Hundreds of North Korean Defectors at Risk After China's Mass Deportation

China has forcibly returned as many as 600 North Korean refugees back into the hands of the repressive government they had successfully fled, human rights groups say.

Behind the veil of the reclusive country's border, the individuals, repatriated against their will, are at high risk of imprisonment, forced labor, torture and even execution, activists and family members told Newsweek. They have called on the United States and others to put pressure on Beijing to end the practice.

The mass deportation—the largest of its kind by China since North Korea reopened its borders after the pandemic—took place on October 9, according to a report released on Thursday by the Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG), a Seoul-based nonprofit, and the Global Rights Compliance, a human rights law firm in The Hague.

The groups are seeking more protection for the mostly unidentified North Korean deportees, over 70 percent of whom were estimated to be women, as the International Criminal Court's legislative body, the Assembly of States Parties, meets in New York from December 4-14.

Neither North Korea's government nor that of its only ally, China, has confirmed or denied any knowledge of the mass deportation, the groups said.

The TJWG said it had lost all communication with the defectors since they were deported.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., and the Foreign Ministry in Pyongyang did not immediately respond to Newsweek's separate written requests for comment by publication time.

Under the U.N. Refugee Convention of 1951, and other pieces of international law, nations are urged not to return vulnerable refugees to their countries of origin if they are at risk of persecution there—a concept known as "non-refoulement."

A 400-page report issued in 2013 by a United Nations commission of inquiry found that most of the tens of thousands of North Koreans repatriated from China to date were subjected to degrading conditions and punishment such as arbitrary detention, sexual violence, torture and execution.

Michael Kirby, who chaired the global governing body's fact-finding mission, said Chinese officials who provided escapees' information to North Korea, and who participated in their repatriation to Kim Jong Un's regime, were "aiding and abetting crimes against humanity."

One of the few refugees known by name among those deported in October was Kim Cheol Ok, who fled North Korea in 1998 at the age of 14 in the middle of a severe famine that killed as much as 5 percent of the country's population.

A human trafficker forced her to marry a local man in Jilin, a Chinese province on the northeastern border with North Korea, and the two had a daughter, according to the TJWG. She was arrested on April 5.

Her sister, Kyu Li, who is herself a refugee, told Newsweek: "Living in China without legal status, my sister and I were always worried about the possibility of being arrested at any moment."

The local police station was known to collect bribes each year from North Korean women in a similar situation, she said, a practice that exploited undocumented and vulnerable defectors in China whose right to remain was uncertain.

"However, even after her arrest, I thought we could find a way to secure her release, as she had lived there for a long time," said Kyu Li. Her niece last saw her mother, who can no longer speak Korean, "inside the prison through a screen," Kyu Li said.

She hopes the Chinese government will treat North Korean defectors with human dignity. "Defectors are also human beings."

The TJWG estimates an additional 1,100 refugees from North Korea are still being held in Chinese detention centers, and they could be deported "back to the murderous regime which they fled from at any moment."

Ethan Hee-Seok Shin, a legal analyst for the NGO, said that knowledge of the October deportation came from a long-time partner who provided intelligence to the U.N.'s special rapporteur on North Korea, Elizabeth Salmon, and has for many years helped North Korean refugees escape.

Coordinating with Chinese informants, the partner tracks the populations of detainees at 11 detention centers across North Korea. They warned about the October 9 deportation months before it happened, Shin told Newsweek.

At most border crossings, the recent batch of North Koreans were transferred by Chinese public security vans, the source said. However, between the Chinese border city of Dandong, in Liaoning province, to North Korea's Sinuiju in North Pyongan province, the refugees were transported in tour buses under armed guard, according to TJWG, citing their anonymous source.

"The TJWG has identified the locations of [North Korean] detention centers and provincial holding centers in the interviews with over 800 North Korean escapees, and the transfer routes of the repatriated North Koreans have been confirmed by a separate set of interviews of 50 North Korean escapees conducted by TJWG's disappearance survey team," Shin said.

The group "can say with reasonable certainty" that their maps showed the detention centers where the deportees would likely be sent upon arrival in North Korea, he said.

The refugees, like thousands of others since China's repatriation operations began in the 1990s, were likely to be harshly punished by Kim's communist regime, which has gone to great lengths to block North Korean citizens' access to the outside world.

In September, the U.S. State Department said it was "deeply concerned about the plight of North Korean asylum seekers, including some 2,000 North Koreans detained in China who are at risk of repatriation to the [Democratic People's Republic of Korea]."

"The North Korean regime perceives individuals who endeavour to leave the country as a direct threat to its stability," Global Rights Compliance partner Catriona Murdoch told Newsweek.

Those who make it out are "pivotal conduits" between the communist country's society and the rest of the world, she said, as they aid in the secret exchange of money, goods and information.

These escapees "represent the most significant catalyst for social change the [North Korean] regime has ever encountered," and those who end up back in Pyongyang's hands are made examples of, Murdoch said, citing accounts of those who have survived multiple repatriations and suffered for it.

The global community bears a responsibility to end China's repatriation of North Koreans, but Beijing is not likely to respond unless faced with "significant international pressure, condemnation and economic repercussions," she said.