By Jun Ji-hye
President Park Geun-hye’s recent appeal for North Koreans to defect could trigger diplomatic friction with China, experts said Monday.
Park urged North Korean civilians and rank-and-file troops to “come and find a new home” in South Korea during her speech marking the 68th anniversary of the Armed Forces Day, Saturday.
She also said South Korea will leave the path open so that North Korean people who are suffering from a “gruesome” reality can find hope and build new lives.
However, experts pointed out that without the help or “connivance” from the Chinese government, it is hard for North Koreans to safely arrive in South Korea. Most defectors escape from the North over the northern border area with China and come to South Korea via a third country. In this process, some defectors are captured in Chinese territory and forcibly repatriated to Pyongyang, they say.
Park Won-gon, an international relations professor at Handong Global University, said China does not accept North Korean defectors as political refugees, and from Beijing’s point of view, President Park’s encouraging North Koreans to defect could be “interference in the domestic affairs of North Korea.”
“China’s diplomatic policy dealing with North Korean defectors is non-intervention,” he said. “The country is unlikely to agree with South Korean policies encouraging defection. That could cause problems between Seoul and Beijing.”
The professor added, though, that the South Korean government might have already begun preparations for actively accepting North Korean defectors including coming up with measures to ask for China’s cooperation and better accommodating an increasing number of defectors.
Hong Hyun-ik, a senior researcher at the local think tank Sejong Institute, said that Park’s latest proposal was a de facto declaration of “diplomatic all-out war,” noting that “This was more than the declaration of the end of conversation.”
Even if the government successfully gains cooperation from China, another question remains whether South Korea is capable of accommodating an increasingly large number of defectors and helping them better settle here, experts noted.
Currently, North Korean defectors, once arriving in South Korea, go through a 12-week education course at the Settlement Support Center for North Korean Refugees, also known as “Hanawon,” before beginning life in the South.
Experts said it would be inevitable for the center to reduce the education period if it becomes overcrowded.
But some critics have already pointed out that the current 12-week curriculum is not enough, citing that some defectors fail to assimilate here and leave for a third country.
A survey released in March by the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights showed that about 20 percent of defectors said they want to return to the North.
According to the Ministry of Unification, a total of 29,688 North Koreans have fled the repressive state and settled in South Korea as of August. This year, 894 North Koreans have come to the South as of August.
The reclusive state severely criticized President Park, also on Monday, “for instigating defections.”
Rodong Sinmun, a daily of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party, said Park exposed hostility and malice toward the North that will only cause a confrontation between the two Koreas.