east.
The Reverend Peter Chung, a Seoul-based activist, said there are about 40,000 North Korean loggers in Russia, but that some 10,000 of them have fled their work sites. Some are finding work as day laborers while others are in hiding as they try to map out how to win asylum in foreign diplomatic missions.
North Korea has been exporting workers to make hard cash since natural disasters and mismanagement destroyed the country’s economy in the 1990s. Laborers have been sent to Russia, Mongolia, eastern Europe and elsewhere, South Korea’s Ministry of Unification spokeswoman Lee Jong-joo said on Friday.
The logger seized Thursday in Vladivostok represents a grim picture of life as a lumberjack in remote Russian outposts, according to Chung, head of the Seoul rights group Justice for North Korea.
The man, surname Kim, told activists he first went to Russia in October 1997, leaving behind a wife and two daughters, and worked there for four years. He went back to Russia in 2006, said Kim Hi-tae of the International Network of North Korea Human Rights Activists, in Seoul.
The North Korean described the conditions as unbearable. His government took half his meager wages, while the North Korean company operating the logging camp took 35 percent. He kept just 15 percent — about US$60 a month — an arrangement that rendered him “virtually a slave,” he told activists.
He eventually fled the logging camp, taking on odd jobs to survive.
He also became a Christian, Chung and Kim Hi-tae said, which could draw severe punishment, even execution, back home.
The successful asylum bid of two other former North Korean loggers inspired Kim to make a similar attempt, Chung said.
He turned up at a safe house that day, saying he wanted help seeking asylum. The missionary asked for a statement, so he scribbled down his name, date of birth and hometown in Korean.
“Wife, two daughters. Sent to Russia in October 1997,” he wrote, using the North Korean spelling for “Russia.” He dated it March 9 this year and signed his name with an emphatic period in his characteristic North Korean script.
The note was obtained by the Associated Press after being scanned and sent by e-mail from Vladivostok to Seoul. Activists asked that he be identified by his surname only to protect his family.
The group Human Rights in Russia said on its Web site that a North Korean named Kim who had sought help from the International Organization for Migrants was waiting in a car outside a Vladivostok hotel to speak to rights officials.
“At this time, another car pulled up to the hotel. Several men in civilian dress got out of it and told the driver of the car that his ‘passenger is a criminal,’” the group’s statement said.
They put handcuffs on Kim, sat him in their car and drove off.
It was unclear who took him, and where they went, it said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese