Seven words

China Faces Predicament Over North Korean Refugees

Seven words
By Edward Kim

Calling for a Jewish boycott of the Beijing Olympics, 194 American rabbis recently cited the following reasons: China ’s support for the genocidal government of Sudan; the nation’s human rights record; its crackdown on Tibet; and providing missiles to Iran and Syria.

Seven words strikingly absent from this list and from the whirlwind of protests engulfing the Beijing Olympics are: “. . . Beijing ’s forced repatriation of North Korean refugees.”

What makes the missing seven words here particularly depressing is that they are missing even from the lips of the most conscientious human rights activists. It would be equivalent to 194 American pastors calling for a boycott of the Nazi Olympics and failing to mention the persecution of the Jews as one of the reasons. If that had in fact occurred in 1936, the Jewish rights movement of that time would have done some soul searching in terms of how and why they were failing to communicate effectively the plight of their Jewish brethren to the world.

In 2008, Beijing is perceived as being blamed by everyone for almost everything except for the forced repatriation of North Korean refugees. Accordingly, it is time for the North Korean human rights movement to do some soul searching.

In this opportune moment when the world’s attention is fixed on Beijing and the backdrop of protests has heightened awareness of the Chinese regime’s complicity in some of the worst atrocities of the 20th century, how is it that the issue of the forced repatriation of North Korean refugees has failed to get on the radar of the majority of anti-Beijing protesters or of the Western media?

Another case in point is Western criticism of the Myanmar junta’s response to the recent cyclone.

In circumstances uncannily similar to North Korea - a regime that refuses to allocate aid donations with transparency; that turns natural disasters into man-made catastrophes; that has caused tens of thousands of preventable deaths – Western leaders have reserved their public and bold criticisms to Myanmar and largely stayed silent on Pyongyang.

Here are some hypotheses:

Reason #1:

If the South Koreans do not appear that concerned about human rights in North Korea, then why should the rest of the world be. Put in more recent terms, when the national pride of the South Korean people is more hurt by what 10,000 Chinese students did to their 50 countrymen on their own soil than by the fact that just 50 South Koreans came out to oppose Chinese forced repatriations, then the world’s deafening silence on this issue should not come as a surprise. If kin see no evil, then why should strangers.

Reason #2:

North Korea, unlike Myanmar, has nuclear weapons. Forbidding problems with no available solution in sight are easier on the conscience (and ego) to ignore than to acknowledge and seek to address. Nobody likes to be reminded of their impotence.

Reason #3:

North Korea, unlike Myanmar, borders China, the rising superpower, which does not want hundreds of thousands of refugees to pour into its country and drain its resources. So it is in China’s best interests, and consequently in the best interests of those that desire to do business with China, to downplay anything that might destabilize Pyongyang and thereby upset Beijing.

This is the tragedy that is North Korea. The country draws little attention from the world because it belongs to a dysfunctional family. The world turns a blind eye to the country’s atrocities because doing otherwise would mean looking down the barrel of a gun. And the country’s abusive partner happens to be the next superpower of the world.

What would be the value of uttering the seven words in such a tragic situation?